As a descendant of slaves I guess I'll try and shed some light on this subject as I see it...
It's not just the American government that is responsible for slavery great Britain, France, Holland, etc but let me chime in on the U.S. my ancestors were not invited here they did not come to the shores of America to make a better life for themselves, they where bought here to work for the whites... I hear alot of people say I wasn't even born then what do I have to do with slavery, well look at it this way. alot of companies(Aetna, csx fleet financia,etcl) where around then and benefited from the blood sweat and tears of my ancestors these companies you do business with today you work for them, you invest in them and collect a pension from them when you buy insurance from them you get a better rate then I do! America should pay her debts... I pay my taxes to a government that enslaved my ancestors. Your founding fathers are Hippocrates, if they really believed in their ideology of a free society then why did slavery ever exist here in America? I'm not just speaking for African Americans, but alot of people who came over from china and help build the railroads where ****ed by the usa along with native Americans, what about my grandfather who risked his life fighting in the pacific and Korea to come home to north Carolina and not be served in a restaurant or access to the law equally? my step dad and uncle where both in Vietnam fighting to help other people on behalf of America and the constitution that supported slavery hmmmmm but you have nothing to do with it? Look deep and hard at what's going on around you. You’re guilty by association and taxes. You say hard work and an education is all one needs to make it in this society, my ancestors worked hard in the cotton and sugarcane fields, denied and education denied to speak their native language and practice their culture, so the whites could sit on their asses sipping mint julep. America has billions to fight iraq but, when is she going to give me my forty acres and a mule?