This, exactly. If your perspective is that you shouldn't be held responsible for what your ancestors did, as if it's not still happening, you're too ignorant to write about the subject.
I’ve been meaning to ask a few specific questions for some time now, and this looks like a terrific opportunity to do so. As a sort of sub-topic of this fascinating thread. I hope they won’t be too much of a bother. It really is time to zero in a bit into specific concepts, I believe, in order to work out the exact mechanics there.
Question 1: Suppose one lives in Canada, but is first generation Canada-born, and one’s ancestors are from Slovakia. Does one then imagine out of a sense of communion that olden Slovakia had oppressed native Canadians? Or is one exempt from the inherited racial guilt? Or is it more of a having the right skin color in the wrong place thing and the guilt is not genetic or national, but more epidermal?
Question 2: Suppose one is not a Slovak, but solid Canadian stock since at least the late 1700’s, and say Welsh-Cumbrian from before that. Yet none of one’s Canadian ancestors oppressed anyone. Some of them tended animals, others worked in townships, but not one of them has ever oppressed in any way a native Canadian. Now, does this lack of a direct lineage to an oppressor shield one from the inherited stain, or is it not a question so much of direct genetic inheritance, but more of a quantum mutual-influence thing? As in—X number of your ethnicity has done a bad thing, and therefore your genes are affected too? If yes—is there a specific number of ethnicity members that have to do the bad thing until you’re tainted too? Or, going further still--do country borders stop it? If you are of the "guilty ethnicity", but have never set foot in the country in which the crimes took place, do you only become guilty once you cross the border?
Question 3: In case it’s not a quantum genetic sympathy thing, but a direct descendant thing. Suppose one’s direct ancestor was responsible for oppressing or even massacring native Canadians back in 1824. Is this family curse forever, or not? If not—is there a specific number of generations after which it is lifted, or is the a percentage of blood-mixing after which the family is no longer the original one and the curse no longer works, or is it there forever in anyone who has any connection to the original ancestor, until a specific act of reparation is carried out? If it’s the reparation thing—does one descendant doing it fix things, or do all the descendant have to do this? And also—just once, or annually?
Question 4: Is this only a thing to do with other ethnicities? If, for example, one is white, from Scottish stock, and one’s great-grandmother was an ax murderer, but only killed Scottish stock whites from her own village—does that mean you also have to feel guilty about it even now? Or is it less generationally contagious if the victims are from your own ethnicity? When does it become a generational crime against other ethnicities—if it’s not the same sub-branch of white but a different type of white (for example Celts killing Slavs), or only if it’s a totally different skin color and culture?
Question 5: If it’s possible to be guilty but not have done anything bad yourself, is it then also possible to be awesome by remote influence? If the bad deeds of one’s ancestor make ‘guilt points’ for the descendant, do the good deeds make ‘awesome points’? If yes—how many ‘awesome points’ make the ‘guilt points’ go away?
Question 6: Leaving ancestors alone and shifting to the here and now. Suppose one’s cousin works in a corporation that pollutes native Canadian land. Does that make one guilty by association or by shared genome? What purification ritual should be done to scrub clean the stain on one character? Or is the whole clan cursed from now on? Or the whole ethnos?
Thank you very much in advance should answers be forthcoming, have a nice weekend.
I invite nighttimer to also meditate on these questions, as the user also sounds perhaps representative of a certain school of thought on the subject.
EDIT: We live in times in which it is expected to wear allegiances on one's sleeve. I'm progressive. Been zooming deep into the mechanics of any issue ever since the obligatory breakdowns after high school.