This also works the other way, if your parent is national hero that does not reflect on the children either. You should not take the credit for a parents good work.
Obviously it can be difficult for immediate children to take such a dispassionate attitude to parents actions but as more generations go by it should become easier.
That's not to say one can't acknowledge that bad things happened in one's lineage (history), but to think one's lineage is worse than another is oversimplifying things or a case of selection bias, among other things.
That doesn't sound right. What makes you say that every family committed atrocities?
The author is in a situation now where she knows she is profiting from her parents crimes by continuing to live her life.
Most white people, when faced with that realization, will next try to imagine a way not to profit, and, seeing no easy choices, absolve themselves of responsibility. They say things like "What am I supposed to do, give away my house?" and most people find that idea absurd, so that acts as proof that people are not responsible for blood spilled acquiring the infrastructure they rely on. The notion is, as long those systems are sufficiently difficult to dismantle, they can be used ethically.
I am not convinced. The other rationale is that by changing hands, resources become clean. But that doesn't make much sense to me either. We don't generally think that a purchaser of stolen goods is entitled to the goods. Unless it's land, and the original owner was murdered. Somehow that is acceptable, while keeping someone's stolen jewelry is not.
The author of this article? Do you mean her G-G-Grandfather? How is she continuing to profit?