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You seem to have a major chip on your shoulder. What the author and what I am trying to tell you is this: we are not guilty, just because we are white. We did not do anything to oppress you or your ancestors. We accept no blame for what others may have done, whatever their race.

I am not denying that there has been discrimination or oppression. Just saying that blaming all whites is as bigotted as blaming all blacks for crime or all arabs for terrorism.

I truly believe that where you discriminate against one, you discriminate against all. This conclusion is obvious to the majority of the American population

You said that "Just saying that blaming all whites is as bigotted as blaming all blacks for crime or all arabs for terrorism." I will agree with you but you need to disagee with the author's logic which is terribly bad. He says the exact opposite of what you said.

Funny how it is assumed that slave owners descendants kept any gains made through the use of slaves.

After the Civil War, most southern whites who owned slaves lost not only their slaves, (a tremendous investment), but through taxation and the inability to work their land, lost that land as well. The claimed family fortunes, were, by and large, forfeit.

The irony of this is that free blacks who owned slaves (yes, there were some)lost their landholdings for the same reason.

While manumission was becoming more commonplace, the north has since (post bellum) used slavery as an excuse for the war, when if slavery were a linchpin issue, the slaves would have been freed at the start of the war, not 1863. The realization that it is cheaper to pay someone and make them fend for their own food, shelter, and medical care, rather than own them and pick up the tab had crept into the economic psyche of the growing pre industrial America.

The reality of the situation, simply enough, is that few southern slave holding families gained by the end of the 'reconstruction' period. So much for that angle.

Even if my ancestors had owned slaves, I would show no gain and, even more to the point, I never owned anyone. If we apply the logic that anyone should have to pay for the actions of their ancestors, actions which occurred a century or more before their birth, the courts are really going to get bogged down.