> Blaming someone, looking to those at fault only works when they are still around and can be made to remedy the situation. But in cases like this, where those people are long gone, it's now up to the government to fix things.

The people that were responsible for these problems are not around anymore, but nor are the direct victims of those problems. There are no Indians living today that are confined to reservations by law. The slaves freed in the aftermath of the Civil War are gone now. Etc.

It would be foolish of me to argue that past crimes against humanity do not still impact our lives today. But such is life. All of our lives are impacted by the lives of others, for better or worse and usually both. This is a fact of life. The modern mindset of Western culture seems to hold that anything bad that happens to oneself as the result of another's actions (no matter what the intent, or how far removed along the cause-and-effect chain) is automatically unjust. But this is foolish. The proverbial butterfly in China that causes the proverbial tornado in America is not responsible for damages.

We fight racism today, to be sure. But racism does not result from slavery and oppression. Other way around. Racism is what motivated people to enslave, oppress, and evict other peoples. The "problem" of American slavery that past racism caused IS solved. It's over. We don't have slavery anymore. Blacks can vote, own property, and have any and all other rights that whites have had all along. Some reparations were made with the abolishment of slavery and the establishment of these rights. Whether those reparations were *sufficient*, I don't know (probably not), but in any case it is too late to complete those reparations. The people that are owed them are gone.

So instead there is societal pressure for reparations to be made to people that were never oppressed in the manner that those reparations are for. What's the point? The making of these reparations is harmless, except when those reparations (such as affirmative action) merely oppress *other* innocents in exchange, but it doesn't get anywhere in bringing greater justice to the wrongs from generations ago.

Now, by no means am I saying there is no racism in the world today. By no means am I saying that there isn't *still* racial oppression. At least it is no longer supported by our laws, but that's small comfort to someone turned away from a job, mortgage, or whatever on the basis of race.

This, however, is a different problem, caused by different people, under different legal and societal circumstances, and both the guilty and the victimized are alive today. THESE are the problems that all of us, whether responsible or not, victimized or not, may work to solve.

But I think we are crippled in our ability to do that if we're always looking back to the past of generations ago and saying, "Well what about THOSE wrongs?"

THOSE wrongs are not THESE. THOSE wrongs will remain wrongs until the end of time. They will remain no more or less atoned for than they are now, no matter how many centuries of attempts at belated reparations are made.

The best can we do is to learn from the past while leaving it in the past. Then strive to do right by the present on its OWN terms.