If you were on a ship that depended on the sweat of galley slaves, and you profited from its voyage, would it make any moral difference when you got on?

My relatives on my mother's side came over about the same time as yours. But as soon as they got here, they got the full dose of white privilege that slavery had paid for and that African-Americans continue to pay for. Wasn't that immoral?

When your ancestors got here, there had been a dozen generations of Americans from Africa who had lived and died and worked here - and had nothing to show for it. They couldn't own a home in a respectable neighborhood, most of them weren't allowed to vote, and most of them went to inferior schools. They went to prison on the say-so of pretty much any white person, and lynching was just getting going in the 1880s. Your grandparents, who like mine had done nothing but get on a boat, could own property, set up businesses, vote, attend public schools equal to the best in their area, and demand respect in a court of law. Is that so moral?

If you mean by "the problem" the personal ownership of slaves, most whites who were here during slavery never experienced that any more than your grandparents did. But every white person benefited from having a legally defined underclass that was being forced to work for no pay, and that built an enormous store of wealth. African-Americans, along with the native peoples, made the "free land" and prosperity that your ancestors enjoyed possible. Wasn't that immoral?

After the emancipation of the slaves, they went into Jim Crow status, held in place by a brutal system akin to fascism for generations. What did your grandparents do about that? They were presumably US citizens by then. Did they move south and organize against the Klan? Did they support anti-lynching laws? Or did they live in a house with a covenant stating it could not be sold to African-Americans? Did they make sure that when African-Americans moved north that they got equal schooling and could live in any neighborhood they wanted to, and get any job they were qualified for? Did they hire, socialize with, go to church with or marry African-Americans? Why not? Was it "moral" to participate in a racist system, just because "everyone else did it?" And remember, your ancestors and mine didn't learn this behavior in Europe. They accepted it after they got here. They chose to be part of a deeply immoral system -- unlike my father's Southern ancestors, who just grew up with and never knew any better.

If they were typical white Americans, like my own ancestors, they pretty much ignored "the problem" in their midst. Most people do in most countries. It's the "good German" syndrome -- I don't refer to your ancestry, of course, since your forebears were out of Germany long before the Nazis came to power. But they were here for our own fascism.

Is it wrong to compare Jim Crow to the Nazi regime? Well, the Nazis were certainly far more terrible mass killers than the Jim Crow South. But they didn't allow spontaneous murder by lynch mob. In most cases, the Nazis did not sexually exploit those they oppressed. They didn't keep their own "mixed race" children in semi-bondage as Southern whites did. And their brutality didn't last for 80 years or so.

And while this inhuman system went on, what did your grandparents do? What did your parents do? What have you done?

You take a bold stand and say brave words. But is it unreasonable for an African-American to say, just as boldly as you "I will not, and I repeat, I will not allow" the continuation of a system that has never acknowledged or repaired those crimes?

Who is immoral? Can you give African-Americans (and your own soul) the respect of taking that question seriously?