i can't argue with that.
but times are different now, arent they?
Maybe I was heavy handed in saying you are dense. Ignorant ? Not using that term in any way to diminish your intelligence. I can tell by how you speak that you are intelligent.
It’s
not different.
Same systemic problems. Different avenues of injustice. Legal avenues of producing the same outcome, slavery, through financial means.
I am not dense. please REFRAIN from name-calling.
I'm not insulting you.
You are both right.
salient, and very true, points, i guess.
my original comment was a bit 'blithering' ... maybe so yes.
but surely .... racism is about 'race hatred' ... ... isnt it? Is it not ??
we should remember the past, because it informs the present. ... yes ... definitely.
But also, we should, could ... have some perspective in life too.
We should take a step back, and try and view history objectively.
"the amount of blood spilled" in the Rwandan genocide was absolutely awful.
I do not agree with you when u say 'The amount of blood spilled by any sort of minority group is dwarfed by the blood spilled by empires.'
the history of humanity is 'empires'.
black, white, or asian, indian, etc.
way back to the Sumerian Empire, etc.
history is a sh it-show. heh.
is it not?
Here in this you have proven my point. You’re just using gymnastics to get there that aren’t necessary.
Empires have, in modern history, been white. Roman ideology is extremely violent. The empire was the problem. If that empire was not in modern history it was still extremely violent. The
empire, from any time in history, was the problem. You asked me about the Zulu empire. I had to go and do some reading. They were a resistance force. Resisting who ? Pax Britannia.
I agree with you that humanity is very violent, as a whole. There are degrees to this though, and I’d like to highlight these different degrees as a way to help you understand the other side of the fence. You seem to be a proud part of the British empire. You seem to think that it has done more good than harm. I would encourage you to take a step back and ask “for who?” Since the modern version of “empire” has been white, it is hard to broach this subject, which history books inevitably teach in a biased way to favor white peoples (they were the winners), in a way that doesn’t damage the image or otherwise sound racist. It’s NOT racism though, to say that empire has been good for one group of people and not so good for the other. Empire has been good for white people, and it has been horrible for everyone else. . There are many examples. Many many examples. Examples that will forever be thought of as less than horrible because they were not perpetrated against white people. Take any one of these examples and ask yourself if you’ve ever heard of them being performed on white people. The Tuskegee experiments come to mind. The testing of birth control on unsuspecting women in Puerto Rico. The outright sterilization of Native American women, without their consent, clear into the late sixties and early seventies. The rounding up of Latinos and their placements in things that could have no other proper naming besides “concentration” camps.
The argument could be made that “good things” have been made possible by these experiments, but the question is, good things for who? In a world where brown people are systemically beaten down with money, they benefit white people, because white people have the money to access them.
Objectivity of history is hard to pin down. It is ever colored by the favoritism of the winners.
I would however like to close my argument speaking about violence and how it differs between native cultures and cultures influenced by empire. Violence has always been, and probably will always be a part of humanity. The violence of an empire is different though. Sure, Native Americans skirmished between each other before European settlers arrived. They didn’t seek total annihilation though. There were no chemical weapons.. there was no biological attack (think small pox infested blankets ). There were no atomic bombs. Also. Imagine someone coming to your home, entering your land, and telling you to leave. Imagine being okay with that. Then understand beyond a shadow of a doubt, that you
would not be okay with that. This is what empire has done to literally every group of people they have ever come into contact with.
I enjoy modernity as much as the next person. The so called “benefits” of the empire allow for many things that I don’t see as necessary or beneficial to humanity as a whole though. Consumerism is a scourge. The pipe dream of a eutopian society where no one has to work is abhorrent to me. One because I don’t think it will benefit everyone equally (read as “the billionaires will be the only ones seeing the benefit”), and two because laziness is a killer in and of itself. Forgive my crass points if they in any way have insulted you, but in the spirit of being crass, actions of the empire
should insult you. We are in the midst of an era where corporations control everything. The sad part is that for those of us who have not experienced the preferential treatment of the empire, life is just business as usual, but, for those of you who have, it will be a very sad awakening to understand that the empire is not here to help even white people anymore, it seeks to enrich itself at the expense of literally the entire planet.
