I can honestly and 100% positively say that no one in my ancestry ever contributed to slavery...they were all dirt poor. They were farmers and coalminers and worked hard for what little they did have.
I used to work with a woman who is African American. She loves to play the race card and flaunted to everyone how her kids both got into good colleges ahead of 'all the whites' because they were black. She would holler discrimination whenever something didn't go how she wanted it to go. She joined 'HISPA' [a hispanic organization through our employers -they do community service and help Hispanic students enter good schools- she felt she qualified because her mom is half latino] and bragged that the only reason she did it was to swing a few free [company paid] trips when they had their Conferences each year. She went to Puerto Rico, New York, and Las Vegas...but passed on the trips to places that were not as fun. She never attended the meetings and did slightly less than the bare minimum to get to go on these trips.
She brought in pics of her mom and dad and her grandparents when they were young. She had always led everyone to believe they had had a very tough life and she too had really suffered. In the pictures these people were dressed to the nines. High fashion suits, gloves, stilletto heels, hats, jewels....standing outside Jazz clubs. So the next day I brought in pics of my family... my dad in his sailor uniform (not the dress whites..just the navy ones they wore every day) while he was on leave and mom in her little cotton dress. This was right after he had come back from the South Pacific. My granparents who looked like the old couple in the painting 'American Gothic', and the topper, my other grandfather in old wornout lace up boots, holey overalls, in need of a shave and and haircut. A good stiff breeze would have blown the man over. Both men died by basically working themselves to death leaving wives to raise the family or run the farm. The one in the overalls left his family penniless when he passed. My dad was two at the time.
I do not look down on her family for being able to have afforded nice things and enjoying their lives, and I expect no pity for my relatives and the lives they led. Because in the long run...my family learned to work for what we have, we don't expect handouts and we deal with what life hands us. She cannot say the same thing. This is not a comparison neccesarily of black vs white...but more the idea that you can get what you want because 'everybody owes you' rather than working for what you have.
I think we do all people, not just minorities, a disservice when we take the work ethic away from them and hand them everything. What purpose does it serve to have a kid get into college but he is not at the level of intellect to keep up, and yet we deny another from getting in when they might just do great things with that education?
I'm not saying we shouldn't have welfare programs either, but they need to be a helping hand to get the person back on their feet again and help find the best way to do for themselves, not support them for life.
I am so tired of the whole politically correct,bipartisan, frivilous lawsuit filing. finger pointing, unaccountable society we live in...but what are ya gonna do? I can't change the world, so I'll just go to work and manage my little corner of this world the best way I can- treating others the way I would like to be treated, and respecting our differences rather than pointing them out for scorn.
I know I got off on a ramble there...and I may not have even made sense...but the way things are in this world, I just think its time we all started banding together as Americans instead of segregating and tearing our people apart.