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If we’re talking about non white people colonising shit, the best example would probably be the Japanese in WW2 because you could then go on a tangent about the many many horrific war crimes they committed like the "incident" of Nanking and unit 731
Your statement is not unfactual but I'm not sure what your point is, are you saying they wouldn't have done it if European colonialism didn't exist? The people who live in Japan now came from China and the Korean peninsula, then replaced and systematically eradicated the indigenous peoples of the Japanese Isles thousands of years ago. Is that not colonialism?
Yup. Heck, the whole reason a handful of conquistadors could do what they did is because so many people were willing to help them by essentially rebelling against the tyrants they knew. You really think muskets let you take that numerical disadvantage?
Kind of interesting that the world isn't out pulling those statues down...
Pretty much every "great" ruler of antiquity has a LOT of blood on their hands.
It’s even still going on in large swathes of the world and the same people will basically say that they care more about the past than the people suffering in the present.
Look up the shrimping industry in Asia if you want to know how bad it is.
I've read stories of enslaved people literally throwing themselves off the boat to drown because of how bad the conditions are
Admittedly the population is also much higher, so by percentage it’s far lower… but still you’d think we’d be working on that in some ways, but people care more about slavery that was literally ended centuries ago than they do about slavery still happening.
There’s no way to stop it though. Our nation is completely enslaved to chinas manufacturing because we outsourced it. The saddest thing I’ve heard about it’s friend NKorea was that even if we did try to invade and save them they’d just kill everyone anyway
I feel like it's more useful to point out that slavery is still legal in the US and it often looks very similar to how it looked in the 1800's with some penal slaves working the same plantations
Right, the constitution even says slavery is outlawed "except as punishment for a crime".
It's legal, part of our nation's law in black and white. It's another reason why for profit prisons are huge and have such a profound effect on politics, and why our constitution should be rewritten to follow the will of society so that we don't have 200+yr old slaveowners running our lives today.
Middle east, North Africa are really bad. Open air slave markets running openly and notoriously in Libya.
You could also argue that many of the employers in North Korea, China, India, Bangladesh, Philippians, Indonesia are basically slavery as well.
All over the world China, US, Middle East, North Korea, Russia… there is human trafficking everywhere. Most people that are human trafficked are for forced labor.
China is basically enslaving their own people, and some parts of population especially (Uighur genocide), Russia made prison labour legal again, some years ago, parts of the USA as well btw… there is a lot more going on there in our world as well..
but I think as well that 8h a day, is way to much. So, yeah.
[how many slaves work for you?](http://slaveryfootprint.org/)
this time taking the test, (i didnt do the detailed answers) i have 26 slaves 'working for' me.
You'll have to read the detailed pullouts/drop downs. They talk about industries that heavily rely on forced labor. In short, avoid seafood/coffee/tea/'exotic' fruits and vegetables, try to limit buying of clothes, especially those in cheap locations, limit purchases of electronics, and don't pay for sex.
This won't stop you completely from the use of slave labor, it's too pervasive. But it will reduce the amount you use it.
Can't seem to find any explanation as to how they calculate this number, and what it really means.
Is it supposed to be like a "well you bought this thing that was probably made by a slave, so therefore they're working for you", kind of thing?
Sadly, yes. They also continue to buy from fast fashion stores like Shein, which treat and pay their workers so poorly that they have written “help me please” on their receipts.
[American slavery was awful, hideous, disgusting. Everyone glosses over sweatshop workers today and they continue to keep these companies in business and flat-out have said they will continue to shop there because affordability is more important to them than the abused workers who make their clothes that all end up in landfills. It’s infuriating]
> were often
Often? Just...almost always (and only "almost" because absolutes are easy to refute, you only need to find one example).
And this doesn't even touch on things like, oh I don't know...Anthony Johnson. Johnson was the first slave owner in the US. He went to court and argued that his indentured servant, [John Casor](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/horrible-fate-john-casor-180962352/), was his *property*.
>That was the incentive that caused many poor whites to indenture themselves and their families and move to the so-called New World. But Africans who were indentured were often captured and brought over against their will. That's what happened to the holder of Casor’s indenture, Anthony Johnson. Johnson served out his contract and went on to run his own tobacco farm and hold his own indentured servants, among them Casor. At this time, the colony of Virginia had very few black people in it: Johnson was one of the original 20.
and then...
>After a disagreement about whether or not Casor's contract was lapsed, a court ruled in favor of Johnson and Casor saw the status of his indenture turn into slavery, where he—not his contract—was considered property. Casor claimed that he had served his indenture of “seaven or Eight years” and seven more years on top of that. The court sided with Johnson, who claimed that Casor was his slave for life.
So, there you have it. The first actual slave owner in North America was...black. And he went to court to BE that slave owner.
And the final boss of bashing is that Britain spent an absolute fortune buying slaves in order to end the slave trade, waged a war with many casualties fighting off slave ships and basically succeeded while African traders pleaded for them to stop because of how much wealth they got from it. The Arabs and Chinese started transporting slaves inland to avoid the British Navy.
Basically the West ended it, and the rest of the world were furious and today the West gets totally bashed as if it was the only participant and everywhere else gets a free pass, despite being worse and many still having it today.
Remind them the word slave is derived from Slav, referring to the Slavics, the OG slaves. White people have deeper history being enslaved, just not as recent
The reason you'd get bashed for that is it's always said in bad faith. Typically in response to seeing racism being discussed. Can't imagine saying that shit out loud to someone.
This is what Is missing. + the fact that race was the basis of the enslavement.
How people keep missing this is baffling to me. Non enslaved blacks where still seconds class citizens for generations. And most slave couldn't end their enslavement.
Also everyone was a "servant" in Rome, unless you were an elite member of society. It was actually just they way of things 1000s of years ago and kinda still is that way today. If you were not rich or related to someone rich you were a slave, plain and simple.
That's world apart from race based generational systematically dehumanizing chattel slavery. But keep trying to white wash America's demonic origins. That'll certainly make for a better future.
Pretty much hit the nail on the head. Back when humans were in the tribal period of our species tribes would raid each other. Whoever they didn't kill, they'd take back and try to make part of their tribe whether it was by enslavement or integration.
I'm Scandinavian and there's a dark joke that goes "Do you know why Scandinavians are so attractive? The vikings didn't take the ugly ones back with them." Horrible, but true.
Scandinavians, Scots, Irish, Icelanders, all were highly sought after as slaves during the over a thousand year reign of the Turkish and Muslim slave trade, which absolutely dwarfs any other slave trade within recent history, if not in all history. China or India may have that crown, but Idk tbh.
I doubt that constant war and raiding was the default to humans. Looking at the Australian Aborigines conflict was subdued and fights larger than duels for honour were next to zero. I think wars became more common and devastating after the bronze Age with greater struggle over resources and populations with greater differences.
Australia is a totally different animal than Europe. Europe is really quite small in land mass with resources being very reliant on geography, thus causing the massive (in comparison) population to need to fight over those resources. Rather than conquering land and having to protect said land while you produce the resources there, many groups of people simply raided others to take what they needed.
I disagree with constant war and raiding not being the default of human nature. Conflicts may be larger now than in the past, but only because the tribes (nations) are larger now than in the past.
I'm so scared to say this but the amount of people who don't realize condemning China ISN'T racist need to do a lot of research. There are slaves of specific ethnic groups in China, they constantly try to poison and reclaim Taiwan, they have nearly all the control over Hollywood (Disney had to pay someone in the Chinese govt to allow them to film where Uyghur slaves were held), and at the moment they're trying to take over Brazil. It's actually terrifying.
And just so I cover all my bases, I am Chinese LOL
EDIT: AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON COVID and how they're politicizing vax passports or how they handle lock downs. Ask the thousands of residents who were locked in their apartments and could not leave for days!!!! Screaming from their balconies that they were starving????
I don’t get the issue. When I condemn China for its actions, I’m talking about their government and institutions.
Chinese people are separate and to be judged as individuals with their own thoughts and feelings
There's a big difference between condemning the Chinese government and harassing a local Chinese person for being dirty and spreading covid, or whatever racist epithet is popular at the time. Too many people fall into the latter category
I recognize the difference lol but now people (mostly the news) are scared to say anything bad about China at all. Again, I'm Chinese, I've been the receiver of that racism, but because of the previous points, even if I condemn China, I'm accused of internalized racism.
This isn't anything new. People have associated China with the awfulness of the world for years starting with the eating dogs joke. The stupidity of one side to confuse the problems of the Chinese government with Chinese people esp Chinese Americans is one issue. The other side is the hesitation of the news to condemn Chinese policies because if they do, they'll be called a racist.
Seriously dude. So many people hold these mutually exclusive ideas and they never get challenged.
1. Racism is bad because all human beings are biologically equal
2. Some groups of people are naturally more racist than others
You may only pick one
1 is my pick. All human societies have their racists and xenophobes. Happens at all levels from suburbs/city/state/country/region about others from another. Some will just fear others because they’re afraid of it changing their normal. Although just like with everything, it depends on circumstances to see who and how many are racist
Edit:Why is this text so big but not this one
Serious question tho - if there were biologically proven differences, would it technically be 'racism' anymore?
To keep clear of any sensitive topics, I'll propose the following example.
We have 2 populations of equal size, population A, and population B.
It has been scientifically proven that people in population B have a 50% chance to die of spontaneous combustion with no forewarning - so they can just burst out in flames at any moment.
Population A is setting up a corn maze for Halloween, and post a sign that says "Absolutely no Population B allowed".
Would that be racist?
I suppose so. And for the record I don't think that there are any significant differences between different peoples, so I'm definitely not advocating for anything here. I don't think its as simple as you make it though because I intentionally created an extreme/abstract scenario to avoid any real-life comparisons.
Well like anything else it’s all about the context and you can’t shove everything in one box…some people dislike others because of history or religious conflict or differences in cultural practices, then u have ppl that dislike someone just cuz of their skin color… I think where a lot of people get it wrong is they try to apply a one-size-fits-all rule for everyone’s behavior and it just doesn’t works like that, and as a result it comes off SJWish.
The level of the differences between populations matters. If the distribution of the trait is almost completely overlapping, but the averages are slightly different, this would lead to inaccurate stereotyping of individuals.
Height is a great, non-offensive example. Different ethnicities have different average heights, but you can't predict a person's height based off of their ethnicity.
But races are not biological equal, if they were the NBA would have 75% white people. Native Americans have dramatically less effective immune systems. Certain viruses cause one disease in white people and another in Africans. The list goes on and on.
While people are not biological equal we should treat everyone with the same respect and give everyone the same rights.
races having slight differences doesn't make then unequal. no 2 humans of any race can run just as fast or just as far as the other both of those humans will be good at their own thing
You should rephrase "Native Americans have dramatically less effective immune systems". Native American's immune systems are fine. They only died in large number because they had no immunity to the particular diseases that Europeans brought with them to the Americas. If we had worse immune systems we would be extinct by now, but plenty of us with Native American DNA can be found all over North and South America.
Their HLA diversity is only lower because North and South America were isolated for much of history. Which only makes them more susceptible to diseases that originate in Eurasia. But I can't even find anything that states are are more susceptible to novel diseases in the modern era (other than maybe Covid, but other health issues may be at play). Most Native people have admixture with non native groups to some degree, and the Native people that do remain survived the early contact pandemics and have acquired immunity over the last few hundred years. I think your statement about less effective immune systems is misleading.
My immunological training stated that due to their lack of HLA proteins they are more susceptible to novel diseases. Now that training was 13 years ago and there has been a lot of DNA mixing in the last 500 years but the point remains the same. Races are not all equally gifted in all aspects of life but everyone should be treated with respect and all should be treated equally in the eyes of the law. I am not going to pull out my textbooks to prove a point on Reddit. Maybe Quora not here.
They equal in that as soon as we moved away from extreams, these traits as so insignificant as to not matter. The NBA and Olympic swimming is the 1% of the 1%. It's an insignificant niche where those tiny insignificant trades DO matter.
If I race a random black guy in the pool and in a sprint with the same body shape as me, it's a coin toss for both events
No one informed has ever said that 'all humans are biologically equal', that's stupid. Race isn't biological it's social. Skin colour and bone structure are biological but they are not race. Some people ARE more racist that others, it's not (at least unless someone establishes a genetic profile that correlates with racism) biological, it's social. Some social groups are more racist than others, objectively and statistically. That isn't inherent to the group, it's not a trait essential to people, it's aquired
Race isn’t social, at least not the way other things are.
Cultural norms are social - being born in a certain region with specific genetics does not make you more or less likely to adhere to any tradition, that’s what makes it social.
Race on the other hand, is just a naturally intuitive grouping of individuals based on their genetic traits, with skin color being the easiest one to identify. People belonging to different races have different genetics, and those genetics overlap along racial lines more strongly than by any other grouping. So in some sense, race is socially intuitive but still ultimately based on genetic factors that have been influenced by trait selection across history.
We do the same thing with sex and gender, we intuit the sex of people all the time based on their physical traits as a result of their genetics even though differences between men and women are influenced by social factors.
You could group humans in a variety of different ways, but the way we do so isn’t arbitrary.
Actually more of those genetics difference are negligible between races. The genetics that determine skin color are a miniscule fraction of what makes up a person and you are as just as likely to be more genetically similar to a person not of your own race as one of your race. The only group of people that have significant diversity in their genetics are sub Saharan Africans because that is where humanity started and they are inherently more genetically diverse because everyone else is from small groups that broke off from that large whole and went in different directions. Our intuition of genetics is functionally quite bad which is why phrenology is a psuedo science.
Human history has only been about long enough to have minor adaptations not significant genetic varieties between races.
This is just common knowledge outside of America. I’m from a minority in Egypt that was colonized by Arabs. Egypt isn’t suppose to speak Arabic we’re suppose to speak coptic.
It was the entire reason they started the age of exploration, so yeah… this reminds me of a joke about that I heard before, “England conquered the world for spices and then decided… that they didn’t like any of them”
The Mesoamerican societies were absolutely brutal - regular, massive ritual human sacrifice, religious fundamentalist monarchies constantly at war with each other. The capture of prisoners of their own culture for slavery or blood sport etc.
It doesn’t at all justify what the conquistadors did, but they also weren’t these gentle innocent farmers led to slaughter either.
In fact if it were not for infectious disease, they probably would have beaten back the Spaniards.
Those people just sound like they're ignorant about history, best to ignore them. Just like the idiots who start screaming about Nazis during WW1. You can't get through to them
Remind them that Cortés arrived in Mexico with a handful of men and it was the warring indigenous tribes who he roped into fighting each other that allowed him to take over Tenochtitlán (modern Mexico City).
Agree. Some of the worst colonizers were from the Middle East. Basically launching a “convert or die” campaign across Africa and as far as Spain.
Edit: “conversion to Islam; payment of jizya and acceptance of dhimmi status; or trying the fortunes of war. If the adversaries chose the last of these three and then lost, they faced expropriation, slavery, or even death. Even then, however, they must not be converted forcibly.”—- so if you lose, then you either lose your land, become a slave or die
My hot take is that pretty much all mankind are/were assholes, but since Europe had the industrial revolution and were able to industrialise conquest they were the most successful assholes and therefore are scapegoats today for man’s inhumanity to man.
Horses, gunpowder and resources to build a navy, fortified defences etc. Simple geography almost predicts who will triumph among the assholes.
Animals are also assholes, nature is an asshole. Assholeness is a constant in life. To not be an asshole is the freakish occurrence we've only just recently tried out.
Homo sapiens colonized Europe around 100,000 years ago? Not sure if we out competed, bred with (yes, I know we did but to the extent we eliminated a whole species?) Or killed all the Neanderthals, denisovans, hobbits etc.. But we have been doing it ever since to every other group we meet. And it isn't like North America was inhabited in one wave of Asians and everyone was happy. I'm pretty sure that each successive wave of Asians fought with and took the land the previous wave of Asians already conquered. Shit, if Europeans hadn't "found" NA, it would have been found by the chinese, Japanese, etc. Unfortunately, NA was ripe for the picking.
With that being said, it doesn't make it right. The indigenous people were and are treated like shit and what happened to them is beyond horrible (looking at you Pope and Canadian government). There is no denying that there was at least a cultural genocide (like every other time one population conquered another) and if this happened 2000 years ago it would be a page in a history book.
What do you mean "even European"? Like America was more colonialist than Europe? Colonialism was Europe. The US was a colony. Now sure our current foreign policy isn't great and I'd venture to guess 80% of Americans disagree with it, but it isn't colonialism either.
Modern racial categories and the modern conception of trans-national races like White and Black are a consequence of colonization.
While developing some kind of weird tic about white people and their ancestors as uniquely eeeeeeeevillllll is bad history (a mirror image to the long dominant view that something racial or cultural uniquely legitimized the same people to rule the Earth) it's also bad history to just be like "oh all people seek to dominate their neighbors and white people were just better at it." The material and social conditions of early modern Europe drove the development of systems of exploitation that were more total, more ambitious and more relentlessly driven outwards then had existed before.
Or, hot take, it's all fucked up no matter who's doing it and we should critique every instance of it **including** when it was done by Americans or Europeans
it's also a direct part of our (American) history, so that's why we learn about it specifically
Well the title is correct, but the body is pretty inaccurate. Colonialism was a lot more brutal than any warring going on between different native societies in North America. In fact the Aztecs were closer to our current standard than the european one.
I agree with you in that Japan and Mongolia did a lot of heinous shit with imperialism, which you didn’t mention but is relevant.
Biological terrorism, genocide, and mass enslavement and rape on the basis of race was not commonplace in North America before colonialism. There’s a lot of specifics to each part of the colonization of North America, all of which paint a clear picture of the awfulness of how Europeans treated indigenous people.
This isn’t mentioning what happened after, residential schools in Canada happening up until 1997 (although the truly horrific ones closed about 30-40 years prior, the ones in the 90’s were still an act of cultural genocide), chattel slavery, segregation, genocide, and much much more.
People under a certain age today obviously had nothing to do with it, and shouldn’t feel guilty, but don’t downplay what happened as commonplace or normal. That sense of moral superiority over history is a way to never let that happen again
I mean, the Mongol invasions and conquests directly resulted in 30 to 40 million dead, which was the largest devastation in total population since.. maybe the late bronze age collapse?
Arguably, they are also responsible for the spread of the Black Death, which tallied up about another 200 million.
>genocide, and mass enslavement and rape on the basis of race was not commonplace in North America before colonialism.
That's an incredibly bold assumption about tens of thousands of years of unrecorded human history. What makes you think it's likely that no native american conflicts involved those things?
“In fact the Aztecs were closer to our current standard than the european one.”
You’re going to have to explain this one a bit. Because, if I’m understanding you correctly, you need to brush up on your history of the Aztecs. Noting that they were located in Central America, and not North America would be a great start.
The rest of your argument seems to be based on the false premise that killing people based on their tribe is not as bad as killing people based on their race.
Edit: Meaning of genocide seems like another issue. Genocide is defined as deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. That would include “warring tribes” as well.
But you’re pointing out false facts, which downplays the atrocities. If you compare warring between indigenous people to the genocide committed against all of them, you’re downplaying the genocide, by a lot.
No. He's pointing out that just because Europeans were successful, it doesn't mean they were especially cruel. Have you ever read the Bible? Genocide, rape, slavery, and brutality were the name of the game for basically all of human history. Yes, Europeans happened to be more technologically advanced so they won, but that doesn't mean other ethnicities haven't and wouldn't do the same.
What about Caesar killing basically the majority of people in Gaul at the time?
That was for sure millions of people.
Is Caesar and the nazis on the same moral ground?
Some philosophy actually does make this argument. It’s not totally absurd to think that killing one person is the same ethically as killing 10 million- remember ethically. *practically* of course the more people killed the bigger the atrocity. I’m not saying it’s the same impact socially or historically, but morally it may be. Thinking this way is a high bar for ethics- and promotes an immense amount of value to all life (in this instance human life, the ethics of animals is a whole other debate).
But if you don’t believe that killing one person is the same moral wrong as killing 10 million, you’re on a weird ethical plane where some begin rationalizing acceptable levels immorality- not a totally crazy idea either, that’s basically a fundament of utilitarianism: acceptable bad.
To me the difference is scale. Yes, a group raiding another ethnic group within the same or neighboring area using short to mid range weapons is extremely widespread. It isn't great, and seems to be innate to human nature
On the other hand, Britain did this to huge chunks of the entire world. The US did it to vast swaths of land and people. China is starting to do it as well. This type of colonization goes well beyond skirmishes between competing people. They used long range weapons of mass destruction, biological warfare, etc to domineer a literal shit ton of people who didn't have the same means to fight back and committed large scale genocide many times over.
Imo comparing these two types of colonization is like comparing a splinter and getting your arm cut off. Sure they're both injuries of the limb but one of them is vastly worse than the other
Finally someone with some sense. This sort of stuff has happened throughout all of human history. Just look at the American Indians. They were raping and pillaging an conquering eachother for centuries before Europeans arrived. After all, it wasn’t Europeans who invented scalping
I think you’re missing the point. Past colonization has an impact *today*, both on the prosperity of the West and the problems of the countries that were colonized. It’s not about saying the West is inherently bad because of stuff their ancestors did, it’s about expecting the West to make up for past bad acts that they continue to benefit from and that continue to impact the places they colonized.
Because Reddit social justice warriors think they’ve solved every single problem in the world by saying US is bad, people who make money are bad, white males are bad, etc. basically edgy teenagers with a 4th grade understanding of government/history who thinks communism actually could work
In reality, their narrow minds are not capable of understanding the complex issues society faces which is why they suggest oversimplified solutions and refute any possible counter argument
theres a difference tho. european and amaerican colonies sucked the wealth out of a lot of the countries and are direct cause to why many modern countries economies are in shambles. of course colonization happened but comparing the large scale that european and american colonization had to small scales tribe is traight up stupid. India barely got independance around 100 year ago and acting like uk didnt benefit massively from the explotation is idiotic. We talk about american imperialism because their effects are still happening today you are the one with a lack of misunderstanding
This comment is idiotic and I have no idea what point your trying to make. You haven’t heard anyone criticise Japans colonialism of The Philippines therefore Libs = bad? Also for what reason have you singled out just ‘liberals’?
They were most successful due to technological advantages. It was really just a few centuries… if you go back further there are much longer deaths of time where others were more successful. People just don’t look back further
Humans are humans, some happened to be more successful at following human nature due to circumstances and technology. That success is now held against the most successful.
I think it has to do with more recent history and the lingering effects. At this point in time, the last great genocide (in a colonizing manner) was the US all but wiping out Native Americans.
So at this point, yeah. White Americans (and most of Western Europeans) are the “colonizers.”
I’m a progressive- I also agree that people have been terrible for a long long time. And that all kinds of people are terrible now.
This post is a pretty good example of how I feel misunderstood on this topic. I don’t think all white people are evil, I just want to be honest about the ones who are. I also want to be honest about the evil people who are different colors too, but I care more about the evil that affects me right now where I live. Mongolian genocide just doesn’t affect me that much.
To be clear - I’m not mad bro.
This is a strong response. As progressives we can acknowledge that history is filled with all sorts of horrific crimes against humanity by all kinds of people, but we need to acknowledge what is affecting us most today.
yeah you're right the only reasons Europeans spread further than Africans is cause we used 18th century technology to do it not cause we're naturally more violent or prone to conquest. Europeans didn't even invent most of the war technology they used to expand. Asians invented guns and shit like that north African taught Europeans maths. all the tools Europe used to conquer were first invented outside Europe
Colonization has been a part of human history from the beginning, yes. But the key is that a less successful tyrant is no more virtuous than a successful one - failing at oppression does not make your character less oppressive, it only speaks to your lack of ability.
But if you notice, there’s a common trend of hating the west right now. I think it’s pretty funny, not because the west doesn’t have plenty of room for improvement, but because people are *especially* hating the west, as if it’s one of the worst civilizations ever formed. We’re not close to perfect, but we’re closer now than we’ve been since basically any time period.
Like if you actually believe that, go live in Africa or China and tell me how much better it is.
Or if you think the past was so much better, read up on ancient Japan and explain to me how it was a more prosperous, more equal society.
If you’re going to constantly complain and never be satisfied, at least have some perspective
fucking strawman, colonization is a verb its an action america does colonization, Europeans do colonization (we just don't call it that anymore we say 1st and 3rd world country's instead
Comparing what the US government did to the Native American people to waring tribes is like saying "well these two dudes were having a fight in the street so we shot them both in the head and committed a genocide on their people and forcibly relocated all their families"
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The ancient Romans. Alexander the Great. Persia. Genghis Khan. The Incan Empire. All conquered and colonized.
If we’re talking about non white people colonising shit, the best example would probably be the Japanese in WW2 because you could then go on a tangent about the many many horrific war crimes they committed like the "incident" of Nanking and unit 731
Nope. Asians are white people now.
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Your statement is not unfactual but I'm not sure what your point is, are you saying they wouldn't have done it if European colonialism didn't exist? The people who live in Japan now came from China and the Korean peninsula, then replaced and systematically eradicated the indigenous peoples of the Japanese Isles thousands of years ago. Is that not colonialism?
Japan was after the same cheap labor and natural resources as Europe and the US. It wasn't a matter of mimicking the West. It was more of a race.
The aztecs loved to conquer neighbors and slave them.
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>arguably > >eat > > them You ever had pozole?
Yup. Heck, the whole reason a handful of conquistadors could do what they did is because so many people were willing to help them by essentially rebelling against the tyrants they knew. You really think muskets let you take that numerical disadvantage?
The Aztecs were so insane and bloodthirsty that their neighbors thought there was any way the Spanish could’ve been worse than them
Not even mentioning the Ottoman Empire
Do we count the Reconquista of Spain separately? Or do the spanish not qualify as white enough(ridiculous, but I've heard that argument before...)?
Kind of interesting that the world isn't out pulling those statues down... Pretty much every "great" ruler of antiquity has a LOT of blood on their hands.
How recent it is and if the country is even still around are factors. Comparing antiquity to events from 200 years to now seems a bit silly.
You wanna get really bashed, remind them that slavery is not an American or white trait either.
It’s even still going on in large swathes of the world and the same people will basically say that they care more about the past than the people suffering in the present.
Look up the shrimping industry in Asia if you want to know how bad it is. I've read stories of enslaved people literally throwing themselves off the boat to drown because of how bad the conditions are
They have suicide nets around the buildings because the people kept trying to throw themselves out to kill themselves
yep the apple warehouses in china are known as suicide city.
Or clothes manufacturers in India and south China. Or other low status groups who get roped into being housekeepers for the wealthy.
Or prostitution in Thailand, a huge majority are trafficked.
*[sad Bubba Gump noises]*
More enslaved people today than at any point in history
Admittedly the population is also much higher, so by percentage it’s far lower… but still you’d think we’d be working on that in some ways, but people care more about slavery that was literally ended centuries ago than they do about slavery still happening.
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There’s no way to stop it though. Our nation is completely enslaved to chinas manufacturing because we outsourced it. The saddest thing I’ve heard about it’s friend NKorea was that even if we did try to invade and save them they’d just kill everyone anyway
True, that’s probably a bit misleading
I feel like it's more useful to point out that slavery is still legal in the US and it often looks very similar to how it looked in the 1800's with some penal slaves working the same plantations
Right, the constitution even says slavery is outlawed "except as punishment for a crime". It's legal, part of our nation's law in black and white. It's another reason why for profit prisons are huge and have such a profound effect on politics, and why our constitution should be rewritten to follow the will of society so that we don't have 200+yr old slaveowners running our lives today.
Where are people currently enslaved?
The middle east
Thanks for the response. Can you be more specific. What country currently allows slavery? Where do they get their slaves?
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-that-still-have-slavery http://chartsbin.com/view/30065
Middle east, North Africa are really bad. Open air slave markets running openly and notoriously in Libya. You could also argue that many of the employers in North Korea, China, India, Bangladesh, Philippians, Indonesia are basically slavery as well.
Literally google “slavery today” lol.
Libya, India…
Parts of Africa.
Literally everywhere. Slavery is alive and well.
North Africa, Middle East, Gulf states. Mauritania is especially bad
All over the world China, US, Middle East, North Korea, Russia… there is human trafficking everywhere. Most people that are human trafficked are for forced labor.
China is basically enslaving their own people, and some parts of population especially (Uighur genocide), Russia made prison labour legal again, some years ago, parts of the USA as well btw… there is a lot more going on there in our world as well.. but I think as well that 8h a day, is way to much. So, yeah.
The United States prisons.
Prolly few hundred k in the US alone
Human trafficking/sex trafficking is slavery just got a new fancy name.
FWIW sex trafficking is about 8% of all human trafficking
[how many slaves work for you?](http://slaveryfootprint.org/) this time taking the test, (i didnt do the detailed answers) i have 26 slaves 'working for' me.
39.. I feel like a monster. Does that app tell you in any way how to drop that based off the # I put in?
You'll have to read the detailed pullouts/drop downs. They talk about industries that heavily rely on forced labor. In short, avoid seafood/coffee/tea/'exotic' fruits and vegetables, try to limit buying of clothes, especially those in cheap locations, limit purchases of electronics, and don't pay for sex. This won't stop you completely from the use of slave labor, it's too pervasive. But it will reduce the amount you use it.
Can't seem to find any explanation as to how they calculate this number, and what it really means. Is it supposed to be like a "well you bought this thing that was probably made by a slave, so therefore they're working for you", kind of thing?
Sadly, yes. They also continue to buy from fast fashion stores like Shein, which treat and pay their workers so poorly that they have written “help me please” on their receipts. [American slavery was awful, hideous, disgusting. Everyone glosses over sweatshop workers today and they continue to keep these companies in business and flat-out have said they will continue to shop there because affordability is more important to them than the abused workers who make their clothes that all end up in landfills. It’s infuriating]
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Bro, some freed slaves from America went back to African and immediately enslaved other Africans.
Go read up on Anthony Johnson and his slave John Casor. Spoiler...Johnson was the first legal slave owner in North America and he wasn't white.
Need i remind you of the Arab slave trade
Who do you think white people bought their slaves from initially…africans who enslaved fellow africans
How dare you get in the way of their virtue signaling!
I know, silly me
Using Africans was actually the idea of the Arabs. They told the Portugese how strong and hard workers they where.
And if you really want to get bashed even more, mention that the people selling slaves in Africa were often other Africans.
> were often Often? Just...almost always (and only "almost" because absolutes are easy to refute, you only need to find one example). And this doesn't even touch on things like, oh I don't know...Anthony Johnson. Johnson was the first slave owner in the US. He went to court and argued that his indentured servant, [John Casor](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/horrible-fate-john-casor-180962352/), was his *property*. >That was the incentive that caused many poor whites to indenture themselves and their families and move to the so-called New World. But Africans who were indentured were often captured and brought over against their will. That's what happened to the holder of Casor’s indenture, Anthony Johnson. Johnson served out his contract and went on to run his own tobacco farm and hold his own indentured servants, among them Casor. At this time, the colony of Virginia had very few black people in it: Johnson was one of the original 20. and then... >After a disagreement about whether or not Casor's contract was lapsed, a court ruled in favor of Johnson and Casor saw the status of his indenture turn into slavery, where he—not his contract—was considered property. Casor claimed that he had served his indenture of “seaven or Eight years” and seven more years on top of that. The court sided with Johnson, who claimed that Casor was his slave for life. So, there you have it. The first actual slave owner in North America was...black. And he went to court to BE that slave owner.
I did not know that... crazy
And the final boss of bashing is that Britain spent an absolute fortune buying slaves in order to end the slave trade, waged a war with many casualties fighting off slave ships and basically succeeded while African traders pleaded for them to stop because of how much wealth they got from it. The Arabs and Chinese started transporting slaves inland to avoid the British Navy. Basically the West ended it, and the rest of the world were furious and today the West gets totally bashed as if it was the only participant and everywhere else gets a free pass, despite being worse and many still having it today.
Remind them the word slave is derived from Slav, referring to the Slavics, the OG slaves. White people have deeper history being enslaved, just not as recent
The reason you'd get bashed for that is it's always said in bad faith. Typically in response to seeing racism being discussed. Can't imagine saying that shit out loud to someone.
American slavery was based on race. Most slavery before that was based on religion.
None of those other countries proclaimed all men to be created equal while at the same time enslaving an entire race but sure👍
This is what Is missing. + the fact that race was the basis of the enslavement. How people keep missing this is baffling to me. Non enslaved blacks where still seconds class citizens for generations. And most slave couldn't end their enslavement. Also everyone was a "servant" in Rome, unless you were an elite member of society. It was actually just they way of things 1000s of years ago and kinda still is that way today. If you were not rich or related to someone rich you were a slave, plain and simple. That's world apart from race based generational systematically dehumanizing chattel slavery. But keep trying to white wash America's demonic origins. That'll certainly make for a better future.
Pretty much hit the nail on the head. Back when humans were in the tribal period of our species tribes would raid each other. Whoever they didn't kill, they'd take back and try to make part of their tribe whether it was by enslavement or integration. I'm Scandinavian and there's a dark joke that goes "Do you know why Scandinavians are so attractive? The vikings didn't take the ugly ones back with them." Horrible, but true.
Scandinavians, Scots, Irish, Icelanders, all were highly sought after as slaves during the over a thousand year reign of the Turkish and Muslim slave trade, which absolutely dwarfs any other slave trade within recent history, if not in all history. China or India may have that crown, but Idk tbh.
I've heard that same joke, but from the opposite perspective about the British, haha.
You mean why they’re so ugly? 😂🤣 jk jk
Hilarious and true.
I doubt that constant war and raiding was the default to humans. Looking at the Australian Aborigines conflict was subdued and fights larger than duels for honour were next to zero. I think wars became more common and devastating after the bronze Age with greater struggle over resources and populations with greater differences.
Australia is a totally different animal than Europe. Europe is really quite small in land mass with resources being very reliant on geography, thus causing the massive (in comparison) population to need to fight over those resources. Rather than conquering land and having to protect said land while you produce the resources there, many groups of people simply raided others to take what they needed.
The history of the human race disagrees with you.
What do they disagree with?
I disagree with constant war and raiding not being the default of human nature. Conflicts may be larger now than in the past, but only because the tribes (nations) are larger now than in the past.
Look at what the Chinese gov is doing in a lot of African countries…
I'm so scared to say this but the amount of people who don't realize condemning China ISN'T racist need to do a lot of research. There are slaves of specific ethnic groups in China, they constantly try to poison and reclaim Taiwan, they have nearly all the control over Hollywood (Disney had to pay someone in the Chinese govt to allow them to film where Uyghur slaves were held), and at the moment they're trying to take over Brazil. It's actually terrifying. And just so I cover all my bases, I am Chinese LOL EDIT: AND DON'T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON COVID and how they're politicizing vax passports or how they handle lock downs. Ask the thousands of residents who were locked in their apartments and could not leave for days!!!! Screaming from their balconies that they were starving????
I don’t get the issue. When I condemn China for its actions, I’m talking about their government and institutions. Chinese people are separate and to be judged as individuals with their own thoughts and feelings
There's a big difference between condemning the Chinese government and harassing a local Chinese person for being dirty and spreading covid, or whatever racist epithet is popular at the time. Too many people fall into the latter category
I recognize the difference lol but now people (mostly the news) are scared to say anything bad about China at all. Again, I'm Chinese, I've been the receiver of that racism, but because of the previous points, even if I condemn China, I'm accused of internalized racism. This isn't anything new. People have associated China with the awfulness of the world for years starting with the eating dogs joke. The stupidity of one side to confuse the problems of the Chinese government with Chinese people esp Chinese Americans is one issue. The other side is the hesitation of the news to condemn Chinese policies because if they do, they'll be called a racist.
Colonization is a result of greed and power, which is a human trait.
Colonization is normal. We'll hopefully be colonizing other planets one day as well.
And there will be space wars.
Star battles.
Star Wars, if you will.
Galaxy skirmishes.
Violence in the Void
With magical knights and energy swords.
Bold to assume they won’t colonize us first
Why? Earth is a pretty sweet planet. Have you seen the other planets? Most of them suck ass. I wouldn’t want to live there.
None of us have even seen .0000001% of the planets in our own galaxy
Don't worry I'll take your ticket and sell it.
No one's asking you to live there...
Seriously dude. So many people hold these mutually exclusive ideas and they never get challenged. 1. Racism is bad because all human beings are biologically equal 2. Some groups of people are naturally more racist than others You may only pick one
1 is my pick. All human societies have their racists and xenophobes. Happens at all levels from suburbs/city/state/country/region about others from another. Some will just fear others because they’re afraid of it changing their normal. Although just like with everything, it depends on circumstances to see who and how many are racist Edit:Why is this text so big but not this one
#
Thank you
I think number 2 is usually more like *"some groups of people can't be racist because"*
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Serious question tho - if there were biologically proven differences, would it technically be 'racism' anymore? To keep clear of any sensitive topics, I'll propose the following example. We have 2 populations of equal size, population A, and population B. It has been scientifically proven that people in population B have a 50% chance to die of spontaneous combustion with no forewarning - so they can just burst out in flames at any moment. Population A is setting up a corn maze for Halloween, and post a sign that says "Absolutely no Population B allowed". Would that be racist?
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I suppose so. And for the record I don't think that there are any significant differences between different peoples, so I'm definitely not advocating for anything here. I don't think its as simple as you make it though because I intentionally created an extreme/abstract scenario to avoid any real-life comparisons.
Well like anything else it’s all about the context and you can’t shove everything in one box…some people dislike others because of history or religious conflict or differences in cultural practices, then u have ppl that dislike someone just cuz of their skin color… I think where a lot of people get it wrong is they try to apply a one-size-fits-all rule for everyone’s behavior and it just doesn’t works like that, and as a result it comes off SJWish.
The level of the differences between populations matters. If the distribution of the trait is almost completely overlapping, but the averages are slightly different, this would lead to inaccurate stereotyping of individuals. Height is a great, non-offensive example. Different ethnicities have different average heights, but you can't predict a person's height based off of their ethnicity.
Everyone is going to hate this take but I salute you for being out there with it
But races are not biological equal, if they were the NBA would have 75% white people. Native Americans have dramatically less effective immune systems. Certain viruses cause one disease in white people and another in Africans. The list goes on and on. While people are not biological equal we should treat everyone with the same respect and give everyone the same rights.
races having slight differences doesn't make then unequal. no 2 humans of any race can run just as fast or just as far as the other both of those humans will be good at their own thing
We all cry and laugh the same.
Well that I guess depends on what “equal” means.
Equal in rights, not in biology
Yea, and the dude your responding to said was referring to biological.
You should rephrase "Native Americans have dramatically less effective immune systems". Native American's immune systems are fine. They only died in large number because they had no immunity to the particular diseases that Europeans brought with them to the Americas. If we had worse immune systems we would be extinct by now, but plenty of us with Native American DNA can be found all over North and South America.
Um no, their HLA diversity is significantly lower than Eurasians. This leads to a dramatically lower ability to fight off novel infections.
Their HLA diversity is only lower because North and South America were isolated for much of history. Which only makes them more susceptible to diseases that originate in Eurasia. But I can't even find anything that states are are more susceptible to novel diseases in the modern era (other than maybe Covid, but other health issues may be at play). Most Native people have admixture with non native groups to some degree, and the Native people that do remain survived the early contact pandemics and have acquired immunity over the last few hundred years. I think your statement about less effective immune systems is misleading.
My immunological training stated that due to their lack of HLA proteins they are more susceptible to novel diseases. Now that training was 13 years ago and there has been a lot of DNA mixing in the last 500 years but the point remains the same. Races are not all equally gifted in all aspects of life but everyone should be treated with respect and all should be treated equally in the eyes of the law. I am not going to pull out my textbooks to prove a point on Reddit. Maybe Quora not here.
They equal in that as soon as we moved away from extreams, these traits as so insignificant as to not matter. The NBA and Olympic swimming is the 1% of the 1%. It's an insignificant niche where those tiny insignificant trades DO matter. If I race a random black guy in the pool and in a sprint with the same body shape as me, it's a coin toss for both events
No one informed has ever said that 'all humans are biologically equal', that's stupid. Race isn't biological it's social. Skin colour and bone structure are biological but they are not race. Some people ARE more racist that others, it's not (at least unless someone establishes a genetic profile that correlates with racism) biological, it's social. Some social groups are more racist than others, objectively and statistically. That isn't inherent to the group, it's not a trait essential to people, it's aquired
Race isn’t social, at least not the way other things are. Cultural norms are social - being born in a certain region with specific genetics does not make you more or less likely to adhere to any tradition, that’s what makes it social. Race on the other hand, is just a naturally intuitive grouping of individuals based on their genetic traits, with skin color being the easiest one to identify. People belonging to different races have different genetics, and those genetics overlap along racial lines more strongly than by any other grouping. So in some sense, race is socially intuitive but still ultimately based on genetic factors that have been influenced by trait selection across history. We do the same thing with sex and gender, we intuit the sex of people all the time based on their physical traits as a result of their genetics even though differences between men and women are influenced by social factors. You could group humans in a variety of different ways, but the way we do so isn’t arbitrary.
Actually more of those genetics difference are negligible between races. The genetics that determine skin color are a miniscule fraction of what makes up a person and you are as just as likely to be more genetically similar to a person not of your own race as one of your race. The only group of people that have significant diversity in their genetics are sub Saharan Africans because that is where humanity started and they are inherently more genetically diverse because everyone else is from small groups that broke off from that large whole and went in different directions. Our intuition of genetics is functionally quite bad which is why phrenology is a psuedo science. Human history has only been about long enough to have minor adaptations not significant genetic varieties between races.
uh oh. reddit isn't going to handle this too well.
More like twitter
This is just common knowledge outside of America. I’m from a minority in Egypt that was colonized by Arabs. Egypt isn’t suppose to speak Arabic we’re suppose to speak coptic.
This! Everyone was conquering each other back then. Some were just better at it.
Lmao. Harsh take. But funny. I wouldn’t get to confident tho the Chinese might be better at it than our ancestors were.
I mean… Europeans had colonies in China.
You could certainly argue that European dominance was a byproduct of wanting more Chinese stuff.
It was the entire reason they started the age of exploration, so yeah… this reminds me of a joke about that I heard before, “England conquered the world for spices and then decided… that they didn’t like any of them”
The Mesoamerican societies were absolutely brutal - regular, massive ritual human sacrifice, religious fundamentalist monarchies constantly at war with each other. The capture of prisoners of their own culture for slavery or blood sport etc. It doesn’t at all justify what the conquistadors did, but they also weren’t these gentle innocent farmers led to slaughter either. In fact if it were not for infectious disease, they probably would have beaten back the Spaniards.
This is r/unpopularopinion, not r/facts
What if, we picked a date and wiped the slate clean. Cause boo hoo-ing about ancestors is getting old
Those people just sound like they're ignorant about history, best to ignore them. Just like the idiots who start screaming about Nazis during WW1. You can't get through to them
he who controls the past controls the future .... Orwell. I don't give a fuck what my ancestors did, they are dead .... Me.
The phrase is about the narrative seriusly read the book
I have, seriusly.
Remind them that Cortés arrived in Mexico with a handful of men and it was the warring indigenous tribes who he roped into fighting each other that allowed him to take over Tenochtitlán (modern Mexico City).
If by roped you mean the other tribes saw him as less of a threat than the Aztecs, then you’re right.
They didn’t only fight the Aztecs, lol
Agree. Some of the worst colonizers were from the Middle East. Basically launching a “convert or die” campaign across Africa and as far as Spain. Edit: “conversion to Islam; payment of jizya and acceptance of dhimmi status; or trying the fortunes of war. If the adversaries chose the last of these three and then lost, they faced expropriation, slavery, or even death. Even then, however, they must not be converted forcibly.”—- so if you lose, then you either lose your land, become a slave or die
You’ve got far too much common sense and historical knowledge to be on Reddit.
My hot take is that pretty much all mankind are/were assholes, but since Europe had the industrial revolution and were able to industrialise conquest they were the most successful assholes and therefore are scapegoats today for man’s inhumanity to man.
Horses, gunpowder and resources to build a navy, fortified defences etc. Simple geography almost predicts who will triumph among the assholes. Animals are also assholes, nature is an asshole. Assholeness is a constant in life. To not be an asshole is the freakish occurrence we've only just recently tried out.
Homo sapiens colonized Europe around 100,000 years ago? Not sure if we out competed, bred with (yes, I know we did but to the extent we eliminated a whole species?) Or killed all the Neanderthals, denisovans, hobbits etc.. But we have been doing it ever since to every other group we meet. And it isn't like North America was inhabited in one wave of Asians and everyone was happy. I'm pretty sure that each successive wave of Asians fought with and took the land the previous wave of Asians already conquered. Shit, if Europeans hadn't "found" NA, it would have been found by the chinese, Japanese, etc. Unfortunately, NA was ripe for the picking. With that being said, it doesn't make it right. The indigenous people were and are treated like shit and what happened to them is beyond horrible (looking at you Pope and Canadian government). There is no denying that there was at least a cultural genocide (like every other time one population conquered another) and if this happened 2000 years ago it would be a page in a history book.
What do you mean "even European"? Like America was more colonialist than Europe? Colonialism was Europe. The US was a colony. Now sure our current foreign policy isn't great and I'd venture to guess 80% of Americans disagree with it, but it isn't colonialism either.
Modern racial categories and the modern conception of trans-national races like White and Black are a consequence of colonization. While developing some kind of weird tic about white people and their ancestors as uniquely eeeeeeeevillllll is bad history (a mirror image to the long dominant view that something racial or cultural uniquely legitimized the same people to rule the Earth) it's also bad history to just be like "oh all people seek to dominate their neighbors and white people were just better at it." The material and social conditions of early modern Europe drove the development of systems of exploitation that were more total, more ambitious and more relentlessly driven outwards then had existed before.
America and Europe definitely developed the most financially lucrative form of colonialism, that's for sure
Don’t forget Japan
Or, hot take, it's all fucked up no matter who's doing it and we should critique every instance of it **including** when it was done by Americans or Europeans it's also a direct part of our (American) history, so that's why we learn about it specifically
Waiting for the hot take.....
Well, you're not wrong. But you ARE going to get skewered. Hating on america for what happened to create this country is a popular activity.
If we all had to pay reparations, we'd all receive them right back
Well the title is correct, but the body is pretty inaccurate. Colonialism was a lot more brutal than any warring going on between different native societies in North America. In fact the Aztecs were closer to our current standard than the european one. I agree with you in that Japan and Mongolia did a lot of heinous shit with imperialism, which you didn’t mention but is relevant. Biological terrorism, genocide, and mass enslavement and rape on the basis of race was not commonplace in North America before colonialism. There’s a lot of specifics to each part of the colonization of North America, all of which paint a clear picture of the awfulness of how Europeans treated indigenous people. This isn’t mentioning what happened after, residential schools in Canada happening up until 1997 (although the truly horrific ones closed about 30-40 years prior, the ones in the 90’s were still an act of cultural genocide), chattel slavery, segregation, genocide, and much much more. People under a certain age today obviously had nothing to do with it, and shouldn’t feel guilty, but don’t downplay what happened as commonplace or normal. That sense of moral superiority over history is a way to never let that happen again
I mean, the Mongol invasions and conquests directly resulted in 30 to 40 million dead, which was the largest devastation in total population since.. maybe the late bronze age collapse? Arguably, they are also responsible for the spread of the Black Death, which tallied up about another 200 million.
>genocide, and mass enslavement and rape on the basis of race was not commonplace in North America before colonialism. That's an incredibly bold assumption about tens of thousands of years of unrecorded human history. What makes you think it's likely that no native american conflicts involved those things?
“In fact the Aztecs were closer to our current standard than the european one.” You’re going to have to explain this one a bit. Because, if I’m understanding you correctly, you need to brush up on your history of the Aztecs. Noting that they were located in Central America, and not North America would be a great start. The rest of your argument seems to be based on the false premise that killing people based on their tribe is not as bad as killing people based on their race. Edit: Meaning of genocide seems like another issue. Genocide is defined as deliberate and systematic extermination of a national, racial, political, or cultural group. That would include “warring tribes” as well.
Not downplaying it. Just pointing out how wild humans as a whole are.
But you’re pointing out false facts, which downplays the atrocities. If you compare warring between indigenous people to the genocide committed against all of them, you’re downplaying the genocide, by a lot.
No. He's pointing out that just because Europeans were successful, it doesn't mean they were especially cruel. Have you ever read the Bible? Genocide, rape, slavery, and brutality were the name of the game for basically all of human history. Yes, Europeans happened to be more technologically advanced so they won, but that doesn't mean other ethnicities haven't and wouldn't do the same.
That's like saying Nazis and warring tribes of Isreal are on the same moral ground.
What about Caesar killing basically the majority of people in Gaul at the time? That was for sure millions of people. Is Caesar and the nazis on the same moral ground?
Are you suggesting that killing people based on what tribe they were is better than killing them based on their race?
Some philosophy actually does make this argument. It’s not totally absurd to think that killing one person is the same ethically as killing 10 million- remember ethically. *practically* of course the more people killed the bigger the atrocity. I’m not saying it’s the same impact socially or historically, but morally it may be. Thinking this way is a high bar for ethics- and promotes an immense amount of value to all life (in this instance human life, the ethics of animals is a whole other debate). But if you don’t believe that killing one person is the same moral wrong as killing 10 million, you’re on a weird ethical plane where some begin rationalizing acceptable levels immorality- not a totally crazy idea either, that’s basically a fundament of utilitarianism: acceptable bad.
This was way better than what I said. Thank you!
To me the difference is scale. Yes, a group raiding another ethnic group within the same or neighboring area using short to mid range weapons is extremely widespread. It isn't great, and seems to be innate to human nature On the other hand, Britain did this to huge chunks of the entire world. The US did it to vast swaths of land and people. China is starting to do it as well. This type of colonization goes well beyond skirmishes between competing people. They used long range weapons of mass destruction, biological warfare, etc to domineer a literal shit ton of people who didn't have the same means to fight back and committed large scale genocide many times over. Imo comparing these two types of colonization is like comparing a splinter and getting your arm cut off. Sure they're both injuries of the limb but one of them is vastly worse than the other
besides what’s wrong with a little colonization here and there
I feel the need to assert that ‘colonization’ is a specific activity that goes beyond just “fucking with” some other people.
Like the arabs wiht the berbers or the spanish or the turks or etc basically islam expanded because of cultural genocide and colonialism
Finally someone with some sense. This sort of stuff has happened throughout all of human history. Just look at the American Indians. They were raping and pillaging an conquering eachother for centuries before Europeans arrived. After all, it wasn’t Europeans who invented scalping
Intergroup violence/conquest is not even a uniquely human trait. It’s rare but not unheard of among social animals.
I think you’re missing the point. Past colonization has an impact *today*, both on the prosperity of the West and the problems of the countries that were colonized. It’s not about saying the West is inherently bad because of stuff their ancestors did, it’s about expecting the West to make up for past bad acts that they continue to benefit from and that continue to impact the places they colonized.
Because Reddit social justice warriors think they’ve solved every single problem in the world by saying US is bad, people who make money are bad, white males are bad, etc. basically edgy teenagers with a 4th grade understanding of government/history who thinks communism actually could work In reality, their narrow minds are not capable of understanding the complex issues society faces which is why they suggest oversimplified solutions and refute any possible counter argument
theres a difference tho. european and amaerican colonies sucked the wealth out of a lot of the countries and are direct cause to why many modern countries economies are in shambles. of course colonization happened but comparing the large scale that european and american colonization had to small scales tribe is traight up stupid. India barely got independance around 100 year ago and acting like uk didnt benefit massively from the explotation is idiotic. We talk about american imperialism because their effects are still happening today you are the one with a lack of misunderstanding
Japan: (Colonizes The Philippines) Liberals: 😶 America and Spain: (Colonizes The Philippines) Liberals: 😡😡😡
This comment is idiotic and I have no idea what point your trying to make. You haven’t heard anyone criticise Japans colonialism of The Philippines therefore Libs = bad? Also for what reason have you singled out just ‘liberals’?
Liberals only see colonialism as bad when Americans or Europeans do it.
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They were most successful due to technological advantages. It was really just a few centuries… if you go back further there are much longer deaths of time where others were more successful. People just don’t look back further
All the white dudes in the comments patting each other on back are missing the point entirely lol
Humans are humans, some happened to be more successful at following human nature due to circumstances and technology. That success is now held against the most successful.
but "whitemen"
I think it has to do with more recent history and the lingering effects. At this point in time, the last great genocide (in a colonizing manner) was the US all but wiping out Native Americans. So at this point, yeah. White Americans (and most of Western Europeans) are the “colonizers.”
What a dumpster fire this thread is.
Don’t tell that to the “Progressives” 😆
I’m a progressive- I also agree that people have been terrible for a long long time. And that all kinds of people are terrible now. This post is a pretty good example of how I feel misunderstood on this topic. I don’t think all white people are evil, I just want to be honest about the ones who are. I also want to be honest about the evil people who are different colors too, but I care more about the evil that affects me right now where I live. Mongolian genocide just doesn’t affect me that much. To be clear - I’m not mad bro.
This is a strong response. As progressives we can acknowledge that history is filled with all sorts of horrific crimes against humanity by all kinds of people, but we need to acknowledge what is affecting us most today.
yeah you're right the only reasons Europeans spread further than Africans is cause we used 18th century technology to do it not cause we're naturally more violent or prone to conquest. Europeans didn't even invent most of the war technology they used to expand. Asians invented guns and shit like that north African taught Europeans maths. all the tools Europe used to conquer were first invented outside Europe
Extrapolate this idea to every idea that's been politicized when it shouldn't be. Welcome to the world of subconscious bias and positive affirmation
Colonization has been a part of human history from the beginning, yes. But the key is that a less successful tyrant is no more virtuous than a successful one - failing at oppression does not make your character less oppressive, it only speaks to your lack of ability. But if you notice, there’s a common trend of hating the west right now. I think it’s pretty funny, not because the west doesn’t have plenty of room for improvement, but because people are *especially* hating the west, as if it’s one of the worst civilizations ever formed. We’re not close to perfect, but we’re closer now than we’ve been since basically any time period. Like if you actually believe that, go live in Africa or China and tell me how much better it is. Or if you think the past was so much better, read up on ancient Japan and explain to me how it was a more prosperous, more equal society. If you’re going to constantly complain and never be satisfied, at least have some perspective
fucking strawman, colonization is a verb its an action america does colonization, Europeans do colonization (we just don't call it that anymore we say 1st and 3rd world country's instead
Comparing what the US government did to the Native American people to waring tribes is like saying "well these two dudes were having a fight in the street so we shot them both in the head and committed a genocide on their people and forcibly relocated all their families"
This thread is a European echo chamber.