I did own any slaves.
In fact my ancestors did not even show up until 1900 or so.
Anyone who tries to pin that on me is evil.
So what. My family got here between WWs. Nobody is trying to pin anything on you. But it is the REALITY of this country that it was declared with a lot of high minded ideals that never tried to live up to. There’s an ongoing continuum of these bad things happening with full involvement and approval of the government. Indian schools ended in OUR LIFETIME (early 1970s), “kill the Indian save the man” was the official motto of government backed schools kids were sent to without parental consent in our lifetime.
And of course there’s the stuff that still goes on. Trigger happy cops never getting in trouble. The Patriot Act allowing the government to just declare somebody a terrorist and hold without charges or trial indefinitely.
Pretending the bad stuff didn’t happen, and doesn’t happen just enables it. Taking credit for the good and ignoring the bad ALLOWS the bad. You can’t learn from mistakes you won’t acknowledge. That kind of deliberate ignorance is why history repeats itself.