> I hardly, if ever, see people using it as a "cop out for all our problems", or people "shoveling all blame on colonialism". I have. Mostly amongst fellow stu

> I hardly, if ever, see people using it as a "cop out for all our problems", or people "shoveling all blame on colonialism". I have. Mostly amongst fellow students. Perhaps it's just different experiences then. > it becomes a way to dismiss these very real effects and ignore them altogether. Meh. I am okay with dismissing past issues when discussing present problems. Past issues cannot be fixed. I am less okay with dismissing present issues as a sole result of past problems. Of course, I don't want to dismiss the effects of colonialism, but when it is used as an excuse (which I have seen often), I'd prefer to dismiss the past effects in an effort to avoid having present effects be dismissed. > because the economic impact of 200+ years of outright exploitation takes more than 50 years to recover from. You're talking in absolutes. I never said that we should have recovered by now. I'm asserting we ought to have made more progress than we have. This is a matter of opinion so I guess we should agree to disagree. > Slavery and legal discrimination are responsible for the current state of the Black community in the US - that's the whole point. Sure, but it's not used as an excuse either. > Incidentally, I do oftentimes see this same misguided criticism levied at the Black community, which essentially amounts to "you've had equal rights for 50 years now; it's up to you now to achieve success and end racial discrimination and inequality". Oh, this is not what I'm saying either. Perhaps I'm not being so clear; but I'm merely against the usage of colonialism as a cop-out. You're clearly not doing that here, so never mind :)