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Originally Posted by Acajack
All of this is true but even though only a tiny fraction of today's white Americans are descended from slave owners, a large proportion of Americans of various European origins have still come to feel some level of responsibility for the slave trade and its long-term impacts. (Heck even some white Canadians feel bad about it - I am not joking.)
If I may... here in Canada we have a historical wound with the indigenous population, and we're already seeing non-European origin Canadians descended from more recent immigration distancing themselves from the collective guilt on that issue. Sure, most of them agree somewhat with the broad idea of making amends, but my sense is how far they are willing to go with this might come up short compared to how well-intentioned Euro-Canadians feel. It's OK for now because Canada is going through pretty good economic times. We'll see in the future how that holds up.
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If someone feels guilt for something bad that happened hundreds of years ago just because the perpetrator of that previous bad action had the same skin color as themselves then they are an idiot. Indeed that's not just dumb, it's a very serious moral flaw. People are not guilty for the crimes of others simply because they share the same skin color, nor are they guilty even if that historical individual was their great-great-great grandfather. Indeed if we look to the past we can easily find instances by almost all groups against many other groups to complain about. Muslims have killed Christians, Christians have killed Jews, Jews have killed Muslims etc. If we keep brining up all these crimes all we get is endless hate and war. Like Gandhi said, "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind". None of us are descended from perfect people (and even if we were that wouldn't make us any more).
Quote:
Originally Posted by dc_denizen
The latest genetic research confirms that in fact, race is definitely not a social construct. When groups of humans don’t interbreed for 40,000 years it’s completely obvious that genetic selection will have an impact.
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Yes, this new anti-science trend of saying things like race and gender are made up is pretty depressing. I understand it comes from a naive desire to end discrimination, but ignoring reality is never the solution to our problems. Of course ironically these same people who say race and gender are made up also seem to be the ones most obsessed with talking about the differences between the genders are races. The bigger issue is just that race isn't exactly a very good way to classify people. It's just based on superficial differences that only very loosely correlate to anything actually meaningful. Unfortunately it seems to me like our entire concept of diversity and inclusion is now tied to race (and to a lesser extent gender) which I actually see as quite counterproductive. If the stated goal of diversity is to get a diverse set of opinions then you need people who THINK differently, not people who LOOK differently. But very little effort is made to get this sort of diversity of viewpoint. Of course this is because the argument that we want diverse viewpoints is really just a legal fiction created by the fact that the Supreme Court said racial discrimination is illegal except if it's used in this fashion. The ACTUAL goal of most diversity and inclusion initiatives is naked racism, it's only cloaked in the concept of diversity of opinions in order to exploit this legal loophole. Here's hoping the current Supreme Court closes this loophole and makes racism of all types illegal.
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