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Who is not guilty ?
If you are not guilty or in some way ethically or morally responsible for crimes of your neighbour or for crimes of your friends, or even for crimes of your relatives, then you certainly have no guilty or ethical or moral responsible for crimes of past generations.
Guilt by race, religion, skin colour, nationality, etc. is a belief held by some people; it is a foolish belief as there is the whole range of human characteristics in all races, religions, nationalities, skin colours, etc.
I, Shawn David Olfman, born into a Jewish family in the 20th century, as far back as when I was in elementary school, was occasionally accused by a few other elementary school kids of being responsible for the death of Jesus Christ, who history records as having been killed by the Romans over two thousand years before I was born. In the 20th century the Catholic Church taught, as part of its doctrine, that all Jewish people, including those born hundreds and even thousands of years after Christ's death, are to blame for that death.
If you think that there is even the remotest modicum of a possibility that I have any responsibility, criminally, ethically, morally, or otherwise, for the death of Jesus Christ, then there is nothing in this paper that will enlighten you. You are free to continue reading, but it will be a waste of your time.
If you are certain that I, born in the 20th century, even though I am Jewish, have no guilt, criminally, morally, ethically or otherwise, for the death of Jesus Christ, then you can feel certain that people of light coloured skin have no guilt, criminally, morally, ethically or otherwise, for any and all things done before they were born, regardless of who did those things, and regardless of how horrible those things were.
If you are certain that you have no guilt or ethical or moral responsibility for crimes of your neighbours or for crimes of your friends, or even for crimes of your relatives, then you can feel certain that people of light coloured skin have no guilt, criminally, morally, ethically or otherwise, for any and all things done by other people, regardless of who those other people are or were.
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It is a lie to say that white people have oppressed, enslaved or otherwise harmed non-white people. In my paper: "White Privilege and Other White Lies" I prove that there is no such thing as white people.
There is no doubt that horrible things were done to some dark skinned people in the past by some lighter skinned people in the past. There is also no doubt that in the past hundreds of thousands of lighter skinned people gave their lives fighting in the American Civil War to free dark skinned people from slavery. None of that has any bearing on the light skinned people of the 20th and 21st centuries or on the dark skinned people of the 20th and 21st centuries. No-one living today, regardless of how old they are, had anything to do with what happened before the 20th century, hence no-one living today has any guilt, moral, ethical, criminal or otherwise for any of the horrible things done in the past, and no-one living today can be proud of having faught (and even died) to free the dark skinned slaves.
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Guilt belongs to the guilty. If a government enacts laws which cause slavery, discrimination, or any other harm to some people, then it is the people in that government who enacted those laws that are guilty of those actions, but their neighbours, friends, relatives and decendants are not guilty for what they did.
The judges who upheld the laws which caused slavery, discrimination, or any other harm to some people, are guilty of those actions, but the judge's neighbours, friends, relatives and decendants are not guilty for what the judge did.
If a person owned a slave, or discriminated against others of a different religion, race, colour, nationality, sexual orientation, etc., then that person (but not his or her neighbours, friends, relatives or decendants) is guilty of that action.
If a person killed someone, or robbed someone, or raped someone, or cheated someone, then that person (but not her or his neighbours, friends, relatives or decendants) is guilty of that action.
If a corporation does harm, whether it be illegal polution, using slave labour, theft of land, cheating people, causing murder or death, etc. the corporation is not responsible, because corporations are a legal fiction, they are a piece of paper which says "Incorporated, or Limited, or some other words"; the people who cause the actions to be done in the name of that corporation are guilty of those actions. The neighbours, friends, relatives and decendants of the people who ran that corporation are not guilty of what was done in the name of that corporation.
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The former Queen Elizabeth and the current King Charles of England are direct descendants of people who created laws which caused slavery, indentured servitude, forced imprisonment for debts, child labour, forced servitude on ships and in armies, wars, starvation, death, and lives of great poverty which were often filled with misery. Their ancestors actually had the power to do evil and did evil. Those of use whose ancestors were farmers, cobblers, doctors, military people below the rank of general, lawyers not connected to the government, store owners, factory workers, office workers, and everyone else who had no power over the creation and enforcement of laws or the causing of wars, do not even have an ancestral connection to the evils of the past. One of my grandfathers fought for Russia in the First World War, my father and four of his brothers faught for Canada in the Second World War; one was killed and one had to be hospitalized. Whether they lived or died and what their opinions and beliefs were made no difference to which battles were fought or when they were fought, which cities were bombed, when the war started or when the war ended. After the war they had no say over whether or not there was segregation or Residential Schools or discrimination or anything else that was done to society or to specific groups in society.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's father did have a say in the continuation of Residential Schools, and he said that they should continue, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is not guilty morally, ethically or otherwise for the action of his father.
Look at it this way. If a time machine was invented and King Charles or Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went back in time and told their ancestors that what they were doing was wrong, and asked them to not do it, and their ancestors refused to listen to them, there is nothing they could do about it, so even if time travel was possible, there was nothing they could do about the acts of their ancestors, so they have nothing to feel guilty about.
If you had a time machine, and you could go back in time and tell your ancestors your feelings about the injustices that were happening in those long ago days, both you and your ancestors could do nothing about it.
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If you are not related to King Charles, or Prime Minister Trudeau, or some other nationally powerful or wealthy family, then don't flatter yourself with guilt, neither I nor my ancestors, and neither you nor your ancestors were important enough or powerful enough to have any impact whatsoever on laws or society; to the law makers and controllers of wealth our ancestors were no-bodies; those that had the power to cause discrimination, slavery, poverty, inequality, wars, segregation, misery, etc., wouldn't even talk to us or our ancestors. If you want to feel guilty, then feel guilty about being so arrogant as to believe that you or your ancestors were important enough to have had an impact on the laws and customs of the society of the past.
If you want to know who was and is privileged, and who is guilty, read my paper
"The Privileged"
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