Our salvation will be the browning of America. Even now, television commercials show inter racial couples where it once was controversial. The next generation will be even closer to absolving this issue. We are only 150 years from emancipation & only 60 years from the abolishon of Jim Crow. We as Americans based our slave culture on race where other slave holding nations based/base it on economic status or birth. So I hold these truths to be self evident that all people are created equal & we as a nation will get to the promised land. Outbreed for goodness sake & for the sake of our species. We are all from mother Africa tho we departed at different times. Mix up the gene pool & stay in school.

So I grew up white and poor. Not privileged. In post-war Germany. I saw my frst black person when a medical student from Ghana moved into the next village . We stared at him, followed him to see if there was anything different about him. No, big disappointment. He was just as old and boring as the fathers who rode the bus to their jobs in the city. They wore grey or black coats, wore gloves and carried a briefcase. I learned my first lesson about races: they are all the same. From a certain age on, they were boring and predictable.
Some years later, i became part of a circle of friends who were interns in a large hospital. Some were black, from the Gold Coast, and I often had luch with them ( I was a poor hippie , often hungry) We sat around in a circle with a big bowl of somehting in sauce and a big bowl of rice. We would form a ball from the rice and scoop up the meat and sauce. It was a hot as hades. The guys loved watching me chew my way through the food with tears running down my cheek. They showed me pictures oh home, huts with Mercedes standing by the entrance.
Then I started working for the American Army in Wurzburg and got to know American blacks. The women were reticent and stand-offish. The men were polite but not warm. The single guys were happy that they had somebody to dance with. All of them were not outgoing, not friendly and not ready to be friends. When I came to the US, I understood immediately. Racism sticks to people like a scent on their skin. Many express their fear and hatred of black people openly. I am embarrassed to be white in this country. Believe me, I know a thing ot two about discrimination. There was a time in the early 70s when I had hoped that this disease would run its course, the days of Angela Davis and Martin Luther King. But no....e still have a long way to go here.

There has been all types of oppression, not just colour but class, creed, in Indian context caste too.

By the way talking about tax, I am just reminded that the place I belong, there was a tax on women called breast tax in early and mid 19 th century. It was abolished after a lot of protests in general and one incident in particular where a woman cut her breast and gave it to the tax collectors...

Your country is still keepimg you back. education is all you have to fight systemic rascism.

I think I understand your issue, and the only answer is to refuse them. You are NOT responsible for anyone but yourself and your immeadiate family (spouse and children). I'm afraid you have to stand up and say "No, sorry, I am not reponsible for you. I am trying to make it myself and you should do the same." Be a role model for the next generation.

I don't think this is exclusive to blacks. There might be a higher percentage, but not exclusive.

As a tall white guy who grew up in a relatively priviledged environment, I am trying not to be critical - but I do believe (based on dealing with the problems I have faced in life) that blaming others (including your parents) for your problems simply doesn't help. You need to do the best with the cards you were given.

You've gone through hell. You are not a tax on anyone. You are a human being and you stand head high.

Can I ask (though I have no right to) that you don't take your revenge on those of us who ... you fill in the words.

Define “problems of the past”?

I do think that some of our parents had a shame tax ? And the new generation needs to accept and move on- I personally didn't do anything to slaves but I was raised middle class white- being adopted I don't know what my bio mom's family might have been apart of- but none of that matters to me- when ever I have non Whites come in the store I make sure I am respectful- to this day in all of my years of cashiering did they not be kind or say mam back- so I always try and do the same- it's white snowbirds and Redneck's with money who act like we should be beholden to them and I'm not on bord with that