Not to nitpick, but a generation isn't the lifespan of a man. I regard it as being roughly 25 years from one generation to another. Lincoln made the Emancipation Proclamation about 143 years ago. Divide 143 years by 25 and you get roughly six generations to take advantage of freedom. Yes, there was prejudice afterwards, but every race who came here had to face prejudice, especially the European settlers who were, (contrary to what modern history books claim), constantly attacked and butchered by the indigenous peoples. In Colonial times Catholics were driven out of villages, their homes and churches burned to the ground, the priests hanged or sent to England to be tried as "heretics".
My grandmother, born in 1885, told us many stories about the brutality, prejudice and outright oppression the Irish faced in America for many, many years. I've seen American newspaper illustrations from the 1800's that depicted the Irish as alligators washing up on America's shores. I'm sure many people know about the "NINA" signs in American store windows in the 1800's and early 1900s, ("No Irish Need Apply").
But no matter how you decide to define a "generation", or no matter how you define "oppression", the blacks of America have had 143 years to pick themselves up and make things work for them. Actually, it's been a lot longer than 143 years since slavery was abolished when you consider that the North abolished it long before the Emancipation Proclamation. No one alive today owes any black person 'reparations'. The whole idea just creates more division amongst the American people, and keeps many blacks in a perpetual state of "entitlement". Reparations is just the latest word for WELFARE.
We agree that no black person living today is owned any reparations by any living person in the United States. The liberal experiments in the "Great Society" and racial quotas and dumbing down of the school systems hasn't been a successful approach.