The Sin of Adam

J&M satirising the current fad for taking offence at things our ancestors did (or didn't do). It's a strange thing that some people believe that people who have never held slaves should pay reparations to people who have never been slaves. All because 5 generations ago some people who may or may not have been related to the current population of certain countries participated in the Atlantic slave trade. 

There is no question that by todays ethical standards that trade was abhorrent, but when you look at history you find that slavery has been a human constant, this is not to say that excuses those people who did it in any way but it does make it impossible to simply draw a line around one example of the practice and decide that that is the one which needs fixing. For example, why not get the Italians to pay for enslaving and/or killing countless of their fellow Europeans (and others) during the Roman Empire, or perhaps the people of Morocco and Tunisia to pay Europeans for the Barbary Slave Trade among countless other examples. The problem seems intractable until you accept the premise that people probably shouldn't be punished for the crimes of their ancestors, that's a very old fashioned idea, probably a legacy from ancient religious myths like "the sin of Adam" etc.