"if we do not give back what our fathers stole, then we are complicit in the theft."

So North America should be signed back over to the native tribes that were originally here? Will they at least give the beads back? Those were some nice beads.

We should not look back into the past with disgust because there are no clean hands. The Romans killed, slaughtered, enslaved, and took my peoples land. I don't demand repartions because they were in power at the time and wanted more. America regrets its past but why? Every black-American today would not exist if it wasn't for the slave trade nor would our country exist if we didn't take the Native-Americans land. The past is filled with corruption, murder, and hatred but instead of looking back and say we are sorry we need to push for a better future. The chinese kill any christian. The government doesn't do anything to stop that nor will people get up and protest it but one guy in Africa enslaves kids to put in his army and now millions are demanding action.

p.s. If you want Africa to get better tell the government you want them to go over there take over the government and establish martial law over there. Sending them food or whining about it won't do crap. South Africa is the only non-crap country over there and thats because it was a British colony.

Wow, who let the ignorant racist in?

I am racist for stating facts and opinions. I didn't say slaves are good or I hate native-americans. I just said I don't regret what my ancestors did. Plus I am one quarter cherokee.

Fuck, am I really arguing on the same side as this guy?

....So not regretting the past is racist.

"So North America should be signed back over to the native tribes that were originally here? "

If we were at all serious about true morality, then yes. I don't see this happening, but yes, it *should* in that it is the right thing to do.

Sorry for reminding you of your privilege lol (directed at all)

This is the cleanest way I know to express why class should be used as admissions criterion:

-Racism begets racism
-Poverty begets poverty

Talking about "meritocracy" and the admirable dream of Dr. King is only legitimate when the playing field is level.

What you are talking about is akin to claiming a free-trade deal between the US and Panama is somehow fair, implying Panama and the US are peers economically.

I'm not accusing anyone here of actual racism, or slave-trafficking or whatever. But I do think that if you think about what you have in your life, and why, compared to some of the most disadvantaged people, you will see that people continued to be judged, if not by you, then by our system, by the color of their skin (and the breadth of their pocketbooks), under the guise of judging them by the "content of their character."

"Colorblindness" and denying the existence of racism is the new racism, in some ways. It has taken on new forms, and we are all, to some extent, racist in that we partake in the system. Even the disadvantaged groups do this, and thinkers have, at least in imperialism discourse, dubbed this psychological damage "the colonization of the mind."

Holydude:

I doubt very much that any person alive on this planet can say with a clear head that they would stand by the actions of all their ancestors.

How can you say that? My personal ancestry is not exactly an outlier and I can say with confidence that my forebears were, some at least, exploiters, racists, murderers, thieves, adulterers, and potentially much worse, though I will probably never know.

If you do not regret that the history of the world turned out as it has you have either not studied history in depth or have an underdeveloped capacity for empathy.

Actually wait I think the answer to that last has already been answered by Holy's previous post. Check this out guys, try not to laugh too hard:

"South Africa is the only non-crap country over there and thats because it was a British colony."

What else happened in yesteryear, my friend?

My point was the government there is corrupted. The British took south Africa and made it prosper. It is not the majority of Africa that has made it bad. Those that are in power have destroyed the continent from ever hitting a modern age. Racism implies one race is superior to the next. I was talking about power not race.

I know that (or at least assumed it), I was actually just making fun of your implied claim that South Africa was the only British colony in Africa. Lol.

@Holy, you realize that Africa is so fucked up BECAUSE of European colonization, right?

OH. Was not paying attention. I thought you were bringing up me being racist again. I do think we should do something about problems in the world but our no intervention approach is not helping. If we want to help Africa like I said overthrow the government and push a martial law cleaning up the crime there.

I take back everything I said before. If affirmative action keeps this guy out of schools, I'm all for it.

No actually, remember before I said I was not specifically accusing anyone of racism. That's not an appellation to just throw at someone lol.

However your advocation for re-colonization is a bit chilling, to say the least.

Yes, the kid with ideas that are not my own is an idiot. Africa is so messed up for the same reason that the middle east is messed up. People living like it is 3000 BC with guns.

That's the how (in part), not the why.

"What you are talking about is akin to claiming a free-trade deal between the US and Panama is somehow fair, implying Panama and the US are peers economically."

A free trade agreement isn't "fair" or unfair. Its the democratization of trade. You don't have to be equals to draft a free-trade agreement. If anything, Panama would benefit more than the US since they could easily undercut the price of any US firm and their goods would be cheaper on the market and thus would be bought. Their firms would get money that otherwise would have gone to US firms. And yes, the US would open up a new market to export to as well and might kill a budding auto industry or something, but it should all equal out and both nations should prosper.

To Holy: You are forgetting many other nations that are currently doing well: Tanzania, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, and a few others I may be missing. I think what you were sloppily trying to convey is that corruption has become so ingrained in their culture that it has become a norm there, and real development cannot occur until that norm is changed. However, cultural differences means that Africa will never develop like the West has (and by that I mean in the same way the West did). My professor was talking about it today in our constructivism lecture. He came back from Afghanistan recently, and we were talking about how the Afghan people aren't really rioting over this "massacre" of 16 villagers, while they did riot by the thousand against the Quran burnings. This is because they rationalize violence differently. He said that they're of the opinions that some Afghans are like "They killed my nieces and nephews, but my brothers and I plant IEDs and ambushed a few of their patrols, so we are equal" Killing isn't a tragedy there, where retribution is the culture and frankly they are satisfied by retribution.

Back to Africa though, you're wrong to say the West will fix things. Yes, the West messed them up in the first place by splitting up tribes and such and persecuting one sect over another. But that was how they kept their power. Its a bad thing in modern eyes, but back then it was viewed as perfectly acceptable. We must be careful at judging past events with a modern lens. Yes, these actions would be unacceptable today and when viewed with a modern perspective they are unacceptable, but to our forefathers it was just the norm.

But I digress. Holy, if you're smart, you'll get a scholarship. Apply to schools out of state as well, and just try your best. I'm going to a private school at state school price (which for New York is pretty high). On the affirmative action tidbit, I'm against it. Race should not be a factor. There is no reason that a girl I knew (who got lower SAT scores, had a lower class rank and GPA, was in easier classes, and was involved in less activities and clubs than I was) should have gotten into Harvard while I was put on a waitlist and denied. I think that lower-income people should be afforded that priviledge, because I see firsthand how horrible the DC public school system is in the poorer areas of town. They don't get as good of an education and thus aren't living up to their full potential. They are the ones who need and deserve the extra boost from society.

"PE - we are not responsible for the actual atrocities of the past, but we are responsible for continued to reap the benefits. if we do not give back what our fathers stole, then we are complicit in the theft."

Which is why I'm fine with socioeconomic-based aid that seeks to normalize university demographics to national demographics. Absolutely fine with that.

But my point has been that your picture specifically lumps all generations of whites and blacks together and then says "whitey dun it." Sorry, but I ain't "dun it," and I support measures to fix the damage caused by my ancestors' "dun it," so don't lump me in with them. (I presume my ancestors did it - though actually, since my father's side mainly traces its lineage back to Native Americans in Oklahoma and my mother's side doesn't seem to have records past about 1870, maybe we actually didn't dun it... in any case we did profit to an extent from it as white society at large did, so maybe. Anyway point is, agency fucking matters, and too many times it gets ignored in the narrative.)

"and the white person thing actually applies across the pond too, because europe did its own imperalizing."

Britain, France? Sure. But I specifically cited Ukraine, Russia and Iran as examples of white-ethnicity nation-states which lack a history of enslaving Africans and imperialism in Africa. I don't believe my ex should get shafted for being "white" because as a first-gen immigrant from an East Slavic state, neither she nor her ancestors participated in or profited from black exploitation. Immigration is a big deal here, because race and nationality are NOT the same thing. The fault lies with whites... white *Americans* - not white Ukrainians.

Also HolyCrusader, plz l2facts. Botswana is the fucking shit (dat GDP growth), even moreso than South Africa by a long shot. Guess why? Instead of getting screwed by whitey and dealing with apartheid bullshit for decades, they went the free-market-democracy-property-rights route, and capital flowed in like nobody's business. Botswana's also British - which should illustrate the flaw in your argument, because if one British colony can waste decades on apartheid and still have one of the highest rape stats in the world, and another one can respect private property rights and equality of all under the law and experience rapid economic growth, clearly their both being British didn't change much.

Furthermore what about all the shitty ex-British colonies? I'm guessing you don't know shit about the Sudan, because holy fuck that's an ex-British colony that could use some help. Seriously, Britain owned almost half of Africa (if not half) at one point, how did being ex-British help all the ones that are, in your mind, failed states?

Oh man I just missed this gem.

"Yes, the kid with ideas that are not my own is an idiot. Africa is so messed up for the same reason that the middle east is messed up. People living like it is 3000 BC with guns."

Yeah, you know why that is? You know what the Middle East and Africa have in common?

WESTERN FUCKING IMPERIALISM.

Seriously, Islamic society in the medieval era was more modern than Christian Europe was by hundreds of years. They got utterly pwned by Mongols and had most of their major centers of civilization demolished and *still* stayed on par until the West started profiting big-time from colonialism and jumped ahead technologically and then went on an imperialism spree and raped the Middle East.

Hey Nemesis - why have you made a thread that has 3 pages and nothing to do with the game?? Why would you do that??

Diplomacy players are smart and interesting people. I like the conversations on this site. This is my favorite place on the net for random discussions.

Does that answe your question OP?

"If we were at all serious about true morality, then yes. I don't see this happening, but yes, it *should* in that it is the right thing to do."

I can respect that. Most individuals I encounter with the ethic of repayment for sins of the father fail to understand and reject the logical consequences. I can respect that you at least agree the morally correct thing, by your proposed ethic, is to go all the way and return the continent to the tribal descendants.

I disagree with the mentality, though, on the fundamental level. In playing diplomacy here, I have learned that one must believe, that any relationship can be repaired and amended by burying the hatchet and going forward from this point that we are at instead of recollecting the past and allowing it to be a living entity affecting our judgments.

Similarly, ex-friends and lovers have taught me the same lesson. We must always be willing to let go the past so that we can go forward, working with where we are as a starting point.

I like to think of this as the function e^x, where we choose to begin at x=0 even though there's "history" at x<0. I think this is a way that we must run our lives. Always willing to reset, to start anew.

But one of the biggest problems I have with the ethic of repayment is, what do we actually do for the descendants of the once-slave populations? Is the right thing truly giving them citizenship and "equality," whatever that is, or is it to give them a free ride back to their home nation? Malcolm X certainly thought the latter. Since I have appealed to Dr. King as a reason this mentality is wrong, I suppose I can appeal to the other famous civil rights leader as why the conclusion is wrong. =P
If we consider that the natives were once enslaved, and the logical conclusion is to give the continent back to them, then I suppose the latter is correct for the other enslaved peoples, because truly, if we give the continent back to the native populations, we have no state nor authority by which to call anyone an equal.

This whole process is getting tricky, trying to decide what we should actually do to preserve justice. Considering most of the solutions we agree on are implausible, I think this is a further reason we should go with the bury the hatchet approach. Of course, I am assuming that approach will yield easy solutions too, such as actually applying the dream that Dr. King had. There may be consequences of starting anew that I have not considered, and if so, please mention them. I'd love to see the flaws in my proposed ethic.