Some of my ancestors came to Wisconsin during the English-enforced Great Famine in Ireland. They arrived starving with a whole slew of kids, including about five boys. They homesteaded a place near the town of Glenmore, Wisconsin. Those boys all grew up and joined the Union Army. They trained at Camp Randall in Madison, which is now the UW stadium area. One of them survived the infamous Libby Prison and then spent the rest of his working life after the war as the Clerk of the Court in Green Bay.
My people earned their right to call themselves Americans. That time in Libby Prison wipes out generations of any notional "debt." In fact, given that all of my ancestors who fought for the Union were volunteers and were white (I'm trying to think of a time black people volunteered to die in droves to free white people - any instances of that anybody can think of?) I'd say that if anything black people as a group owe Irish Americans like me as a group.
But that is of course absurd. The one thing all of us owe to this great country is to lead moral lives. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not steal. Honor your father and your mother. And so on. We're all falling down on that, but seriously, how are blacks as a group doing on that score?
How about we start the national conversation on race with a frank discussion of black rates of abortion, murder, rape, robbery, etc.?
Sounds good to me but it would go no where. Blacks don’t want this issue to be resolved. For many in the black community racism is a business.