This began as a comment to @everittdmickey's post Rant: Slavery and it kept growing, and growing. Eventually I forgot it was a comment. I decided to turn it into a post instead.
My biggest problem with people claiming victim status over slavery, and demanding reparations.
They are not the slaves they are describing. They never have been.
Their ancestors likely were. All of our ancestors likely have been depending how far we go back in history for reparations.
So why do they deserve reparations for something that was never done to them? Furthermore, if they deserve these reparations then technically we all do. If you set a limit on how far we can look back in time then that would indicate there is an expiration on when this status can be claimed. Who has the right to dictate that time? To me the answer is none of us. If it wasn't done to you, and experienced by you then you are no victim, and if the people who did it are dead then there is no one to repay you for something that was not done to you. No victim, no crime.
I apply this to "native" Americans too. No one living is guilty of stealing your land. It is likely you never actually owned it. In addition, before that the tribes fought among each other and land changed hands. How far back in time do you go to put claim on something that you personally never owned?
By that technique, all of us can make such claims somewhere. We can all claim to own Africa for example since go back far enough and that is where it is said we all originally came from.
Now before you think I am the white guy basking in my mythological white privilege during a time that white punishment seems acceptable to the status quo. I have a significant amount of "native" American ancestry. By blood I have both Chickasaw and Cherokee ancestry. My ancestors walked the Trail of Tears.
I may actually have a significant enough amount I could have claimed tribal status, gotten scholarships, etc. I never felt right doing that.
I have met a very pale skinned blonde guy in my past who is part of some Michigan based tribe, and he has gotten significant sized paychecks each month for as long as I've known of him simply due to being a significant enough amount of that particular tribe.
Was his land taken from him? No.
Was he ever a victim? No.
A treaty was created that seems to exist in perpetuity and allows future generations to claim victim status, when they are not.
This has been conditioned to be normal. It is not.
It forces those who had nothing to do with past crimes to pay recompense for things they didn't do. It pays people recompense for crimes they were never a victim of.
None of us are guilty of the crimes of our ancestors.
None of us are owed for lost property of our ancestors.
If you held that property as yours and it was forcefully taken from you while you are alive then you would be a victim, a crime would have been committed, and there should be reparations. Yet that doesn't make by extension your grand children, great grand children, and even your own children if they were not living on that property at the time of the crime, a victim.
No victim. No crime.
If you personally never owned it. You are not a victim.
If you personally did not have the atrocity done to you, or were alive to see it done to your family. You are not a victim.
Furthermore, I tend to agree with Lysander Spooner with regards to people who think they have the right to enslave future generations and force them to agree with contracts they never signed. Yet this happens all over the place.
This quote comes to mind:
And yet we have what purports, or professes, or is claimed, to be a contract—the Constitution—made eighty years ago, by men who are now all dead, and who never had any power to bind us, but which (it is claimed) has nevertheless bound three generations of men, consisting of many millions, and which (it is claimed) will be binding upon all the millions that are to come; but which nobody ever signed, sealed, delivered, witnessed, or acknowledged; and which few persons, compared with the whole number that are claimed to be bound by it, have ever read, or even seen, or ever will read, or see.
