Yes... except that they don't really care what your actual heritage is. As far as they are concerned, we are all descended from... British royalty, I guess. They don't know or care about the experience of the Irish, or the Polish, or anyone who doesn't look like them. They bristle if you say get over slavery but they seem totally cool with forgetting all about the Holocaust, because 200 years ago was just other day but the 1940s are ancient history.
And six million murdered Jews can’t compare to a dozen lynched black men.
How about the Irish famine? My great grandfather came here at the age of 8 in 1850 on a ship from county Kerry to New Orleans because his family didn’t have the fair for the ships to New York. They worked their way up the Mississippi to where he and his brothers became teamsters and then farmers. Owning land was their goal and education.
My other ancestors had similar histories. My mother, born in 1915, was the first to graduate from college. When I was the third of his three children to get an advanced degree, my dad who came of age in the great depression, sat down and cried.
I remember a colleague of mine, we were both doing well in our lines of work, both university-educated white guys. He was English, I wouldn’t say a toff (ie upper-class) but he came from a well-to-do family and was very liberal in politics.
We frequently debated politics and he knew my right-of-centre politics and we would wind each other up.
One day he said to me that did I not accept that the British government (taxpayer, I reminded him) should pay reparations for the slave trade that had enriched Britain.
I asked him why, he said we enjoyed a privileged position and that privilege was based on the wealth accrued through three centuries of imperialist exploitation and it was incumbent upon us to pay a little back.
I looked at him and stated coldly, “I don’t know what your ancestors were doing and if you feel ashamed about it feel free to hand over whatever of your wealth you feel derived from exploiting black people. My ancestors were starving to death on the windswept mountains of Donegal eating nothing but rotten potatoes while the British Empire grew fat, I don’t owe black people anything.”
He left it at that, I honestly believe that it was the first time that he realised that not all white, heterosexual males who have made a bit of money for themselves were racist exploiters of black people.