So if you buy something it does not become yours, then?
Only if you buy it using free trade. Trading at the point of a gun does not count. Prime examples - the Dutch and British East India companies.
It is hard to argue that colonialists did not subvert free trade by all means available - favorable laws for European exports to colonies, manipulated exchange rates, breaking treaties, …
I’m not gonna lie I really hate when people make these types of arguments… This is how history works. Read back more than a few hundred years. People have always conquered, taken, fought, died, won and moved on - history has winners and losers (sorry to break it to you). In collective point #3 you tell “white people” not to label everything, but then you label the losing territority inhabitants in collective point #1 and claim “white people” need to give their stuff back.
It’s only 2013. We’ve come to accept that the United States is no longer the Native Americans’ in a few hundred years. In hundreds of more years that will change again and America will most likely be a different country (or many). People have such a short term view on history.
Edit: I’m pro Israel. History is what you make it.
^Agree with lxwarr. The Zinn and Chomsky-ites would say, “How dare all these white folk come in here and slaughter all the Native Americans! It was their land!” and “How dare we take slaves from other countries (Africa) captive and force them to work against their will!”
1.) Indians weren’t a passive, peaceful people. They slaughtered and killed each other. And they would have slaughtered and killed the white man and conquered them, if they had the means to do so. The white man just happened to have the better weapons and armor.
2.) People have been enslaving other people for thousands of years. America didn’t do anything abnormal. They only strange thing America did–they actually willingly abolished slavery, something no other civilization has ever done in the history of history.
Actually, Britain did it before the US, and didn’t even have to go through a war to do it (I know that the Civil War was technically about state’s rights, but it was the slavery issue that was the key question that made state’s rights an urgent issue).
And the Romans abolished slavery too, which included abolishing slaves who were white. Of course, after the Roman Empire collapsed, resources were so unevenly distributed that the only way most people could gain any security at all was to become permanent sharecroppers and later serfs, which was a kind of reinstitutionalization of slavery under a different name.
Russia abolished serfdom under Alexander II around the same time as the US. Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, and was really something odd, because basically Princess Isabella, who was acting Empress while her dad was touring Europe, woke up one day and freed the slaves voluntarily. It cost the imperial family the throne, and Brazil became a republic a year later, but it is one of the wierder things in history.
The fact that people have been taking things from each other for thousands of years doesn’t justify my taking your stuff just because I have a gun. There’s a difference between power and authority. Power is the ability to convince or (if necessary) coerce you to do something, authority is power exercised with legitimacy. We have to live with the fact that not all power is legitimately exercised, but we don’t have to admire it.
I agree with what you’re saying. I guess my main gripe is “What is the statute of limitation for your ancestors grievances?” I think that is where most of the argument lies.
You could argue for forever and a year if the displayed power of the British Empire changed the world for the better. If it did does that make it legitimate? Does it matter if the experiment worked in some parts of the world but failed in others?
Damn Bchad with his facts…Greenman, you can go hide in a corner now.
I agree that it’s a legitimate question to ask how long one has to wait before descendents of people who did things that we consider unjust. I think part of it has to do with how long it takes before the descendents of the losers can have equal opportunities to be successful in the world, and we’re clearly not there yet. At the same time, our culpability in this is not the same as our ancestor’s culpability, so even though the winners in some sense “owe” the losing community something (if we are trying to apply a sense of justice), we don’t owe as much (proportionately) as people closer to the unjust events do, and those levels of culpability do decrease over time, provided that one isn’t actively committing new injustices. But clearly, it’s going to be forever before one can clearly figure that part out.
Of course, western civilization may be getting its comeuppance now, at least the non-super wealthy parts.
Louis C.K. has great material on “Being White”… I love the part where he talks about how one can use a time machine but only one direction…
Quotes like this are honestly what scares the south about minorities. I know he’s a comedian, but suggesting that the only recourse for your ancestors is for your decendants to be subjected as second class forever is a scary thought. If that is being vocalized throughout the minority communities it gives the majority no reason to support equality. This only helps perpetuate racism and people trying to hold groups down. My mom used to tell me to forgive and forget.
But why does that responsbility fall upon the “white” community? If a particular ethnicity should not be targeted as a group for suspicion based on the action of its indivduals, why do you feel so comfortable targeting the “white” community for blame? Why does collective groupthink only work in one direction?
Where did I say the white community needs to be targeted, or that it must only go in one direction? Just because I laughed at Louis CK.
My statement was an ethical principle, divorced from specifics of a particular ethnicity. It’s based on the idea that people should have more or less equal opportunities, and that the events of past generations mess that up. We can’t change the past, but that doesn’t absolve us of trying to figure out how to make our future more just.
If it’s divorced from the specifics of this particular case, then it’s a trivial point…yes people should have more or less equal opportunities…the question is who’s responsibility is it to implement that?
Poor job in justifying the mistakes of our white ancestors. Those statements are disgusting.
First of all, I am not griping about white people’s past wrongs. It’s history, what happened happened. I absolutely do not expect current white people to pay for the sins of their ancestors. But the topic was “how would you improve the white race”? So it’s legit to point out past wrongs perpetrated by white people to make sure y’all don’t do it again - inadvertantly or something.
Greenman, two wrongs don’t make a right and never have. Even if Indians were bloodsucking cannibals, that doesn’t justify the repeated killings and double-crosses by US.
Anyway, I am glad you guys agree with the “individual” part of my post 
Absolutely.
First the cycle of poverty/crime/addiction is far more complex then pulling oneself up by their bootstraps and cannot simply be remedied by some bullshit purposely inflamatory five point plan.
Second, he is generalizing about a community which comprises 42,000,000 people. Not all of which sag their pants, end up in jail or drop out of highschool.
Finally, poor whites and latinos exhibit the same maladaptive behaviours, this is more a issue of poverty and social exclusion then it is of race.
Plus making comments like that the guy sounds about as in touch with reality as my 85 year old senile irish grandmother.
“Pull your damn pants up! What’s wrong wit choo kids?”
http://shine.yahoo.com/fashion/texas-mcdonald-8217-tells-patrons-pull-pants-172900402.html