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You're right. But I have observed that the Japanese, whom I respect and whose language I can speak a bit, are completely unaware and oblivious to their ancestors' behavior.

In the case of American black slavery it was White Christians who died by the thousands in the process of getting them freed. Guilt is being drilled more into white American kids, including mine whose ancestors never owned a slave, as German kids have had to endure over the war and the Holocaust. I'm sick of it too.

One thing I've used to put things in perspective when a black friend or colleague starts to kvetch in my direction is point out that some of my ancestry is Native American (Cherokee and Delaware), and that they're not the only ones with a reason to bitch about white people, AND ESPECIALLY DEMOCRATS (Trail of Tears, anyone?).

Bottom line is, if everybody quit bitching about things in the past which can't be changed (my ancestry is also Scottish and Irish ... am I supposed to march on London, or something?) and got on with being decent now we'd all be a lot better off. That doesn't mean we forget, just that we learn from the past and move on.

“...if everybody quit bitching about things in the past which can’t be changed...and got on with being decent now we’d all be a lot better off.”

I believe we as a country were actually heading that direction.

Until Obama...

In the case of American black slavery it was White Christians who died by the thousands in the process of getting them freed.

"Getting them freed" was not at all a goal of the war. It eventually was adopted as a goal about 18 months after the war started, but the intent of sending Armies into the south was not to free the black people, it was to control the economic powerhouse that was the Southern trade with Europe.

People nowadays do not know this, but the South produced 75-85 % of all the European trade, and because the Federal government was paid through tariffs, the South was effectively paying for 75-85% of all the cost of running the Federal Government.

An independent South would have wrecked the Northeastern shipping and finance industries, and the powerful men of New York were not going to have that.

The North went to war to stop the South from damaging the economics of the powerful people of New York and Washington DC.

In other words, the same people who are "the establishment" today.