I feel the same way . The thing that gets me is the fact that neither my great grandparents nor my great, great grandparents had a thing to do with slavery...but that doesn't matter. It will forever be tossed in my face and my kids faces and in my grandchildren's faces.
Let's talk about the Jews and the holocaust. Or the way Native American Indians were treated when this country was first settled. That's oppression and mistreatment. And 2 topics that many blacks won't touch.
This and similar posts are
beyond offensive!
In the first place, many African Americans are perfectly willing to discuss historical atrocities against other groups. But it isn't a contest!
And to suggest the genocides against Jews and Native Americans somehow make 400 years of black slavery "not so bad," is both ignorant and cruel.
In the first place, many, many, many black people died as a result of slavery, so it isn't a mere matter of dead Jews and Indians versus Africans "inconvenienced" by having to work in the kitchen.
In the second, we're talking about an atrocity that lasted 400 years of legal slavery and at least another century of de facto slavery under Jim Crow laws. That's
half a millennium of hardship, suffering and death.
And, finally, the point is not whether your grandfather or mine owned slaves. The point is that this country was very much BUILT by slave labor (primarily the labor of blacks, but also of Indians, Chinese and other groups).
We who enjoy the benefits of living in this country have an obligation to work to repay that debt by making the nation as equitable as it can be TODAY!
Think of it as paying off the mortgage.
(And, no, I am not arguing for reparation payments to individuals, though I have read interesting arguments in that regard. I'm saying we don't get to pretend everything is jim dandy just because we're "tired" of hearing about the issue.)