Social Justice Concept: An American "Truth & Reconciliation Commission" Is Needed

Hello All,

After viewing a PBS episode of "Bill Moyers Journal" this week where Desmond Tutu of South Africa was mentioned and discussed.

I got to thinking that America unlike South Africa in 1994 with the ending of Apartheid had no "Truth & Reconciliation Commission". In regards to the near genocide committed to Native Americans and especially to the imported slaves and than later Jim Crow treatment of African-Americans.

It took the U.S. nearly 50 years to address the Japanese internment camps during WWII during the Reagan Administration. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Abolisher's before him began the century long societal discussion of the treatment of African-Americans. However these discussions with our American society is still ongoing as a social democratic experiment.

I'm not talking about reparations to Native Americans or Afro-Americans. What I am discussing is something very similar to the "Truth & Reconciliation Commission" that helped heal the nation of South Africa in 1994 in regards to "Apartheid".

The United States of America has had nothing close to this, lest the work begun or continued by Martin Luther King Jr. with his "Beloved Community" philosophy.

The inequalities with Native Americans continues to this day and if not for grass roots social organizations would be very much forgotten. Casinos on Native American reservations isn't the ultimate solution for these indigenous people of our America.

On the other societal discussion is that Afro-Americans make up nearly 2/3's of our national prison inmate populations. Often stricken by poverty and lack of opportunity we as a consumer capitalistic society would rather discard people than invest in them it seems. This is just a continued tapestry of hardship facing Afro-Americans in our nation that continues to this day and age.

If we as Americans in our civil society do not demand a change not just from our government, but from each other. Our civil society will sooner than later implode onto itself. It may not be a catastrophic implosion but a social paralysis of will power and vision will lead us further away from a Republic Democracy. It will turn us into something that may take more than a generation to extricate ourselves from in the future.