Disclaimer: This is a serious hypothetical with components based on historical race relations. As such, it references these demographics, but is NOT meant to condone or condemn any particular group or individual based on the color of their skin. Please make sure that your comments are similarly focused on the dilemma and not on any demographic characteristics.

For the purposes of this scenario, you are a middle-aged Caucasian-American with an upper middle class financial situation (not a millionaire, but you own your own home, on part of your family's ancestral land, and clear a low six figure annual salary). Your roots that go back to early colonialism. It is definitively established that your great-great-great-grandparents were slave owners in the early- and mid-1800s. They did not mistreat anyone that they owned, in fact they had a reputation so stellar in terms of treatment that proponents of slavery called them out and put them down for it, but they did still own and use people for years before the civil war came about. They freed their slaves in response to the Emancipation Proclamation, and provided them with a meager amount of basic seed money to start their lives.

Fast forward to the present. The great-great-grandson of someone your ancestors had enslaved approaches you, personally, because they have discovered the relationship between your ancestors and theirs. Their claims are credible based on genetic testing and records from the time. They are economically below the poverty line and have a felony conviction history, which they assert is partially due to the systemic racism inherent in longer sentences and harsher treatment for people of African-American descent. They assert that their ancestors were not fully and properly compensated for decades of service and that, resultantly, you owe them reparations. Ethically, they say, you owe them equal ownership in your land, but they are willing to settle for a monthly payment significant enough for them to be comfortable for a few years since they can't get work right now.

Questions:
1) To what degree do you feel obligated to help or not help? Why?
2) To what degree do you help, and how?