I've never "gotten it" about reparations for slavery and such.

[meadowlander]

32. There is a qualitative difference between being economically exploited and enslaved.

I'm Irish. My ancestors were tenant farmers driven off their land during the famine while the colonising powers at the time continued to export food instead of feeding the people producing it. They were economically exploited.

But my ancestors were not kidnapped, taken to another country, raped and bred like cattle, ripped away from their family networks, beaten, branded, and killed for trying to leave.

And as a white person, my grandparents and parents had access to education, jobs, housing and other economic benefits that lifted them into the middle class - benefits that were not available to the descendants of slaves.

So no, it's is not a "dumb divisive issue". It is the original sin of the American experiment and until we are honest about it and make a genuine effort to make amends those wounds will never heal. That is the only way we can "deal with it".