Have you ever heard the expression, “If you were really sorry, you wouldn’t have done it in the first place”?

It stretches logic to begin with, but falls completely apart when it’s one generation trying to make amends for the crimes of the past.

On Monday, the United States Senate apologized for its failure to pass anti-lynching laws. Despite numerous pieces of legislation that would have attacked the heinous practice and affirmative votes in the House of Representatives, the Senate failed to act, gridlocked by Southern senators who utilized the filibuster to block action.

Nearly 5,000 people were lynched in the United States between the end of the Civil War and the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. The crimes were widespread and the ultimate expression of oppression, hatred and racism. They were that time’s equivalent of the suicide car bomber: Violence wielded by radicals with the intent to terrorize an entire population.

In reality, the Senate’s actions are not so much an apology – after all, the victims and their tormentors and killers are gone – but an acknowledgement of a great wrong. It was with cowardice and malice that the Senate failed to act. Owning up to the failure is an important symbol of reconciliation.

The injustice is not undone by saying “I’m sorry,” but by facing the brutality and ugliness of our shared national history, the country makes progress in the struggle against racism. Admitting the truth, especially after a long, terrible silence, is liberating. The great weight of inaction is finally lifted, yet history’s burden will remain upon those men and women of the Senate who knew about the evil of lynching and did nothing.

Today’s senators didn’t allow lynching to continue, but they’re still right to acknowledge the truth and to issue an apology.