Former United Bermuda Party Leader Wayne Furbert was right to bring his motion asking the House of Assembly to apologise for the role of the House of Assembly in race division.

And the House was right to support his motion, which read: "We affirm our wholehearted commitment to the cause of reconciliation between all races; and that we ask for forgiveness for the role that this House has played in race division."

In fact, the House of Assembly is the right place for such an apology to be made on its own behalf and on that of the Country, because all formal acts of slavery and segregation flowed from the legislature – by commission or by omission.

It was Parliament that legalised slavery and drew up the laws that enforced it. And it was Parliament that changed the franchise requirements after Emancipation which had the effect of disenfranchising many black Bermudians from exercising a vote. And it was Parliament that failed or refused to pass legislation to prevent discrimination in the workplace and elsewhere, at least until segregation began to be broken down in the late 1950s. Only then did the same Parliament begin to replace the laws that made discrimination of all sorts legally impossible – a process that continues to this day.

So it is right that the current Members of Parliament should apologise for those acts of their predecessors. They represent their institution.

The wider question is whether individuals should offer similar apologies on behalf of their ancestors, or simply people who happen to share the same pigment, or for the privileges and advantages they may have received as a result of their race.

There is no harm and there may be much to gain in making such an apology, and as Mr. Furbert said, it could at least "open up the possibility of healing and mutual respect so keenly needed between the black and white community". But it is a difficult question, because every single individual will see it differently.

MP Michael Scott rightly said that an apology could be made out of empathy. But this is not the same thing as taking responsibility, so this is clearly a complex matter.

The real question is how the community bridges the gaps between the races in wealth, education and opportunity, because it is by bridging those gaps that Bermuda can most substantially ease its racial divisions.

It could be argued that this could include forms of reparations from the white community to the black community. This too is more complicated than it at first appears.

Affirmative action programmes have been used with some success elsewhere, and to some degree, the Economic Empowerment Zone in North Hamilton tries to do exactly that by offering tax concessions and other development incentives in an area which has historically been occupied by black Bermudians and black landowners and business owners. But it is worth noting that the EEZ has not engaged in positive discrimination on racial grounds, and rightly so, because to do so might indeed exclude people who also need help or have good ideas. The main point is that the benefits still largely flow to black Bermudians.

Still, all research shows that the single best way to improve opportunity and to improve social mobility lies in education, and it is here that Government needs to continue to focus its efforts.

It is critical for another reason as well. The restructuring of public schools in the 1990s and the subsequent loss of confidence in public education – rightly or wrongly – has caused de facto segregation on the basis of income, but also, because of the gaps in wealth between whites and blacks, on the basis of race.

It is extremely difficult to build a racially harmonious society if the races are segregated as children and as adolescents.

One way to reverse the trend is to raise the standards of public schools and to publish their results, while requiring that private school students also take the same assessment tests and publish their results too.

That will reverse the perception that public schools are inevitably worse than private schools, while also giving Government schools a real incentive to get better.