I don't see any benefit or logic in holding people accountable for things their ancestors did decades or centuries ago. I think it's much more reasonable to hold people accountable for their own actions and words.
I agree. The main problem is that much of this contradicts the core idea of judging people as individuals, not by their race or nationality. Should individuals be judged according to the color of their skin or by the content of their character?
The embracing of identity politics still had the tendency of classifying and categorizing people into groups, which had the effect causing the narrative and political thought to focus on group identity. Consider terms such as "white privilege" or "black lives matter." Regardless of whether one is offended by the terms or convinced that the arguments behind them are sound, the net effect is that it puts in people's minds that there are two groups of people, "white" and "black," which still carries meaning and significance in today's society. (There are, of course, other groups and group identities, but I'm just using this as an example.)
If society considers it morally just to identify on the basis of group membership in a race, then that's what we will have. The problem with Affirmative Action isn't really that it was unfair or racist towards white people (which it really wasn't), but the deeper issue is that it still creates in people's minds a sense of racial group identity which leads to even greater consequences.
That's the real problem, as I have observed it over the course of my life. I remember many years ago, there was a case where a white college student observed that there was a black students association on her campus. So, she thought, "Why not form a white students association? If they can do it, we can do it, right?" Well, she ended up finding out just how wrong she was and faced quite a backlash. Of course, we all know the standard arguments used to justify one but not the other (which are similar to the arguments used to support Affirmative Action), and perhaps they may be valid, albeit overused and stale at this point. But it still perpetuates a sense of group identity which remains the major part of the problem we face.
By that logic of guilt by association, should we also demand reparations from ancestors of, say, dictators or imperialist generals?
I think you must mean "descendants" instead of "ancestors." But this does raise an interesting point. Should the leadership of a country be held less responsible than the people as a whole? I always thought it was rather shady that the Allies after WW1 decided to demand reparation from the German people, while letting the Kaiser off the hook and allowing him to live out his life in exile in the Netherlands.
On that note, perhaps all of the royal families of Europe should give up their wealth and property and to go work at McDonald's. Let's see if they're willing to do that first.
