[raybbr]

I am not descended from slavery nor did any of my grandparents, who came from eastern Europe, own any slaves. The very first line of this article capitulates to the liberal notion of reparations.

[FreedomNotSafety]

Why did you start your post with your lineage? Is it to imply that you are exempt from reparations because of it? When it comes to reparations does the fact that I have slave owners in the family tree give you a superior defense then me from paying reparations?

[Mrs. Don-o]

It absolutely does not. The whole point is not a capitulation to the liberal notion of slave reparations, but the most effective rebuttal: go back far enough, and we all have both slaves and slave-masters in our ancestry. So it's impossible to say who would pay reparations to whom.

And as a person of Polish national origin, aren't you a descendant of slaves? The very word "Slav" comes from "slave".

[Middle English sclave, from Old French esclave, from Medieval Latin sclvus, from Sclvus, Slav (from the widespread enslavement of captured Slavs in the early Middle Ages). See Slav.]

[Source]

[Tammy8]

If you had ancestors here during slavery then they may have owned slaves. People always think of the plantation owners with hundreds of slaves and there were actually few of them. Many others owned slaves though, most businesses of every kind and size owned slaves, 1 or more. Many middle class people owned at least one house slave to help with the cooking and cleaning as soon as they could afford to.

I was sure my family never owned slaves until I did some genealogy work. My mother’s family were fairly poor so she was sure they never owned slaves. Her grandfather made wooden barrels, and paid taxes on one slave. No one in the family had ever talked about it but there he was on the slave tax rolls paying for his one slave that helped him make barrels. We also found a few others in the family tree that listed one slave as household help.