If senators wish to kneel for nine minutes as an act of contrition, that’s their choice. It is my choice to be ­embarrassed for them. There is a yawning difference between having a desire to fix the wrongs of the past and taking responsibility for them.

Kneeling in front of your fellow citizens in cult-like displays of self-flagellation, the kind we saw in Bethesda and North Carolina, where white people begged for absolution while washing the feet of their black neighbors, is antithetical to the egalitarian ideals we should be striving to achieve.

Most Americans have historical grievances, or we wouldn’t be here in the first place. My ancestors were probably boiling leather to survive under Russian monarchs — their progeny sent to death camps under fascism and their children forced to live under the tedious tyranny of communism. They came here to stop kneeling.