Nicki Minaj is not a theologian, a historian, or a political philosopher. However, during a Sunday conversation with Erika Kirk at Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest, she articulated a moral truth that much of our culture — especially our political culture — seems determined to forget. Her remarks about beauty, pride, and childhood dignity unexpectedly point toward one of the central crises of our time: our inability to forgive, and our obsession with inherited guilt.  “I don’t want what was done to little black girls done to white girls,” Minaj told the crowd. “I don’t want it done to any girls.” What she was rejecting was not history, nor the reality of injustice, but the idea that healing comes from opening your eyes and treating others respectfully rather than poking them right back in the eye. “I don’t need someone with blonde hair and blue eyes to downplay their beauty, because I know my beauty,” she added. “I don’t need people making other people feel badly about themselves in any way.” That instinct runs directly counter to the logic of modern identity politics. In today’s racial discourse, particularly around slavery, Black Lives Matter (BLM), and “anti-racism,” moral responsibility is often treated as something passed down biologically or culturally. People are encouraged to see themselves, and others, primarily as carriers of ancestral guilt or grievance. We begin to view each other as vectors of some disease, and illness is not eradicated through dialogue; it is avoided by isolation or attacked with doses of drugs.  In instances of attacking the opposition, the individual in question disappears, and they are replaced by categories, like “racist,” “fascist,” or “supremacist,” much like how a doctor would diagnose a respiratory infection. Conversation gives way to accusation, and the words they hurl at the offender are administered like harsh medicine, meant not to heal the patient, but to suppress symptoms, silence dissent, and give the illusion of treatment while the underlying condition — resentment — only worsens.  In the cases of isolating oneself from ideological opponents, the sickness deepens in silence. Families, church, and communities fracture along political lines, each side convinced that the other is incurable. Holiday gatherings grow tense or disappear altogether. Some replace blood relatives with friends as “found family,” but the broken bonds they fled from live on in their motivations to seek comfort in others. We stop seeing one another as relatives or neighbors and begin seeing each other as risks to be managed, not people to be understood.  This is where the question of generational guilt becomes unavoidable. Are we responsible for the actions of people who were dead before we were born? Common sense says no. Moral responsibility requires moral agency, yet modern politics increasingly insists otherwise, assigning collective blame blame to entire groups and collective innocence to others. This framework does not resolve historical injustice; it freezes it in place, ensuring it can never be forgiven because it can never be truly atoned for.  The danger of this approach is not only moral but psychological. When people are told they are permanently stained by history, with no path to redemption, they react in predictable ways. Some internalize the accusation and withdraw. Others grow angry. Still, others eventually say, consciously or not, “If I will never be seen as redeemable for something I didn’t do, then I might as well become what you say I am.” Hatred is not extinguished by interested guilt; it is cultivated by it.  Christianity offers a radically different diagnosis and a different cure. Scripture rejects the idea of blood guilt passed from generation to generation. The prophet Ezekiel is explicit: the son does not bear the iniquity of the father. At Christmas, Christians celebrate the arrival of a Savior who enters a broken world not to assign blame by lineage, but to offer forgiveness to individuals. Grace is not a denial of wrongdoing; it is the only force capable of stopping wrongdoing from reproducing itself in cycles.  Nicki Minaj said something at Amfest that was really profound. I’m paraphrasing, but she said, “just because I want little black girls to think they’re beautiful doesn’t mean I need to put down little girls with blonde hair and blue eyes.” We all got wrapped up over the last… — JD Vance (@JDVance) December 22, 2025 Minaj’s words echo that moral wisdom. “They still need to be nurtured,” she said of children of every race. “They cannot continue to pay for other people since they haven’t done anything wrong.” That is not a call to forget history. It is a refusal to weaponize it against the innocent.  As families gather this Christmas — around dinner tables, in living rooms, and at churches — the choice becomes clear. We can continue treating one another as carriers of moral disease, prescribing endless punishment and social distance. Or we can recognize that forgiveness, not inherited blame, is the medicine that actually heals. Without it, resentment metastasizes. With it, reconciliation, however imperfect, becomes possible.  Julianna Frieman is a writer who covers culture, technology, and civilization. She has an M.A. in Communications (Digital Strategy) from the University of Florida and a B.A. in Political Science from UNC Charlotte. Her work has been published by the Daily Caller, The American Spectator, and The Federalist. Follow her on X at @juliannafrieman. READ MORE: Gen Z in the Age of Digital Polyculture Artificial Afterlife The Real Divide Isn’t Red v. Blue — It’s Male v. Female