J. Pharoah Doss:   Does Biden’s Native American boarding school apology make a difference?

First- and second-grade students sit in a classroom at the former Genoa Indian Industrial School in Genoa, Neb. Researchers are now trying to locate the bodies of more than 80 Native American children buried near the school.& National Archives/AP 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...