If it wasn't done to you, or done by you then you are OWED nothing, and you don't OWE anyone...

What am I talking about? It's pretty simple. If it wasn't done to you, or by you in the HERE AND NOW then it is irrelevant. If your ancestors X generations removed included a serial killer. That does not make you who were born generations later guilty of their murders. You don't owe the descendants of those that were killed anything. It was not your crime. It was not something you could have changed. It is irrelevant to you except as a lesson from the past.

That is an extreme example.

Yet I never owned any slaves. I have never been a slave (debateable with governance as it is). I do not OWE anyone anything. In fact, I don't know any slaves unless you count those enslaved by insane legalease like me, or those enslaved by the 13th amendment while in prison since the 13th amendment still allows enslavement in punishment for crime.

Yet the world is full of people who think they are OWED something because their ancestors were slaves. They'll even go so far as to tell you who OWES them and it is usually "white people". Though it is likely unless the white people around them are breaking the law that none of them have ever had or known a slave. They OWE no one anything for past slavery.

The past slavery is a lesson to learn from in history so we don't repeat it. It is not justification for giving people who are not owed it special treatment.

In the U.S. their ancestors don't even have to have actually been slaves to expect this OWED treatment. They simply need to identify as black. Their ancestors could have migrated to the U.S. long after slavery was abolished yet somehow they still will act as though they are OWED special consideration for the color of their skin.

NOTE: This doesn't have to be just with black people. Skin color truly is irrelevant since it is not something any of us get to choose. It is only relevant because people choose to use it as the proof they are OWED due to being a VICTIM whether they are a victim or not.

They miss the fact of the historical lessons. They are simply repeating the cycles that lead to those past atrocities. Believing one skin color was OWED rights that others did not have. This was and is called racism. Guess what? White is a skin color. You don't defeat racism by being racist. So if some jerk of a white person treated you like a racist jerk would you are no better if you turn around and then treat other white people as a racist jerk would because you are angry about what some asshole did to you. Two wrongs don't make a right. You can't defeat racism by being a racist. For racism to end then truly skin color needs to cease to matter. If skin color is promoted in any way that is only fueling racism and the ugly historical cycle continues. That doesn't mean bigots will not still exist and racists. Yet for them to die off we need to quit feeding racism. All you'll do is replace one group of racists with another and racism will persist.

Ask yourself: "Can I stop caring about skin color?"

If you can answer yes, then you are on the path to one day maybe seeing no racism in our society. If you cannot answer yes, then to find a racist you need look no further than yourself.

It goes further than this... the acting privileged and claiming somethings are OWED is a terrible mental sickness that has metastasized and spread all over the place.

Another example is Native Americans. They talk about how they are OWED land because it was stolen. The truth is THEY never possessed that land. It was not theirs during their life. Nothing was stolen from them. From their ancestors, very possibly, yet some of it was given by treaty.

Yet let's go with the stolen land idea. Depending upon how many generations you can go back virtually every inch of land on the planet has changed hands many times. We can all make the stolen land claim.

Yet it is a lie. We never owned it. We tell ourselves the lie and we believe it to be true.

The only people that might be able to make such an argument from a reasonable perspective are people that it happened to directly. If you are alive, have the land, and it is taken some way that is not voluntary from you then you may have an argument. That is the ONLY case where that is true.

La Raza fans. You are owed nothing. So instead of expecting to steal something back that you never owned, work towards building something of your own.

Native Americans. I am as pale skinned as they come. Yet I have a large amount of Chickasaw, and Cherokee ancestry. Enough that I easily could be called a Native American. I might even be able to make a claim of being part of a tribe. If we include my step father who adopted me he was also of Swedish and Choctaw tribe. So while I am WHITE. I am also native American. Yet no one OWEs me for that.

Furthermore, I've seen some native American women attacking someone by saying "I'm from here". Do you understand what truly makes someone a native? It's simple. They were born here. So while we use NATIVE AMERICAN to define the people that were sometimes called Indians even though they were not from India, in reality anyone born here is technically a native American. So when the bigoted female "native american" chooses to say "I am from here" as an attack to someone else who was actually born here, all they are is being a bigot, and acting entitled to something they are not. No one OWEs them anything.

The only people that might be OWED due to treaties being violated are the people who made those treaties. I doubt any of them are alive, but in some few tribes there may be some very elderly people that could still be OWED.

People need to stop identifying as a victim.

They need to build, and create a name for themselves in a positive way other than simply protesting and demanding hand outs for events that did not happen to them.

Build, Dream, Build some more, make mistakes, learn from them, build some more, and make your own story and own history rather than trying to live like a parasite off of events from the past that did not happen to you.

Also... throw the concept of Cultural Appropriation into the trash. Cultures are ideas, and are choices. You can adopt a culture, leave a culture, change a culture, mix and match multiple cultures. Cultures cannot make copyright and intellectual property infringement claims. It is again people thinking they are OWED something when they are not.