On Thursday June 18, 2009, the United States Senate issued its long awaited public apology for the forced enslavement of African Americans in this country. This apology came 402 years after its inception in the colonial formation of this nation. It amazes me to no avail the audacity of this government and its people to believe that a simple apology for 400 years of forced slave labor is enough ! Slavery was abolished in 1865 as a result of the thirteenth amendment, yet for the next 109 years African Americans in this country although "free" were still the subjects of widespread inequality. Blacks in this country have technically only been free for 35 years and anyone whom says otherwise is in denial. We speak of the american dream, freedom, democracy and civil rights...but whom do these belong to? They surely don't belong to the people whose ancestors carried and built this country from the ground up through hundreds of years of free labor. They certainly don't belong to the people who have been stripped of thier ancestral identities and  left with broken mental deficiencies as a result of these insane practices. So i say to the Senate keep your apology.....if it took this long for you to realize the injustices that this country has been built on and the blood that stains its institutions then an apology is only a slap in the face to those in which it means the most.