Why is mark wahlberg apologizing

Yang writes that it is "gut-wrenching" that in the reactions to the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner - all young black men killed despite being unarmed - the victims are often characterised as "harder, bestial and irredeemably corrupted by casual drug use or records of petty crime".

But Mr Wahlberg, he says, who has a much more extensive criminal record, is seen simply as a troubled kid. Ben Railton, writing for Talking Points Memo, says that he also sees a larger historical and cultural narrative at play. But other reactions are less focused on the wider racial conflict and more in the human one.

Writing for the Boston Globe, Adrian Walker suggests that Mr Wahlberg should personally reach out to his victims and apologise before taking the legal route. He says that he believes Mr Wahlberg's regret is genuine because the potential gains of the pardon are so small. Cleansing his record and his conscience should be hard, not as easy as writing a few checks.

Time's Daniel D'Addario says the pardon request comes across as entitled and proves that he hasn't really changed - and why should he? Mary Belmonte, the white teacher who brought the students to the neighborhood beach that day, sees things differently.

He was just a follower doing what the other kids were doing. The year-old former rapper, Calvin Klein model and Boogie Nights actor wants official forgiveness for a separate, more severe attack in , in which he assaulted two Vietnamese men while trying to steal beer.

That attack sent one of the men to the hospital and landed Wahlberg in prison. Wahlberg, in a pardon application filed in November and pending before the state parole board, acknowledges he was a teenage delinquent mixed up in drugs, alcohol and the wrong crowd. Court documents in the attack identify Wahlberg among a group of white boys who harassed the school group as they were leaving Savin Hill Beach in Dorchester, a mixed but segregated Boston neighborhood that had seen racial tensions during the years the city was under court-ordered school integration.

It doesn't make him any exception," she said. Another victim, Johnny Trinh Hoa Trinh , a Vietnamese man now living in Texas, told a Daily Mail reporter he does forgive Wahlberg, and denies a popularly held belief that the permanent injury to his left eye was caused by the actor during the assault.

Pham, the Vietnamese American leader who now works for the Baker administration, suggests a novel way he thinks that Wahlberg can atone for his past. We all believe in a second chance," said Pham. A movie that would embrace the concept of brotherhood, of living together, making our neighborhood a much better place. I think that would be a wonderful thing to do. When I mentioned this proposal to Wahlberg, he actually seemed open to the suggestion.

That would be the toughest task," he said. But before he leaves his past behind, there are some other people who would like some closure, too — namely his victims. Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker globe. Correction: An earlier version had the incorrect date for when Wahlberg assaulted Thanh Lam. It happened in Boston Globe video.