5 ms·

So, native Americans?

mesh 5y ago
Native Americans represent 1.7% of the US population: https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=3&lvlid=62 https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=3&lvlid=6...
- nohr 5y ago
  Are you this dense, or is this on purpose?
- utunbu 5y ago
  Tibetan people represent 0.4% of the Chinese population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_people
  - echelon 5y ago
    Tibet isn't China. They got Crimea'd in the "Peaceful Liberation of Tibet"
    - antonzabirko 5y ago
      Exactly. Similar situation, though. Both countries are being unrightfully claimed.
    - utunbu 5y ago
      In replying to > Native Americans represent 1.7% of the US population I think the analogy between (Tibetan people, China) and (native American people, US) makes sense.
    - kunagi7 5y ago
      You can't compare pears to apples. Tibet and Crimea annexations were quite different. Crimea used to be part of Russian Empire and then part of the Russian SSR until it was gifted to Ucranian SSR as a region in 1954. A 65% of the residents are Russians, 16% Ucranians and 12% Crimean Tatars. And most of their population speaks Russian (85%). There were tensions between Russia, Ukraine and Crimea thanks to that transfer (and they haven't disappeared). The annexation was a bad thing economically wise but it was done quite fast and clean. The Tibet was already under Chinese control since the Qing Dynasty (1720). At that time, Korea was also a vassal state of the Qing Dynasty. The Tibet independence (1911-1950) sadly didn't have any strength (obsolete military, bad and few foreign relations) and they were absorbed by the CCP military. Also, they speak different languages, have different cultures and the Han are still a small minority in the region.
  - RHSeeger 5y ago
    But the statement being replied to was > Imagine being called a minority in a place you are the majority which implies that only the area of Tibet is being discussed. And > Tibetan people represent 0.4% of the Chinese population implies that all of China is being discussed. So there's a disconnect there. The comment about Native Americans was presumably being read in the context of "Native Americans in the Unites States", which is a context where they are, indeed, a minority. I expect the original comment about Native Americans was made in the sense of "like how the US treated Native Americans", not "the facts presented (majority, living there for a long time) also apply to the Native Americans". Whereas the reply to that comment was, I assume, made based on the second interpretation. So not dense or intentional, just a different understanding of what was being said, because of ambiguity. And, because people like to feel superior and assume everyone interprets everything the same way they do even when ambiguous, the poor responder got a bunch of down votes lumped on them.
- majormajor 5y ago
  What percentage of the population of the land that is now the US did they represent when Europeans first started colonies there? From the CCP's perspective, would a similar decline in percentage be desirable? From our historical view of the US, are the actions that got us here praiseworthy?
  - jimbob45 5y ago
    To be fair, a majority of the native population died due to the Europeans inadvertently introducing Smallpox. While I agree with your argument as a whole, I would advise against trying to use numerical arguments for Europe's treatment of the natives.
    - Cerium 5y ago
      I interpreted their argument to mean that the Native Americans were 100% of the American population before Europeans arrived.
    - jfk13 5y ago
      > inadvertently introducing Not always inadvertently, perhaps: https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blankets https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smal... Although that article says that "there’s only one clearly documented instance of a colonial attempt to spread smallpox", the fact that there is any "clearly documented instance" of such an attempt is pretty horrific.
- cronix 5y ago
  Yes, only 1.7% after 500 years of....being left alone?
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  In 1491, that number was probably a little different. Give things 500+ years and Tibetans may be down to 1.7% too.
RHSeeger 5y ago
Native Americans are not the majority in the Americas, outside of reservations. So if you meant "Native Americans on a Native American reservation", then I guess so... but I don't think they're considered a minority in that context, are there?
- stuaxo 5y ago
  They clearly were in at one point, which is why the situation is comparable.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    Also Tibetans aren't the majority in Shanghai, just Tibet - Like native Americans on current reservations, which continued to shrink in size for a long time.
    - 8note 5y ago
      Yeah, the chinese government is looking for a way to get rid of the Tibetans. The Americans have done well in ensuring the native population has lost power and are shrinking. The end goal of china is to be rid of their Tibetan scourge, just like the Americans would like it if the natives stopped existing
      - emkoemko 5y ago
        "just like the Americans would like it if the natives stopped existing" really? why?
bpodgursky 5y ago
Do you think the 17th-century treatment of Native Americans is a good template for the treatment of minority-majority populations? I'd like to think we've gotten better.
- 8note 5y ago
  From a colonial perspective, colonists got everything they wanted it's a good template for anyone looking to take sovereignty over somebody else's land. If you're trying to do that, youre already dropping ethics
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    Right.. both are bad things. If we could go back in time, we should be telling the US not to abuse and displace the native americans. I'm confused why there's any disagreement here.
    - thereare5lights 5y ago
      Back in time? Who needs to go back in time? We're literally still abusing them today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline_protests https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline_prote...
Quillbert182 5y ago
Native Americans are not unified by language and religion. They have a wide variety of both of these things.
- yorwba 5y ago
  Tibetans are not unified by language or religion. There are more than a dozen Tibetic languages, and speakers of more distantly related language families like rGyalrongic are also classified as Tibetans by the government. The official policy of one standard language per recognized ethnicity does mean that many of them will have been educated in Lhasa Tibetan at school. On the religion front, next to the various schools of Tibetan Buddhism, there's also the older Bön and other, less popular religions like Islam.
swiley 5y ago
I have yet to meet someone IRL who thinks what was done to native Americans was just and also condemns the CCP for their treatment of minorities.
- vkou 5y ago
  You'll immediately find a lot of those people if you re-frame the question in terms of reparations. In the same way, there's no shortage of people in America condemning police treatment of HK protestors (Repressed people fighting for freedom), who also support police treatment of BLM protestors (Rioters and lowlifes with no real grievances who just want to ruin everything). That's because most people don't hold political ideology derived from first principles, they just check what their political tribe likes/hates, and follow suit.
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    Not everyone views reparations are an appropriate response for past injustices. Your framing the situation is a litmus-test aimed at excluding people. Every human being in history is at the tail of a long line of injustices and atrocities. The current way to fix things today is to look at the situation people are in, today, and remediate as necessary. I'm the 4th generation from eastern european serfs, who were treated as livestock or part of the land. It doesn't affect me today in the slightest. I don't deserve reparations. This isn't an argument against a social safety net or social welfare. It's an argument against crude race-based cash transfers that ignore who is and isn't hindered today by past injustices.
    - vkou 5y ago
      My framing is the only meaningful litmus test. I don't give a shit about feelings, are you going to do anything about past and current injustice, where you can? The answer, in the United States, is predominantly "No" from both sides of the political spectrum to the first question, and "Mostly No/No" to the second. I'd also like to point out that even the Soviet Union/the Russian Federation flirted with reparations for victims of Stalin's repression.
sillyquiet 5y ago
Not sure of the point of this comment, other than textbook whataboutism. Yes, the situation with the Native Americans wrt the expansion of European settlement in the Americas is similar. At the same time, chattel slavery was widespread and common amongst most nations in the world. Should we tolerate a nation today having slavery because it was a thing for us previously?
- sangnoir 5y ago
  The United States governement is not honoring its treaties with the native peoples to this day. This is not just an artifact of the past, but an ongoing injustice. https://www.history.com/news/native-american-broken-treaties https://www.history.com/news/native-american-broken-treaties
  - sillyquiet 5y ago
    Sure, ok that sucks. Still not sure why this is the topic of conversation in an article about the CCP treatment of a conquered nation.
    - sangnoir 5y ago
      You don't see any links with successive US governments treatment of conquered (first) nations? To borrow a Canadian phrase. I think there is value in deep consideration of patterns across time and political ideology, and perhaps draw informed generalizations on certain societal failure modes.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  Judging the past by the standards of the present is problematic at best and regressive in the worst case. The best examples of the human condition represent a desire to improve on our mistakes. Because we are imperfect, those with the will to do so must always be striving for improvement. If we appeal to this erroneous view of history, what will future generations be able say of us under the same logic? If we subscribe to this flawed logic, which past atrocities are not justified to be repeated today?
- 5y ago
vkazanov 5y ago
Recent discoveries of cultural genocide of natives in Canada also tells quite a story: children taken from families, school graveyards... We, Europeans, are a cynical crowd.
allemagne 5y ago
Yes, what was done to native Americans was wrong and should not be done to Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, or any other ethnicity in China.
- ssijak 5y ago
  What was done to Vietnamese, Syrians, Libyans, Afghans, Iraqis, Somalis, Serbians, etc is also wrong.

mesh 5y ago

Native Americans represent 1.7% of the US population: https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=3&lvlid=62 https://minorityhealth.hhs.gov/omh/browse.aspx?lvl=3&lvlid=6...

nohr 5y ago
Are you this dense, or is this on purpose?
utunbu 5y ago
Tibetan people represent 0.4% of the Chinese population: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tibetan_people
- echelon 5y ago
  Tibet isn't China. They got Crimea'd in the "Peaceful Liberation of Tibet"
  - antonzabirko 5y ago
    Exactly. Similar situation, though. Both countries are being unrightfully claimed.
  - utunbu 5y ago
    In replying to > Native Americans represent 1.7% of the US population I think the analogy between (Tibetan people, China) and (native American people, US) makes sense.
  - kunagi7 5y ago
    You can't compare pears to apples. Tibet and Crimea annexations were quite different. Crimea used to be part of Russian Empire and then part of the Russian SSR until it was gifted to Ucranian SSR as a region in 1954. A 65% of the residents are Russians, 16% Ucranians and 12% Crimean Tatars. And most of their population speaks Russian (85%). There were tensions between Russia, Ukraine and Crimea thanks to that transfer (and they haven't disappeared). The annexation was a bad thing economically wise but it was done quite fast and clean. The Tibet was already under Chinese control since the Qing Dynasty (1720). At that time, Korea was also a vassal state of the Qing Dynasty. The Tibet independence (1911-1950) sadly didn't have any strength (obsolete military, bad and few foreign relations) and they were absorbed by the CCP military. Also, they speak different languages, have different cultures and the Han are still a small minority in the region.
- RHSeeger 5y ago
  But the statement being replied to was > Imagine being called a minority in a place you are the majority which implies that only the area of Tibet is being discussed. And > Tibetan people represent 0.4% of the Chinese population implies that all of China is being discussed. So there's a disconnect there. The comment about Native Americans was presumably being read in the context of "Native Americans in the Unites States", which is a context where they are, indeed, a minority. I expect the original comment about Native Americans was made in the sense of "like how the US treated Native Americans", not "the facts presented (majority, living there for a long time) also apply to the Native Americans". Whereas the reply to that comment was, I assume, made based on the second interpretation. So not dense or intentional, just a different understanding of what was being said, because of ambiguity. And, because people like to feel superior and assume everyone interprets everything the same way they do even when ambiguous, the poor responder got a bunch of down votes lumped on them.
majormajor 5y ago
What percentage of the population of the land that is now the US did they represent when Europeans first started colonies there? From the CCP's perspective, would a similar decline in percentage be desirable? From our historical view of the US, are the actions that got us here praiseworthy?
- jimbob45 5y ago
  To be fair, a majority of the native population died due to the Europeans inadvertently introducing Smallpox. While I agree with your argument as a whole, I would advise against trying to use numerical arguments for Europe's treatment of the natives.
  - Cerium 5y ago
    I interpreted their argument to mean that the Native Americans were 100% of the American population before Europeans arrived.
  - jfk13 5y ago
    > inadvertently introducing Not always inadvertently, perhaps: https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blankets https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smal... Although that article says that "there’s only one clearly documented instance of a colonial attempt to spread smallpox", the fact that there is any "clearly documented instance" of such an attempt is pretty horrific.
cronix 5y ago
Yes, only 1.7% after 500 years of....being left alone?
ceejayoz 5y ago
In 1491, that number was probably a little different. Give things 500+ years and Tibetans may be down to 1.7% too.

RHSeeger 5y ago

Native Americans are not the majority in the Americas, outside of reservations. So if you meant "Native Americans on a Native American reservation", then I guess so... but I don't think they're considered a minority in that context, are there?

stuaxo 5y ago
They clearly were in at one point, which is why the situation is comparable.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  Also Tibetans aren't the majority in Shanghai, just Tibet - Like native Americans on current reservations, which continued to shrink in size for a long time.
  - 8note 5y ago
    Yeah, the chinese government is looking for a way to get rid of the Tibetans. The Americans have done well in ensuring the native population has lost power and are shrinking. The end goal of china is to be rid of their Tibetan scourge, just like the Americans would like it if the natives stopped existing
    - emkoemko 5y ago
      "just like the Americans would like it if the natives stopped existing" really? why?

bpodgursky 5y ago

Do you think the 17th-century treatment of Native Americans is a good template for the treatment of minority-majority populations? I'd like to think we've gotten better.

8note 5y ago
From a colonial perspective, colonists got everything they wanted it's a good template for anyone looking to take sovereignty over somebody else's land. If you're trying to do that, youre already dropping ethics
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Right.. both are bad things. If we could go back in time, we should be telling the US not to abuse and displace the native americans. I'm confused why there's any disagreement here.
  - thereare5lights 5y ago
    Back in time? Who needs to go back in time? We're literally still abusing them today. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline_protests https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakota_Access_Pipeline_prote...

Quillbert182 5y ago

Native Americans are not unified by language and religion. They have a wide variety of both of these things.

yorwba 5y ago
Tibetans are not unified by language or religion. There are more than a dozen Tibetic languages, and speakers of more distantly related language families like rGyalrongic are also classified as Tibetans by the government. The official policy of one standard language per recognized ethnicity does mean that many of them will have been educated in Lhasa Tibetan at school. On the religion front, next to the various schools of Tibetan Buddhism, there's also the older Bön and other, less popular religions like Islam.

swiley 5y ago

I have yet to meet someone IRL who thinks what was done to native Americans was just and also condemns the CCP for their treatment of minorities.

vkou 5y ago
You'll immediately find a lot of those people if you re-frame the question in terms of reparations. In the same way, there's no shortage of people in America condemning police treatment of HK protestors (Repressed people fighting for freedom), who also support police treatment of BLM protestors (Rioters and lowlifes with no real grievances who just want to ruin everything). That's because most people don't hold political ideology derived from first principles, they just check what their political tribe likes/hates, and follow suit.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Not everyone views reparations are an appropriate response for past injustices. Your framing the situation is a litmus-test aimed at excluding people. Every human being in history is at the tail of a long line of injustices and atrocities. The current way to fix things today is to look at the situation people are in, today, and remediate as necessary. I'm the 4th generation from eastern european serfs, who were treated as livestock or part of the land. It doesn't affect me today in the slightest. I don't deserve reparations. This isn't an argument against a social safety net or social welfare. It's an argument against crude race-based cash transfers that ignore who is and isn't hindered today by past injustices.
  - vkou 5y ago
    My framing is the only meaningful litmus test. I don't give a shit about feelings, are you going to do anything about past and current injustice, where you can? The answer, in the United States, is predominantly "No" from both sides of the political spectrum to the first question, and "Mostly No/No" to the second. I'd also like to point out that even the Soviet Union/the Russian Federation flirted with reparations for victims of Stalin's repression.

sillyquiet 5y ago

Not sure of the point of this comment, other than textbook whataboutism. Yes, the situation with the Native Americans wrt the expansion of European settlement in the Americas is similar. At the same time, chattel slavery was widespread and common amongst most nations in the world. Should we tolerate a nation today having slavery because it was a thing for us previously?

sangnoir 5y ago
The United States governement is not honoring its treaties with the native peoples to this day. This is not just an artifact of the past, but an ongoing injustice. https://www.history.com/news/native-american-broken-treaties https://www.history.com/news/native-american-broken-treaties
- sillyquiet 5y ago
  Sure, ok that sucks. Still not sure why this is the topic of conversation in an article about the CCP treatment of a conquered nation.
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    You don't see any links with successive US governments treatment of conquered (first) nations? To borrow a Canadian phrase. I think there is value in deep consideration of patterns across time and political ideology, and perhaps draw informed generalizations on certain societal failure modes.
aww_dang 5y ago
Judging the past by the standards of the present is problematic at best and regressive in the worst case. The best examples of the human condition represent a desire to improve on our mistakes. Because we are imperfect, those with the will to do so must always be striving for improvement. If we appeal to this erroneous view of history, what will future generations be able say of us under the same logic? If we subscribe to this flawed logic, which past atrocities are not justified to be repeated today?
5y ago

vkazanov 5y ago

Recent discoveries of cultural genocide of natives in Canada also tells quite a story: children taken from families, school graveyards... We, Europeans, are a cynical crowd.

allemagne 5y ago

Yes, what was done to native Americans was wrong and should not be done to Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongolians, or any other ethnicity in China.

ssijak 5y ago
What was done to Vietnamese, Syrians, Libyans, Afghans, Iraqis, Somalis, Serbians, etc is also wrong.