Thursday, July 20, 2017

"No no, THOSE conquerors and oppressors

weren't white Europeans, so they don't count!"  Etc.
But wait! What about those First Nations and Native Americans who were oppressed and almost destroyed by other Indians? Can any Karankawa demand that monuments honoring the Comanche be removed and renamed? What about the Lakota who suffered because Delaware warriors acted as guides for the US Cavalry? Should the descendants of the people chased out of their homes by the Apache, Navajo, and Hopi have a right to insist that anything associated with their ancient oppressors be removed? Or those whose ancestors were conquered by the Inca?

If you take it to that extreme, it dissolves into folly. Germans must stop honoring Charlemagne because he had 2,000 Saxons executed for their retaliation for his allowing their pagan shrines to be destroyed. The French and British should remove all statues and monuments to Roman leaders, because Rome conquered and colonized their people and wiped out a tribe or two (or so Roman sources claim).

Where does this lead? It leads to a swirling vortex of nasty recriminations and accusations of genocide and mass murder, of willing and pre-planned destruction of peoples.
Not long ago an arrogant little shit from South Africa, who is Zulu and who had a Rhodes scholarship, got seriously nasty toward a waitress who dared to be white;  among other things demanding "Give us back the land!"  Then got very shitty toward anyone who had a problem with it.  My question would've been "Which land?  The land your ancestors stole from the people who lived here before, that land that the Africaners/British took from you, or the land you left when you decided to invade the people further south?"  Because I'm really tired of this crap.


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