[Beetle01]

An understanding of the past is vital to the future. Native Americans were cheated and forced off land they inhabited. Africans were stolen from their homeland and transported to a foreign place and forced to do backbreaking labor for ramshackle housing. Neither make for proud moments of American history. If you were whipped and forced to work for near nothing for fifty years, then released with a freedom that translated into economic deprivation unless you returned to the very fields that had enslaved you, would you then say, "Well, my master is the only one around who freed us, glory be to god for that generous man"?

Exactly the past.
Noone is saying ignore it or act like it didn't happen. Definetly learn from it. Its 2008, not 1968 anymore. Things have drastically changed, and unless we can look more towards the future things will stay the same.

It makes me sick to think of all the people who lived their entire lives as slaves and never experienced anything more than a whip to the back and a hard life. I don't ask anyone to say glory for that generous man, I never freed a slave nor were any black people today ever slaves. I say that we learned from our mistake and our misdeeds. Lets move on as Americans and put the 19th and 20th centuries behind us and move on into the 21st century.