Racism from Tankie Admin and future Lemmy Developer about how the opinion of certain ethnicities in China doesn't matter
Racism from Tankie Admin and future Lemmy Developer about how the opinion of certain ethnicities in China doesn't matter
You're viewing a single thread.
Gonna side with the tankies on this one, being called cracker has never offended me in any way, shape, or form. Now if OP is genuinely disregarding people's opinions for being white then yeah that's racist actually but I don't feel bad about cracker at all. I don't know any other white people who feel bad when we get called that, it's just not the same.
I'm not entirely offended by cracker either, but I also think it's stupid to hold people accountable for atrocities done centuries ago before electricity.
But yeah, the Admin is disregarding the opinion because they are a white migrant living in China.
I also think it’s stupid to hold people accountable for atrocities done centuries ago before electricity.
It's stupid to hold anyone accountable for the acts of their ancestors. I'm not sitting here half oppressing myself and half oppressor. But racist behavior and systems continue to this day, it's not just some relic of history.
oh absolutely. I think every nation should officially recognise the atrocities of the first settlers.
It's stupid to hold anyone accountable for the acts of their ancestors.
In the sense of retribution, sure. However, restitution is still necessary. All slaveowner property should have been confiscated and given to the former slaves, down to the very last penny. We never did that, so the resulting racial wealth disparity has persisted to this day.
Fixing the problem has gotten more complicated due to the passage of time, but it still needs to be fixed. Ideally we'd trace where the wealth of the slaveowners went, confiscate it, and use it for restitution. People aren't entitled to keep stolen property, even if they receive it unknowingly.
Practically speaking though, restitution would likely need to be funded though taxation. As an anarchist I don't like the idea of increased taxation, but if such a thing were to gain momentum I wouldn't feel right opposing it either.
Fixing the problem has gotten more complicated due to the passage of time, but it still needs to be fixed. Ideally we'd trace where the wealth of the slaveowners went, confiscate it, and use it for restitution. People aren't entitled to keep stolen property, even if they receive it unknowingly.
See, here's where my problem comes in - I have no issue with punishing those actually involved, but how many degrees of separation are we pursuing here? I don't find the idea of playing genealogist for the sake of determining whose wealth gets seized appealing. None of us choose to be born who we are - we only choose our actions. The time for that kind of justice is, sadly, long past, even if having every slaver hanged and every freedman granted their property would have been a dream end to the Civil War, instead of the nightmare we ended up with.
No, at this point, the only just means of restitution is necessarily a broad and societal correction rather than attempts at seizing individual property - that is to say, the government should use the resources at its disposal to attempt to correct existing racial wealth disparities rather than try to identify the descendants of the guilty who originally caused it and take it out of their metaphorical hides.
I mean, man, I'm probably clear, since even my white ancestors were post-Civil War immigrants, but that doesn't, and shouldn't, matter. It's a duty to support equitable redistribution of wealth to eliminate racial disparities as a human being and as a countryman, not as someone with white or white slaver ancestors. This started with bigotry - it must end with unity. All of us have a duty to each other, to raise up those who are kept in unequal condition, to stand with those who are isolated, to refuse cooperation to the ideologically prejudiced.
All of us have a duty to each other
I tend to take a more individualist view of things. I agree that we have some level of duty to each other, but I don't believe that duty should be enforceable with anything stronger than social pressure. As such, I feel that taxation for collective benefit is fundamentally unjust.
However, unlike right-libertarians, I'm not okay with class stratification. We need to be actively dismantling the power structures that maintain the disparities in our society. I believe that in doing so, we'll find that taxation isn't actually necessary, and that we can have a society which is both voluntary and reasonably equal.
It seems like we're largely in agreement here in practical terms. However on principle, confiscating stolen wealth that someone has been given isn't a punishment, since they were never entitled to it in the first place.
But how far away do we judge it to be given? That blood money wasn't just sitting around - it was used to undertake countless projects. Is the architect who was paid for his work now in debt? Is the otherwise-uninvolved merchant of post-war goods subject to seizure (ignoring the enormous problem of Jim Crow and complicity there, for the sake of the argument in the abstract)? His kids? His kids' kids? His employees? All of them were paid with money stolen from the sweat, toil, tears, and blood of slaves. Generational wealth and the generation of wealth is not a simple matter like "This is your great-great grandfather's watch, here you go", and I don't think it can be, even just in principle, resolved by the same methods that immediate theft can. There are too many degrees of separation involved even just in inheritance from 5+ generations ago.
For a more modern example, if man robs a bank, uses the money to put his kids through college, and only after they graduate, he's caught and is killed in a shootout with the police, is it moral to suddenly saddle the kids with the debt of their college years? What about the earnings they made afterwards? Are they illegitimate too? They were only made possible by the expenditure of the illegitimately acquired wealth.
None of this is meant to assert that we disagree strongly, I just love discussing hypotheticals, abstracts, and principles.
Lines do get blurry, and that causes real problems with trying to ensure a just outcome. No real way around that. However, sometimes things are more clear cut. If the plantation (or at least the land it was on) is still in the family, maybe it shouldn't be anymore?
However, there's an argument to be made that such a confiscation would be too sudden and severe of a shift in the social contract. I still think it should be considered, though. Of course, I also think we shouldn't allow absentee land ownership in the first place.
I also think it’s stupid to hold people accountable for atrocities done centuries ago before electricity.
At the same time, many families got rich off of slave labour, and have passed that ill gained wealth down from generation to generation.
Just because you gave the car you stole away as a gift doesn't mean it ain't fucking stolen. It should be repossessed.
Just because you gave the car you stole away as a gift doesn’t mean it ain’t fucking stolen. It should be repossessed.
Following along with the analogy, the original owner of the car is dead and so are all of their direct descendents - reuniting the person who was wronged with their beloved car is impossible. Should we... what, estate sale the car? Pull some sins of the father nonsense and fine the current owner for actions taken generations ago?
I used to watch the YouTuber in n question and they did used to be a really good view into China. However, I stopped watching after he moved to the US and started making classic "China bad" scare content. The only part of the OP that is questionable is the excessive use of cracker, which is a bit distasteful but nothing more.
I would also like to point out that "atrocities done centuries ago" does not apply to White South Africans. Apartheid was what, 40 years ago? Well within living memory.
It is very recent, yeah.
You can be racist without the victim be offended. Doesn't happen often, but offense isn't a requirement.
Living in Appalachia - around here, 'cracker' may not be even near the equivalent of the n-word, but it's also definitely not a kind term.
Yeah I was gonna ammend that with "well that's probably because of the enormous amount of de jour privilege and honestly segregation that I've lived with because I've heard in some places people can actually be serious about it". Lemmygrad is for sure one of those strange places where it can be serious, wouldn't be surprised by black Isrealites being on there or something.
It's edgy kids doing it, many of whom are white themselves. They form a worldview that's nothing but a reverse image of 19th century White Supremacy - only instead of white people being the only bringers of good, white people are the only bringers of evil. It denies the agency of communities of color and, predictably, ignores or denigrates the experiences of mixed-race folk.
Okay now I'm gonna try to see if there are white people on grad who believe in Yakub
They definitely use the same terminology. Mostly because they think any form of anti-white sentiment is inherently funny and laudable, same essential reason why 4chan back in the day was so fond of the n-word, just a different target.