Are people guilty for the sins of their ancestors?

[Jamie (K)]

Germans born in the 1950s, '60s, '70s and later have trouble in various parts of the world because many people in other countries blame them for the Nazi genocide and World War II, even though they weren't even born yet when those things happened.

In the 1500s, the Europeans instituted a slave trade from African to America. In the US, this lasted until the 1860s, when a bloody war was fought to stop it. Nonetheless, many Europeans still blame Americans for having had a slave trade, even though the Europeans started it and the Americans abolished it. (Notice also that people from other slave nations, such as Brazil, don't get the same resentment.)

In the past 50 years, more Africans have immigrated to the United States voluntarily than were forced over as slaves. Now there are problems with fights in high schools between African-Americans and Africans, because the African-American kids tell the Africans, "Your people sold our people into slavery." Unbelievable, but true in many schools.

Do you think people are guilty of their ancestors' sins? What about their imagined sins? What about the sins of people who are not their ancestors but are the same color or speak the same language they do?

[Ralf]

In Ireland, the 'English' are still blamed for 800 years of suffering. Every 20 years or so it seems to be 50 years more. In fact, the English first came to Ireland in the later days of the 12th century and retreated in 1921. Today, I don't think that there're too many people alive who knew anybody who was involved in incedents that happened under British rule. Any sentence starting '800 years of suffering...' doesn't bring out the lustre of conscious reflection, because people usually use it to justify a squishy resentment against English people in general.
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[Molly]

[Molly]

[Molly]

Is blaming someone for the sins of their ancestors similar to blaming all Muslims, for example, for the sins of their "peers"?

[Molly]

, ><even though the Europeans started it and the Americans abolished it.>>

Many of them were the same people, right? I mean, many US-based Europeans became Americans upon independence, right?

[Jamie (K)]

[Jamie (K)]

[Molly]

[Molly]

[Jamie (K)]

[Molly]

[Jamie (K)]

[Molly]

I feel Jamie's thread could push people to belittle the claims discussed here:

"NEW YORK (CNN) -- Attorneys for a former law student, who discovered evidence linking U.S. corporations to the slave trade, filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday that could seek billions of dollars in reparations for the descendants of slaves in America."

http://edition.cnn.com/2002/LAW/03/26/slavery.reparations/

(Maybe that's Jamie's intention.)

[Molly]

Hey, Jamie, do you think the Japanese are right here?

"TOKYO, March 5 — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said today that if the United States Congress demands that Japan apologize for his nation’s use of foreign women as sexual slaves during World War II, his government will refuse to comply."