Apologizing for slavery.

• Position: TRENDS AND TRANSITIONS

In a debate rarely seen at the North Carolina legislature, senators--both black and white--talked about their experiences with racism and intolerance.

Senator Tony Foriest spoke of how, as a child, his family planned their vacation stops based on where they would be permitted to stay for the night. Senator Bill Purcell struggled with knowing his grandfather had been a slave owner. And Senator Jim Jacumin told of how his Waldensian ancestors--some of whom now live in western North Carolina--were enslaved for their religious beliefs.

In the end, the North Carolina Senate passed a resolution that expressed "profound regret" for the practice of slavery and apologized for official actions that promoted legalized discrimination over four centuries. The resolution acknowledges the state's "profound contribution for the official acts that sanctioned and perpetuated the denial of basic human rights and dignity to fellow humans."

"What we're talking about is state-sponsored discrimination," says Foriest. "The state went out of its way to deny its people the right to life and liberty."

The measure recounts a long history of discrimination against North Carolina's black population, from the first slaves in the British colony of "Carolina" in 1669 through the Civil War, and Jim Crow laws that promoted inequality into the mid 1900s.

The...