Does Biden’s Native American Boarding School Apology Make a difference?

Photo by Steve DiMatteo on Unsplash

Few US presidents have formally apologized to Americans for the “sins” of previous administrations.

In 1976, President Gerald Ford apologized for the imprisonment of Japanese Americans during WWII. After Japan bombed the US Naval base in Pearl Harbor, the US government viewed Japanese-Americans as a threat to national security. From 1942 to 1945, authorities imprisoned around 120,000 Japanese-Americans. Ford saw this mass incarceration as a “setback to fundamental American principles.” President Ronald Reagan signed a bill in 1988 that compensated every individual imprisoned.

In 1997, President Bill Clinton apologized for the horrific Tuskegee Experiment, which occurred between 1932 and 1972. The United States Public Health Service intended to study syphilis and recruited poor Black sharecroppers under the pretense of providing free medical care for “bad blood.” However, the Public Health Service’s actual goal was to monitor the full progression of the disease. Instead of providing effective care, the researchers gave the participants placebos, allowing them to analyze how the untreated condition led to other severe health problems, ultimately resulting in each sharecropper’s death.

Last month, President Joe Biden apologized for the United States government’s role in running Native American boarding schools.