Southern Convocation

I was asked to go to a Southern Life Convocation for my sociology class with Dr. Demerath and ended up leaving the convocation more insulted than I have ever been in my entire life. What I took away from the convocation was that these 3 African-American people were essentially saying that the white Southern population needed to make a formal apology for slavery. Now most people will mark me as a typical southern white-boy; I am conservative to the brim and God-fearing, but on the list is not stupid. Why should we apologize for something that ended before our great-great grandparents were even born. Will it make everything better? Will the African-American community quit committing the majority of crimes in America? Will it make them get a job instead of waiting for their welfare check? The majority of educated African-Americans agree with that statement by the way, that welfare is not helping the minority community, it just makes them lazy. Will they stop pulling the race card every time something doesn't go their way? No, there is an African-American in the White House and they still say things are unequal. The biggest shock in the convocation was besides my friends and I everyone else was agreeing. Why? I am so completely baffled by this, I mean yes slavery was a terrible thing but it's over. It'd be like Israel demanding that Germany apologize for the Holocaust, it won't happen. After leaving the convocation I felt like complete shit. What had I just subjected myself to? Well this might be viewed as racist but rest assured I am not racist, many of my friends are black but everything I have typed above this I believe with my whole heart. This is the end of that subject for me, this convocation ended what little faith I had in the liberal community of America, I had, perhaps somewhat foolishly, hoped that the liberal community around Centenary would pipe down now that they won, but that was optimistic to the point of foolishness.