APOLOGY FOR SLAVERY MAKES NO SENSE WHATSOEVER

Resolved, by the House of Representatives that the Congress apologizes to African-Americans whose ancestors suffered as slaves under the laws and Constitution of the United States until 1865.

News reports say President Bill Clinton is considering whether to throw his support behind the above proposed congressional resolution of "apology" to African-Americans for slavery imposed on their ancestors more than 130 years ago. What a useless gesture. Sad to say, it would fit perfectly within this president's symbols-are-everything cynicism and his diminished, bite-sized, school-uniform and V-chip presidency.

Consider: The president who is weighing this empty symbolism has just returned from having delivered a major speech on affirmative action at the University of California-San Diego. And what did our president have to say in that major speech? He took the voters of California to task in a defense of affirmative action. California voters last November overwhelmingly passed the California Civil Rights Initiative banning quotas and preferences in state hiring, promoting and contracting. In this, Golden State voters are right and the president is wrong.

No one alive today is remotely responsible for having enslaved blacks centuries ago. Nor is there a living former slave to whom an apology might conceivably be a proper gesture. Moreover, a majority of Americans are descended from millions of immigrants arriving in the 130 years since slavery ended with the passage of the 13th Amendment outlawing it. Shall we apologize on behalf of white Americans whose ancestors had never set foot in North America until decades after slavery ended? What about the descendants of slain Union soldiers, 360,000 of whom or about one-fifth of those who fought, were martyred in opposing slavery?

It is a mark of today's debased public discourse that a gesture as phony as this attracts serious attention. Newt Gingrich is right: This proposal won't teach one child to read, won't raise hopes for any child trapped in a failing inner-city school. School choice -- giving poor minority parents more choices in the education of their own children -- would actually do something in this regard. But then bold departures of that sort are opposed by our symbol-happy president.