In the line of other recent apologies for historical injustices committed, California is now apologizing, through a resolution of its state assembly, for the persecution of Chinese immigrants to the state. No rights of compensation are entailed by the bill.
Apologies of this kind are sometimes said to be either illogical - because you can't apologize where you aren't personally to blame - or pointless. But there's nothing incoherent about an institutional or collective apology being proffered by persons who are themselves blameless in the matter at hand. An editorial in the LA Times gets this right:
[G]overnments, like churches, are more than a collection of individuals. They are enduring institutions that embody community ideals beyond the brief tenure of their representatives...
California's treatment of Chinese immigrants was shameful. While they did the dangerous and backbreaking work of blasting through rock, digging tunnels and laying tracks to build the state's railroads, overseers were legally permitted to treat them as beasts of burden and laws barred them from schools and other public facilities.
Discrimination is not just a matter of lost economic opportunity and political marginalization. It damages the emotional relationship between citizens and their nation. If an apology can bind up intangible hurts that have endured for decades, then yes, it's worth something.
And the point? That's the point: putting on the public record an acknowledgement that a wrong was done, and that the collectivity - here, the state of California - makes symbolic expression of its remorse.