> I was giving a lecture on genealogy and reparations in Amite, Louisiana, when I met Mae Louise Walls Miller. Mae walked in after the lecture was over, demanding to speak with me. She walked up, looked me in the eye, and stated, “I didn’t get my freedom until 1963.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/437573/blacks-were-enslaved-...
It's an unspeakable evil. The "statute of limitations" on sins of the fathers is "until atonement".
Even today, there's plenty of forced labor and sex slaves that exist in the USA. That doesn't mean it's an active systemic issue of oppression, it just means that bad people do bad things when they can get away with it, in spite of a system to stop it.
We shouldn't hold people who didn't do bad things accountable for the actions of people who have done bad things. I don't think that's a radical idea.
In fact, how far back do you even take this? Should we also hold the people of the modern-day Republic of Benin responsible for what their ancestors, the Kingdom of Dahomey, did, which was abducting and selling their African brothers for a bit of cash?
To address your other point, if my grandfather did something to hurt your grandfather in the 1950s, and it's been 70+ years and the only thing your family has figured out how to do since then is complain about how some guy was mean to your ancestor that one time, and that life is so unfair and you're so oppressed because of it, the issue may not be my grandfather, it may just be your family and their victimhood mindset. It feels good to "be oppressed" and have personal responsibility taken away, because when it's always someone else's fault, it can never be yours.