The ideology that punishment is a form of retribution, with the primary aim being to inflict as much suffering as the subject has earned through their crimes, rather than to produce a change in behaviour, is what leads to the US having the world's largest prison population and world's highest incarceration rate but having far more violence that other countries at a similar level of economic development and no significant decrease in violent crime.

It doesn't work on a nation-state level either - they tried the harsh punishment route after WW1 and it led to WW2.

Jews are not the primary victims of WW2.

it's not about defining, it's about owning that the present is the way it is because of harms inflicted on certain groups. and, knowing that, perhaps finding ways to make amends so that the best ideals of the present can be applied to everyone. some groups still do not have opportunities or possibilities because of the ripples of the past.

to take your 1619 Project example. generational wealth has vast differences between black families and white families because of Jim Crow. as a society that supposedly prides itself on equal opportunity for all, we have not lived up to that and it creates a dissonance in the ways in which we say we hold certain ideals but act counter to those ideals.

since this is HN, if a CEO said one thing and behaved differently, you'd lose faith in that CEO. same thing applies to national image and national identity.

And if so who is perpetuating them?