It's too late to Apologize?

So New Jersey is proposing to put forth an official apology for slavery. They will be the first northern state to do such (and reportedly the largest northern state to have slaves). However, Republican Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll says nay to that. I highlighted the “thought provoking” parts in red. See below: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/01/01/america/NA-GEN-US-Slavery-Apology.php

TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey would become the first Northern state and the fifth state overall to apologize for slavery under a measure to be considered this week by state lawmakers.
Legislators in Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia have issued formal apologies.
"If former Confederate states can take action like this, why can't a Northeast state like New Jersey?" asked Payne, a Democrat from Essex.
But Republican lawmakers wonder if it would be relevant.
"Who living today is guilty of slave-holding and thus capable of apologizing for the offense?" asked Assemblyman Richard Merkt, a Morris Republican. "And who living today is a former slave and thus capable of accepting the apology? So how is a real apology even remotely possible, much less meaningful, given the long absence of both oppressor and victim?"
But Payne, an Essex Democrat, said an apology would comfort black residents and set an example for other states. "Slavery was an evil and shameful practice and New Jersey should profess remorse for its past involvement," he said.
The measure is set for a hearing tomorrow. It hasn't received Senate consideration but would have to be adopted by Tuesday, when the legislative session expires.
It's proposed as a resolution, a form used to express the Legislature's opinion and requiring no gubernatorial action.
Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll, a Morris Republican, said Democrats should start by asking their own party to apologize, noting the historic Republican opposition to slavery and how New Jersey twice voted against Lincoln.
"But, on a current note, if slavery was the price that a modern American's ancestors had to pay in order to make one an American, one should get down on one's knees every single day and thank the Lord that such price was paid," Carroll said. He said his ancestors came from Ireland around the 1850s, fleeing the potato famine he said was worsened by British indifference.
"Far from holding it against the modern British, I delight in the cruelty of their forebears. Without same, I might be hanging around in Inisfree," Carroll said, referencing an Irish island.
History "is not something for which anyone can — or should be expected to — atone," said Carroll.
"To the extent that America — or New Jersey — ever owed any kind of debt to anyone, that debt was more than repaid through the blood and suffering of 650,000 federal soldiers who died or were wounded during the war provoked by slavery," Carroll said, referring to the Union Army's losses in the Civil War, which pitted the North against the Confederate South between 1861-1865.
"No one today need feel the slightest guilt, as no one today participated in the wrong."

New Jersey has 8.7 million residents, 14.5 percent of them black.
According to the proposal, New Jersey had one of the largest slave populations in the northern colonies, was the last Northern state to free slaves and was the last Northeast state to abolish slavery, doing so in 1846.
It also allowed authorities to return runaway slaves to their owners and didn't ratify the amendment prohibiting slavery until January 1866, a bit more than a month after its passage, after rejecting it in 1865.
"It's a disgraceful part of our state's history," said Payne. But Merkt said many residents descend from families who came to America after the Civil War and have no link to slave-holding.
"Today's residents of New Jersey, even those who can trace their ancestry back to either slaves or slave-holders, bear no collective guilt or responsibility for unjust events in which they personally played no role," Merkt said.
The proposed resolution expresses "profound regret for the state's role in slavery and apologizes for the wrongs inflicted by slavery and its aftereffects in the United States of America."
It states that in New Jersey, "the vestiges of slavery are ever before African-American citizens, from the overt racism of hate groups to the subtle racism encountered when requesting health care, transacting business, buying a home, seeking quality public education and college admission, and enduring pretextual traffic stops and other indignities."

So I wonder- Do we deserve an apology like other groups? And if we did, what would that do for us? It’s coming from people who weren’t involved although benefited from it. Would it even be sincere at this point, after all no one now has enslaved anyone? Also, do we deserve reparations? Sorry if I offend anyone but if we gave every ancestor of slavery 40 acres and a mule or the financial equivalent what would that do? Half the people wouldn’t even spend it on things to improve themselves and their children and put real wealth into our community. Would a program geared at helping underprivileged black people find financial empowerment be better? And unlike what fellow former law student said in class a few years back- Welfare is NOT a form of reparations- please open a book and read up on it!

Let’s face it, call it how you like, the United States, Paris, England etc. have slavery to thank for being suck super powers. Perhaps if they had not grabbed people from their homelands and enslaved them or “colonized” their countries, they might be facing the same type of turmoil many African countries are now seeing and the plights that many African Americans are now stuck in. It’s not as if Europeans never went to war against their own or enslaved their own (although treated them much better than African slaves), so its not a far reaching assumption.

Finally, should we be on our knees thanking God for slavery? If not, we might be running from the many atrocities imposed on the many African citizens. But then again, what might Africa look like if there was no European influence? Should we just forget this whole horrific incident and leave it in the past? Should the Native Americans, Jews, and Japanese forced to be internment camps (mind you they got an apology and money) also forget? Was the fact that so many soldiers died in the Civil War an equal price (personally, I think hell no, this is far from an eye for an eye situation, killing, in my opinion never makes the world right and Mr. Carrolls statements only show how simple minded he really is)?