• andymouse@slrpnk.net
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    2 months ago

    I think we can pick one story and show one thing, and then another one to show another thing. Or hell, pick the first one again to say something different than the first time.

    History is a malleable thing, and what you base your argument on is a version of it, not sure it’s the truth.

    But the gist of what you are saying is that any people would have done what White folks did. Just give them time.

    You know, I don’t believe that. White folks were exceptionally OK with genocide, we always have been. Intergenerational traum, I guess, from the millenias of tragedy of the Continent.

    To presume that our white trajectory is the necessary trajectory for ALL PEOPLES, because ‘ecology’ (which is a scholarly discipline defined by who, may I ask) is… BONKERS.

    I’m sorry, I am sure you are bright and you seem well-read and intelligent but the idea you propose as an infallibility for all humans is completely and utterly bonkers.

    • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      The concept of “white folks” is entirely unscientific, it’s an American cultural construction.

      But yes, I am indeed saying that we just need to give other cultures time and we will all end up at the same destination. I don’t essentialize humans by their arbitrary racial characteristics.

      • andymouse@slrpnk.net
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        4 days ago

        I think you miss the point of history and cultural legacies.

        I’m not making the argument that genocidal violence is in the genetic markup of white folks.

        White folks is broadly speaking “European-descended people”.

        I think this group of people is… Special in this regard. Most likely due to infighting and a long history of savagery - not due to their DNA!

        So… Other peoples won’t necessarily have this brutal background, and so would not necessarily have done what white folks did.

        I think owning up to the uniqueness of what it means to be white, or European-descendant, is an interesting project. And that project should not be tossed aside by some rationalisation that, incidentally, is terribly convenient for… white folks.

        • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Boring meal on Christmas eve?

          So it’s not about DNA yet it is about being “descended” from these people whose culture was uniquely evil? This sounds very, very like essentialism.

          The convenience of the “rationalisation” is in any case moot if the person you’re addressing does not even accept your label of them (“white”). What do you propose to do about that problem? Tell them that you know what invented category they belong to better than they do?

          What a mess! I resubmit my simpler solution: we are all humans, there is only one species, we are all implicated in its successes and failures, end of story.