Traces of the Trade

In Traces of the Trade, Katrina Browne and several members of her extended family follow her ancestry's history of slave trade from Rhode Island, to Ghana, to Cuba, and back again. Her and her family moved quickly through phases from a sort of denial, to shock, and finally to self-reflection. What I found most striking about the film was how a white upper class family made the attempt to understand and make up for something that they can never hope to understand or make up for.
Early in the film when the family was meeting for the first time, one of Katrina's relatives said that he didn't know what he would have done in his ancestors' place, and that he probably would have been a slave trader as well. He justifies this by saying basically that "everyone else was doing it". This completely naive statement is an example of what I mean when I say that the family went through a sort of denial. They know and acknowledge that slavery is a bad thing, but at least one of them admits that they probably would have participated, because it was just what was done at the time. They don't really have a clue.
When their trip takes them to Ghana and Cuba, the family member I mentioned before retracts his statement and says something along the lines of "slavery was horrible, and they knew what they were doing". Other family members cry, and express horror at what they see. This is when they begin to discuss what they can do for the people that their family has wronged. Before this point they made no mention.
Finally, in the scene that sticks out the most for me, the whole group of DeWolf descendants is sitting around a table eating, and reflecting on their trip. When the conversation turns to what colleges they attended, they go around the table, and only one of about 15 people did not go to an Ivy League school. I think at this point I realized how privileged this family as a whole is, and how absolutely distanced they are from not only the people their ancestors persecuted, but the ancestors of slaves still left in Ghana.
I feel that when they are looking to make up for what their ancestors did, which in itself is impossible, they are doing this for themselves, to make themselves feel better about what was done. This is one of the biggest questions the film left in my mind. What have they done so far to "make up" for their family's history? Are they continuing to do this, and has this trip really changed them, or have they gone back to ignoring the whole thing? Are they continuing their lives like they were before they went on this trip?