Slavery reparations?

[robart]

I find this conversation rather interesting. Due to its past, germany has paid a lot of direct or indirect "reperations". Just some years ago we paid sums to to former forced laborers living in eastern countries. (Those were not quite reachable during the cold war and the time after, therefor those payments were that late.)
While I absolutly welcome those payments, I'd call a reperation for slavery in US-America difficult at least. If the grandchildren of slavers give money to the grandchildren of slaves, it would imply the concept "original sin" (I hope I got the term right), a concept I strongly dislike.
Sure, some of todays problems can directly be related to the "bad starting position" that the decendents of the slaves had. But I guess it would be better to face todays problems directly, than trying to retribute the wrongs of 1880.
(Reperations for survivers of any kind of wrong are another matter entirely. I absolutly welcome those.)


Another interesting notion (for an outsider like me) is the way the participants of this discussion describe the american civil war.
Good guys fighting only for the reason to "free the slaves" and bad guys fighting only to keep slavery.
You know much more about american history than me, but does anybody really think the comon soldiers cared about the slaves at all?




(Another day spent, another group of people despising me. I really should shut up from time to time...)