Jimmy Naughton

Colorado Springs, CO

Why does any race deserve restitution for their hardships? Every race has been enslaved, yet today’s discussions only ever focus on the Atlantic Slave Trade, i.e., the black slave. Hell, the Irish slaves were more plentiful in the English Empire, they were cheaper and treated far worse since they were Catholic, no thanks to Oliver Cromwell. If you go back far enough in history, you can find the dark pasts of every civilization and of every group of people. People of all races and all backgrounds will never be able to achieve peace if all they ever do is focus on the past and demand restitution for ancestors that are long dead from “perpetrators” who are also long dead. My family, both adopted and biological, come from all over Europe. I have blood from Germany, England, France, Czechoslovakia, Ireland, Poland, Italy, Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine. My ancestors came to America on a boat in 1915, when German and Hungarian forces invaded their village in Serbia during WWI, Serbia having been part of the Allied Forces. But you don’t see me at the German Embassy demanding restitution for the hardships that my family went through. Some of my ancestors were kidnapped, enslaved, and murdered by Barbary Pirates, yet you don’t see me demanding restitution from Muslims and North Africans? You see me focusing on the present and the future, using the opportunities given to me by my ancestors to succeed today, as well as continuing to see people’s character and not their color.