The comparison to religious rituals is interesting. As someone who is Catholic, this looks to me sort of like an attempt at a group confession, but at least in

The comparison to religious rituals is interesting. As someone who is Catholic, this looks to me sort of like an attempt at a group confession, but at least in the Catholic tradition we perform examinations of conscience [1] and go to confession [2] and we are told to come to terms with what we actually did wrong. You don't get away with some vague acknowledgement of being a sinner. As the Catechism says, "Through such an admission [a person] looks squarely at the sins he [or she] is guilty of, [and] takes responsibility for them." Whether one agrees with Catholics on any number of things (and many reasonable people do not), there is a certain logic to the idea that before you can be better, you have to actually say what's wrong. Forcing a group of people to self label as racist in the way described above is unmoored from reality: even if one had done things that were racist in the past, there is no looking squarely at one's short comings, and there is no taking responsibility for anything. And for someone who hadn't done anything racist, or for someone who claims to have never done anything racist, it's just a show, and things won't actually get better in a meaningful way. [1] https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/sacraments-and-sacramentals/penance/examinations-of-conscience https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/sacraments-and-sacr... [2] https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s2c2a4.htm https://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p2s...