All of these "apologies" for conduct of others that was appropriate in different times, is comical. It makes you wnder, who is funnier and more pathetic, those apologizing or those accepting the apology. What a display of empty sets. Meaningless drivel that some imbue with their own values.
You also have to wonder regarding the timing and who articulated "the apology." Is it political, a precursor to an apology to blacks through elevation of Obama regardless of his merit or lack of it. Is this actually "racism in action."
Of course, these positions postulate a world with polar opposites of good and evil and attributing all "goodness" to the group receiving the apology.
Martin Luther King was a complex individual, who was the figurehead for a cause, but who was subject to many forgiven human failings. That's what he was, a human being rather than the idyllic person he is depicted as being.
And here is testimony that his descendants, his posterity, are also human, subject to human foibles. www.thesmokinggun.com What is it the French say, "Cherchez l'argent." This observation is repeated in less elegant aphorisms in English, such as, "Love it makes the world go round, but money greases the wheels."
Allow human beings to fester long enough and the inevitable result seems to be a descent into chaos. Don't condemn MLK's children. Just recognize that this is what human beings do. I credit them for their autonomy, and refusing to conduct themselves in conformity to the images that people have formed of them and their group. They're real. More power to them.
These apologies are "fake," meaningless activities that have no merit outside of the time warp in which they are occurring. They are "inappropriate." The people, who could have issued meaningful and genuine apologies have left the scene. This is a comedy. Right? What "status" do today's doctors possess that enables them to speak for people in the trade earlier? None.
And er, who are the victims to whom these apologies are being made? More of the mea culpa ritual that seems to be de rigeur in our society nowadays. Now for the ultimate apology involving people who were not players. Self-abnegation may be good for the soul, but it'll be bad for the purse. It's a disaster in the making. But the iedealists occupy a world contrived from fiction, not reality.