4 ms·

> Yeah, every time the discussion comes up about, for example, reparations for the descendants of slaves, I start out thinking: it's been 150 years! Well, that

> Yeah, every time the discussion comes up about, for example, reparations for the descendants of slaves, I start out thinking: it's been 150 years! Well, that might be a bit disingenuous. The "last chattel slave" was only freed around September 1942. I've seen this reference in several places, but the most direct one is a footnote on a wikipedia page [0]. Regardless, it is probably not worth putting a time limit on suffering. The children and grandchildren of enslaved black people are still alive today! Waving it away with "time has passed" seems more an attempt to bury the issue than to approach it with some semblance of acknowledging the wrong done. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeville,_Texas#/media/File:Beeville_couple_arraigned_on_charge_of_holding_Negro_in_slavery_on_farm_(1942)_The_Brownsville_Herald.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeville,_Texas#/media/File:Be...

wk_end 3y ago
I think you may have misread the comment you're responding to.
javajosh 3y ago
>it is probably not worth putting a time limit on suffering I'm not a historian, but if you believe this, how do you propose to make things right for all the suffering of the past? You would need to examine history for winners and losers, every battle and atrocity and societal structure, and then assign blame to modern people who look like the bad guys, and victimhood to modern people who look like the victims. How do you deal with the (probably very common) case when a group of people that looks one way has been both oppressor and victim? How do you deal with issues like pedophilia, incest, or domestic violence, or torture, all of which have had very different moral weight historically? To me, that's the tragedy of this ideology. The problem isn't the desire for making past wrongs right - that's a very good urge, and one I share. It's that the method for making past wrongs right is based on a very simplistic reading of history and a simplistic, and deeply unfair, idea that you can assign blame and victimhood based on similarity of appearance. There ARE cases when you can address great wrongs, but there is a kind of natural "statute of limitations" where it becomes actually impossible to do anything. Should the Jews still be angry with Egyptians? Or does the Israeli treatment of Palestinians wipe that debt out? What about the Jews who weren't involved? What about the blood libel, the assertion that Jews killed Jesus (nevermind that he was a Jew), and so it is right to hold all modern Jews responsible? What about all the tribal massacres in Africa, where the victims and oppressors a) look exactly the same, and b) would do exactly the same thing if their positions were reversed? How do you deal with the Aztecs, who were slaughtered by Europeans, but who themselves did human sacrafice and slavery, and who eventually interbred with the Europeans? Same for the Russians and Mongolians. (There are probably a hundred other examples of this - Vikings and the Anglo Saxons? The French and the Celts? Etc). What we can do, we should do. Japanese internment at Manzinar was wrong, and they deserved all the reparations and apologies they (eventually) got, and more. Harvey Weinstien's female victims deserved to see him in prison (at least). Black neighborhoods deserve to have freeways rerouted to not split them and make them terrible, and money to rebuild. But do all white people deserve to be hated, and to hate themselves, because they look like a group of wrongdoers? No. Heck, some of them are recent immigrants. Ditto for black people. And the whole idea we can assign blame based on a person's appearance is a CORE racist belief, and yet now the zeitgeist holds that if you don't do it, you're the racist. The world is upside down, and this ideology is utterly unjust. In my view, it's not anti-racist, it's a new racism that doesn't seek to end racism, but rather to turn the tables and swap the roles of victim and oppressor. This will not, cannot, end well, and it's not the world I want for myself or my children, and I don't think it's the world any right-thinking person wants.
- specialist 3y ago
  > ...how do you propose to make things right for all the suffering of the past? Yes and: What is justice? > You would need to examine history for winners and losers... That'd be a good start. Until something better comes along, I support the "truth & reconciliation" strategy. With a splash of sociology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory Another good step would be to enfranchise people. Like giving the all the people impacted by a new freeway some say in the planning process.
  - prottog 3y ago
    Your society would be doomed to forever look back at historical grievances and never make progress. As Ibram X. Kendi says: "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." Under your and his vision, there will never come a day when people aren't discriminated for things they had no control over.
    - ThatGeoGuy 3y ago
      I think it is probably unwise to pre-suppose an extreme here (that society will never "progress"). The default action today is "do nothing and don't acknowledge the problem." Suggesting any action be taken against that status quo does not in any way suggest that it is a permanent inviolable law that society must continuously optimize for nor does it suggest that it can't be done in tandem with other "progress" society may achieve.
      - javajosh 3y ago
        > The default action today is "do nothing and don't acknowledge the problem." Ambivalence is the human default, and logic requires it must be so. The world presently has 10e9 people. Historically, something like 10e12 people have ever existed (I'm estimating). If you were to somehow feel the sum total of human suffering in just one instant, I daresay it would destroy you. We ALL pick and choose what suffering to acknowledge, for the simple reason that to do otherwise is impossible (and deadly if it was possible). Heck, we ignore entire categories of suffering in every discussion, like that caused by disease, heart-break, ostracism, bullying, or old age. You loudly proclaim your aversion to all human suffering, past and present, and claim to know how to fix it. This is absurd. It is vain virtue signaling. Your position smacks of an ignorant pride, wrapped in a claim of impossible compassion. And this sin of pride extends to your "solutions" - you assert that you can accurately assess the suffering of all humans throughout history and take just action to make it right. That's even more absurd. We can't address ALL suffering. That doesn't mean that we can't address ANY suffering. It means we must (must!) be highly selective. We must let (almost) everything go. We deal with what's in front of us. We must acknowledge how human life is twisted: Rape and plunder...that yields good kids. Civilizations collapse...to make new for the next one. Rampant exploitation...that yields just and fair societies. Cultural appropriation...that yields great ideas and art. Slavery and dehumanization...that ultimately leaves the descendants in a better position than the descendants of those that weren't taken. It's twisted, messed up, and that's life. (btw the most twisted thing I know of in nature is the life-cycle of this slime-mold/ameoba life cycle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlANF-v9lb0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlANF-v9lb0). Yeah, there are plenty of structures that need to be dismantled in the US. The police are out-of-control and there is no meaningful separation of powers at the local level; the health-care system is plundering us all for profit; wealth inequality continues to get worse; money in politics has ossified our power structures. And yeah, America has a profound and unique history of racist dehumanization rooted in southern slavery that continues to this day and negatively impacts many American black people in profound ways. But the solution to the KKK (the original recipe anti-black version) is not to invent a ~KKK (the crispy anti-white version) and tell whites that if they don't join ~KKK then they are in the KKK. That's just fucked up.
Y_Y 3y ago
Historically, many slaves were not permitted or able to reproduce, this is one thing that distinguishes the slave trade in the United States. Trying to make amends for those slaves whose line ended with them is probably impossible. On the other hand, a great many people today all around the world, and of many skin colours are descended from slaves. I am mostly familiar with this history in Europe and Africa, though I have no doubt it went on to a greater and lesser extent elsewhere. Supposing that the average reader here, who does not consider themselves to be "minority", is a "white" American, how confident are you that your ancestors do not include many slaves? Slavery in Europe still exists, but in the traditional sense with open buying and selling and large-scale enslavement it was openly and widely practiced in England and Germany and Poland and wherever you trace your ancestry no more than a thousand years ago. You may consider it inappropriate to put a time limit on suffering, but in practice it's implicitly done all the time. The US is exceptional in having so many people who bear clear marks of historically nearby enslavement. Other parts of the world have been more successful in forgetting. If I proposed to some Ivy League admissions panel that the descendants of biblical Jews should be favoured over those of Egyptians on account of enslavement would anyone listen?
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Population wise there are more slaves today than 100 years ago, so the world has not quite moved on.
wlonkly 3y ago
The part you quoted was a rhetorical device, hence "start out". The poster went on to explain Jim Crow laws and other systemic discrimination against Black people up to at least 1971.

wk_end 3y ago

I think you may have misread the comment you're responding to.

javajosh 3y ago

>it is probably not worth putting a time limit on suffering I'm not a historian, but if you believe this, how do you propose to make things right for all the suffering of the past? You would need to examine history for winners and losers, every battle and atrocity and societal structure, and then assign blame to modern people who look like the bad guys, and victimhood to modern people who look like the victims. How do you deal with the (probably very common) case when a group of people that looks one way has been both oppressor and victim? How do you deal with issues like pedophilia, incest, or domestic violence, or torture, all of which have had very different moral weight historically? To me, that's the tragedy of this ideology. The problem isn't the desire for making past wrongs right - that's a very good urge, and one I share. It's that the method for making past wrongs right is based on a very simplistic reading of history and a simplistic, and deeply unfair, idea that you can assign blame and victimhood based on similarity of appearance. There ARE cases when you can address great wrongs, but there is a kind of natural "statute of limitations" where it becomes actually impossible to do anything. Should the Jews still be angry with Egyptians? Or does the Israeli treatment of Palestinians wipe that debt out? What about the Jews who weren't involved? What about the blood libel, the assertion that Jews killed Jesus (nevermind that he was a Jew), and so it is right to hold all modern Jews responsible? What about all the tribal massacres in Africa, where the victims and oppressors a) look exactly the same, and b) would do exactly the same thing if their positions were reversed? How do you deal with the Aztecs, who were slaughtered by Europeans, but who themselves did human sacrafice and slavery, and who eventually interbred with the Europeans? Same for the Russians and Mongolians. (There are probably a hundred other examples of this - Vikings and the Anglo Saxons? The French and the Celts? Etc). What we can do, we should do. Japanese internment at Manzinar was wrong, and they deserved all the reparations and apologies they (eventually) got, and more. Harvey Weinstien's female victims deserved to see him in prison (at least). Black neighborhoods deserve to have freeways rerouted to not split them and make them terrible, and money to rebuild. But do all white people deserve to be hated, and to hate themselves, because they look like a group of wrongdoers? No. Heck, some of them are recent immigrants. Ditto for black people. And the whole idea we can assign blame based on a person's appearance is a CORE racist belief, and yet now the zeitgeist holds that if you don't do it, you're the racist. The world is upside down, and this ideology is utterly unjust. In my view, it's not anti-racist, it's a new racism that doesn't seek to end racism, but rather to turn the tables and swap the roles of victim and oppressor. This will not, cannot, end well, and it's not the world I want for myself or my children, and I don't think it's the world any right-thinking person wants.

specialist 3y ago
> ...how do you propose to make things right for all the suffering of the past? Yes and: What is justice? > You would need to examine history for winners and losers... That'd be a good start. Until something better comes along, I support the "truth & reconciliation" strategy. With a splash of sociology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_commission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory Another good step would be to enfranchise people. Like giving the all the people impacted by a new freeway some say in the planning process.
- prottog 3y ago
  Your society would be doomed to forever look back at historical grievances and never make progress. As Ibram X. Kendi says: "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." Under your and his vision, there will never come a day when people aren't discriminated for things they had no control over.
  - ThatGeoGuy 3y ago
    I think it is probably unwise to pre-suppose an extreme here (that society will never "progress"). The default action today is "do nothing and don't acknowledge the problem." Suggesting any action be taken against that status quo does not in any way suggest that it is a permanent inviolable law that society must continuously optimize for nor does it suggest that it can't be done in tandem with other "progress" society may achieve.
    - javajosh 3y ago
      > The default action today is "do nothing and don't acknowledge the problem." Ambivalence is the human default, and logic requires it must be so. The world presently has 10e9 people. Historically, something like 10e12 people have ever existed (I'm estimating). If you were to somehow feel the sum total of human suffering in just one instant, I daresay it would destroy you. We ALL pick and choose what suffering to acknowledge, for the simple reason that to do otherwise is impossible (and deadly if it was possible). Heck, we ignore entire categories of suffering in every discussion, like that caused by disease, heart-break, ostracism, bullying, or old age. You loudly proclaim your aversion to all human suffering, past and present, and claim to know how to fix it. This is absurd. It is vain virtue signaling. Your position smacks of an ignorant pride, wrapped in a claim of impossible compassion. And this sin of pride extends to your "solutions" - you assert that you can accurately assess the suffering of all humans throughout history and take just action to make it right. That's even more absurd. We can't address ALL suffering. That doesn't mean that we can't address ANY suffering. It means we must (must!) be highly selective. We must let (almost) everything go. We deal with what's in front of us. We must acknowledge how human life is twisted: Rape and plunder...that yields good kids. Civilizations collapse...to make new for the next one. Rampant exploitation...that yields just and fair societies. Cultural appropriation...that yields great ideas and art. Slavery and dehumanization...that ultimately leaves the descendants in a better position than the descendants of those that weren't taken. It's twisted, messed up, and that's life. (btw the most twisted thing I know of in nature is the life-cycle of this slime-mold/ameoba life cycle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlANF-v9lb0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlANF-v9lb0). Yeah, there are plenty of structures that need to be dismantled in the US. The police are out-of-control and there is no meaningful separation of powers at the local level; the health-care system is plundering us all for profit; wealth inequality continues to get worse; money in politics has ossified our power structures. And yeah, America has a profound and unique history of racist dehumanization rooted in southern slavery that continues to this day and negatively impacts many American black people in profound ways. But the solution to the KKK (the original recipe anti-black version) is not to invent a ~KKK (the crispy anti-white version) and tell whites that if they don't join ~KKK then they are in the KKK. That's just fucked up.

Y_Y 3y ago

Historically, many slaves were not permitted or able to reproduce, this is one thing that distinguishes the slave trade in the United States. Trying to make amends for those slaves whose line ended with them is probably impossible. On the other hand, a great many people today all around the world, and of many skin colours are descended from slaves. I am mostly familiar with this history in Europe and Africa, though I have no doubt it went on to a greater and lesser extent elsewhere. Supposing that the average reader here, who does not consider themselves to be "minority", is a "white" American, how confident are you that your ancestors do not include many slaves? Slavery in Europe still exists, but in the traditional sense with open buying and selling and large-scale enslavement it was openly and widely practiced in England and Germany and Poland and wherever you trace your ancestry no more than a thousand years ago. You may consider it inappropriate to put a time limit on suffering, but in practice it's implicitly done all the time. The US is exceptional in having so many people who bear clear marks of historically nearby enslavement. Other parts of the world have been more successful in forgetting. If I proposed to some Ivy League admissions panel that the descendants of biblical Jews should be favoured over those of Egyptians on account of enslavement would anyone listen?

mensetmanusman 3y ago
Population wise there are more slaves today than 100 years ago, so the world has not quite moved on.

wlonkly 3y ago

The part you quoted was a rhetorical device, hence "start out". The poster went on to explain Jim Crow laws and other systemic discrimination against Black people up to at least 1971.