Are official apologies for past slavery morally appropriate?

Theorists of transitional justice regard official apologies as one major instrument for countries to take responsibility for historical wrongs. One such wrong is the slavery past of western countries, for which Afro-descendant activists have requested official apologies yet countries have been reluctant to apologize officially. Should there be official national apologies for past slavery? One prominent philosopher who has criticized others’ pro-arguments yet has defended an affirmative answer, notably in the U.S. slavery past case, is Janna Thompson (2020). This article takes a critical stance towards contemporary slavery apologies, through an analysis of various moral arguments against apologizing for slavery as well as Thompson’s defenses of it, with illustrations from the Dutch and U.S. slavery past cases. It will present four reasons for why post-slavery governments cannot properly apologize for their nations’ slavery past, and three reasons for why descendants of enslaved people cannot properly be recipients of slavery apologies. Essentially, contemporary official slavery apologies are questionable due to a morally unbridgeable gap between contemporary post-slavery society and the slavery past itself. Thus, this article suggests that restorative transitional justice may only work within a historically restricted timeframe.