No one has to
feel guilty over it - with the exception of those that have a position of power be it in politics or society but that is a whole different story. I mean, hell if you wanted to you could completely ignore the topic and say, it doesn't bother you and you don't want to discuss it.
And I really do not know why that narrative of guilt is so often created.
Apartheid and Jim Crow are really not very different when you think about it. And it does have severe effects even to this day. In both nations. The racism, particularly the systemic racism like racial segregation for example impacted a lot of people in sometimes direct and subtle ways. While the majority of people are not racists there still are effects by the racism of the past. I mean seriously, just find some coloured person in their 80s and just talk to them about how they experienced the things around them during their 20s.
Some of them still had grandparants which remembered the abolition of slavery even. That's what 3 generations? Not that far away, when you think about it. And while it was gone in the 1860s it still took some 100 more years where former slaves had eventually their full rights. From voting, to going to the same schools, living in the same districts as white people and so on. So racism is still an issue. Even if most people are not racists.
For example, you get rid of segregation but the effect of it still remains for a long time. The development of communities is directly linked to it. How subsidies, loans, job opportunitites, infrastructures and many other decisions have been made in the past. The outcome of it is negative gentrification -
the process of changing the character of a neighborhood through the influx of more affluent residents and businesses.[1] (...) Gentrification often increases the economic value of a neighborhood, but the resulting demographic displacement may itself become a major social issue - and disproportionate development of districts.