Can America ever truly pay for its sins?

[Neo-Scholastic]

Only race hustlers believe in ancestoral guilt.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Only race hustlers believe in ancestral guilt.

Continue to push made-up words

(A Theist objecting to ancestral guilt)

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

Only race hustlers believe in ancestoral guilt.

Don't forget the Xian priestly caste.

Xians came up with a corker when they invented original sin. IE that the punishment for the sin of Adam and Eve passes down to all children, forever.

Creating guilt only they can remove made Xianity a very powerful religion. And that's the basis of Xianity, at least;  inflicting guilt to obtain power.

[SlowCalculations]

When I mention sins I'm talking about the fact that hundreds of years ago the people who came to this country slaughtered the people who were here first and took their land. Later they enslaved the blacks, treated women like property and wouldn't even allow them to vote until as soon as 1920. Sending the Japanese people into camps after the attack at Pearl Harbor. And I'm sure the list just gets bigger and bigger.

Is there anyway for America to truly confront its past and change for the better or is it just too great a wound to heal?

Discuss.

You know, I got asked about this the other day by another atheist and I was sorta puzzled I've never heard of this before that's why. 
I also don't understand how that's any different than a Christian expecting us to pay for our parent's sins and our parents parents sins it's the same silly concept. 
Do I believe in respecting human rights and people's freedoms absolutely! But I don't think we can repay anything other than going forward and not repeating the past mistakes. 
Unless that's what it already means? I'm not entirely sure so bare with me.

[Anomalocaris]

Only race hustlers believe in ancestoral guilt.

Oh the irony,  Yahweh hustlers, of which you are one, have been doing it for 2700 years.

The difference is you with made up guilt so as better to perpetuate a continuing wrong, where as others may do it to remedy ongoing effects of actual past wrong.

[T.J.]

This topic was inspired by all the things I see online about how we killed off the Indians, enslaved people, and all the terrible things America has done to minorities that I pegged the question if there's anything the country can do to rectify that or if it's always going to be open wounds.

[Oldandeasilyconfused]

This topic was inspired by all the things I see online about how we killed off the Indians, enslaved people, and all the terrible things America has done to minorities that I pegged the question if there's anything the country can do to rectify that or if it's always going to be open wounds.

 Interesting question.

The US failed to keep even one treaty it signed with native Americans. Tragically, I think Americans of both races will be dealing with the legacy of slavery for at least another 100 years.

Of course in Australia we didn't bother with treaties. Even as I was growing up, the aboriginal people were deemed to be a dying race. That was one way we could justify taking mixed race children from their aboriginal  parents. 

We treated the aboriginals shamefully.   Once we decided we would include them in the census and let them vote, we  discovered we had a big problem. From the early 1960's until now, successive governments of both parties have tried to solve the aboriginal issue by chucking huge sums of money at them. 

Nothing which has been done has changed much at all. Aborigines make up only 3% of the population, yet make up 29% of the total prison population.  As a group, Aboriginal Australians live 15 years fewer than the broader community.

Time for blame and guilt for past sins is long gone imo.  I think it's time we began looking at and dealing with the what rather than the why.

[Ahriman]

Does America, or even any other nation, really have a moral impetus to change anything? Why should we? When lions kill and eat gazelle, do the lions then apologize to the remaining gazelle? Of course not, because it's simply a part of "lion nature" to eat gazelle. Human nature is amoral and has much less to do with empathy than most people would like to believe.

[The Architect Of Fate]

Does America, or even any other nation, really have a moral impetus to change anything?

Yes

 Why should we? When lions kill and eat gazelle, do the lions then apologize to the remaining gazelle? Of course not, because it's simply a part of "lion nature" to eat gazelle. Human nature is amoral and has much less to do with empathy than most people would like to believe.

Congrats your a sociopath 

[brewer]

This topic was inspired by all the things I see online about how we killed off the Indians, enslaved people, and all the terrible things America has done to minorities that I pegged the question if there's anything the country can do to rectify that or if it's always going to be open wounds.

Would you post the same topic if you lived in Italy? Turkey? Mongolia?