GoSeigen wrote:servodude wrote:
Blame? I see where you are coming from but that would suggest a direct causality that I can can't really agree with.
I believe we have a responsibility to acknowledge and understand what happened - and what resulted from it
- to accept that the position and power achieved by some nations during the time was down to two hundred years of the unpaid labour of millions of people... and that we have benefitted from that, from the legacy it left and the transfer of wealth that it caused
- and that there exists still a huge disparity of outcomes and existances because of how some people's ancestors treated others
- but we are not to blame for what happened
we will be to blame for what happens with how we deal with it though
Blame. It wasn't my word -- but as you defend the concept of not accepting blame do you agree with @MuddyBoots's implication that if there were universal suffrage at that time then blame would be appropriate? It seemed to me just the latest of a long list of excuses not to accept any responsibility at all (whereas the many proofs of white supremacy deriving from similar periods seem to be accepted).
GS
OK I missed the original reference.
I just see "blame" as being sufficiently easy to refute that it serves as a misdirection... "Sins of the fathers" and all that.. that the proper discussion gets ignored
Some folk are mental enough to blame current day Germans for the holocaust, or Jews for killing Jesus
- blaming us for the slavery trade is equally nuts
We can only be blamed for what we do (or don't) and should be judged on our own actions
Slavery was always morally wrong, eventually judged legally wrong and wrought a shitty legacy for a great deal of people... AND some other folk and places did really well out if it.
I'd like to be confident that it has stopped and won't come back - but I'm not.
I think we have a responsibility to deal with the outcomes it left - which isn't the same as being responsible for it