It might seem like a digression, given all the challenges facing the state legislators in Albany, to take up legislation that would have the state of New York formally apologize for its role in slavery. Yet a Democratic assemblyman from Harlem, Keith Wright, and a Republican state senator from western New York, Dale Volker, have introduced such a bill. Though it deals with abuses that took place 150 or 200 or 300 years ago, it strikes us as a good start at opening up the little told story of slavery in the state whose motto is Excelsior.

New Yorkers recently gained an illuminating look at slavery here in an exhibit at the New-York Historical Society. The resolution before the state legislature is another step in the direction of historical accuracy, reminding New Yorkers that, even though we are a Northern state, slavery existed in colonial New York and New York State for more than 200 years.

The argument can be made that an apology isn’t worth much in practice or even that, by encouraging a cult of victimization, it would be counterproductive. But just because it isn’t a panacea it does not follow that it’s with logic entirely. And it strikes us that a refusal to apologize is more likely to engender feelings of victimization than is an actual apology

We favor the apology resolution with a caveat — that language referring to the 2002 World Conference Against Racism, held in Durban, South Africa, which declared slavery a crime against humanity, should be deleted from the resolution. The Durban conference devolved into an anti-Israel hate-fest, and it would be twisted to try to rectify one bigoted practice, slavery, by invoking a meeting tainted by another form of bigotry.

If the lawmakers are looking for authorities to cite on the evils of slavery, let them cite the 13th Amendment, or Abraham Lincoln, or Frederick Douglass, or Sojourner Truth, or Henry Ward Beecher, or William Lloyd Garrison, or Charles A. Dana. There is no need to quote a United Nations-sponsored hatefest aimed at Jews, a people who know that the centuries are not enough to erase the impact of slavery.

The resolution calling for an apology is not the only slavery-related measure being considered in Albany. Hakeem Jeffries has offered a measure that would revise the state’s civil laws to make it possible for the heir of a person enslaved in New York before December 31, 1827, to sue to recover damages for unpaid labor. This newspaper is not in the camp that reflexively opposes the idea of restitution in respect of slavery. But from covering the struggle of Jews for restitution in material claims against both the Nazis and the communists in Europe, we have learned that these kinds of suits can move in unintended — and undesired – directions, toward group rights and group responsibility, and would advise great caution.