A historic guilty thread

builder22 · 11 Jun 2020 at 16:56

Quartz said:
Everyone has a slave-owner and even a slaver in their ancestry. That's whites, blacks, yellows, olives, reds, everyone.

There’s a few slavers in my close family

LabR@t · 11 Jun 2020 at 17:12

History is just that history.

Where does this rubbish stop how far back are going to take this? Let's ban all history and live in the now, destroy all buildings and build rainbow coloured tower blocks where we can all live as equals side by side each in a government regulation living space.

LabR@t · 11 Jun 2020 at 17:13

What about the slavery going on today?

"andy" · 11 Jun 2020 at 17:18

The mayor of Middlesbrough is having an awful time trying to defend a statue of James Cook this week. I think its a statue of him as a child exploring the local area. Built because he was born there the son of a labourert and became one of world's greatest explorers. Not built because he killed the indigenous population

Meanwhile the area has some of the worst child poverty in the UK. Children are leaving school unable to read and modern slavery is still going on. Surely all the effort against that statue could be better spent there ?

Naff8000 · 11 Jun 2020 at 17:18

Many of our caveman ancestors were serial killers.

Chris Wilson · 11 Jun 2020 at 17:21

Well, you know me, it would be a bit like in the Blue's Brothers, I'd try and reinstate the business....

(Just joking for the humour challenged!)

Ayahuasca · 11 Jun 2020 at 17:26

"andy" said:
The mayor of Middlesbrough is having an awful time trying to defend a statue of James Cook this week. I think its a statue of him as a child exploring the local area. Built because he was born there the son of a labourert and became one of world's greatest explorers. Not built because he killed the indigenous population

Meanwhile the area has some of the worst child poverty in the UK. Children are leaving school unable to read and modern slavery is still going on. Surely all the effort against that statue could be better spent there ?

They will have to rename the hospital as well then.

LOAM · 11 Jun 2020 at 17:54

Mine were part of the Norman conquests and smashed their way up north to Scotland where one tried (unsuccessfully) to become king apparently. God only knows what they got up to between now and then but one of them gave birth to Thomas Telford who built a few bridges. If any of them had any money there was none left by modern times so hopefully they had a good time.

Rroff · 11 Jun 2020 at 18:09

My ancestors made money from all kinds of things, probably some of it was linked to that kind of stuff. Any significant wealth was squandered ~100 years ago or so now. (EDIT: Though the bulk of it was rewards for services to King Edward VI and later the Elizabethan era rather than through business).

I'm not the kind of person to beat myself up over the sins of my fathers, etc. the only thing I'd hold myself to is to be better.

LabR@t · 11 Jun 2020 at 18:24

British
History
Matters

Destination · 11 Jun 2020 at 18:49

I think we should nuke the pyramids.... built by slaves after all, tear them down, signs of oppression.

Tombstone · 11 Jun 2020 at 19:14

Orionaut said:
So,

For all you White folks, how would you feel if you found out today that your forbears traded and profited from "Black Ivory", and what would you do now as a consequence of learning this.?

For all you Black folks, how would you feel if you discovered that your forbears were also involved with the trading of "Black Ivory" (Not an unrealistic scenario by any means in the UK and the US too). What would you do?

I would kind of like to have put this in SC put I think putting it in GD is probably better, despite my wanting it to be a serious question.

In the mean time. As far as I am aware. Despite having sea farers in my past. I do not think that "Black Ivory" was ever any part of it. For my part my sins of the past are all about Whales. And while I feel bad about this. no, I do not feel any need to rip my shirt off and beat my breast an reject my ancestors as a consequence!

I wouldnt do anything or feel anything about it, if you trace my bloodline back it certainly goes back 10's of thousands of years, none of my ancestors just popped up out of thin air after all. I would 100% imagine that if you traced all my ancestral relatives back you will find someone connected to slavery, someone who committed murder, someone involved in rape, someone involved in beating a child, someone who stole, someone who pillaged and so on. I dont believe in the sins of the fathers and dont believe that anyone should be held accountable for the actions of one of their ancestors. I'm not about to start blaming the children of Jamie Bulgers killers (if they have any) because of what their fathers did. I'm not going to blame the grandson of Rudolf Hoss for the things his grandfather did at Auschwitz, nor would I expect him to apologise for something which happened before he was even born. I mean where do we draw the line if we are going to do that, do we vilify and decry the Dambusters for all the people who died as a result of their raids? It could all so easily get way way out of hand.

FoxEye · 11 Jun 2020 at 19:29

Orionaut said:
So,

For all you White folks, how would you feel if you found out today that your forbears traded and profited from "Black Ivory", and what would you do now as a consequence of learning this.?

Nothing. What should I do?

Maybe my ancestors were also Viking raiders raping and pillaging up and down the British east coast. Who cares?

Maybe I'm descended from Genghis Khan or Ming the Merciless.

It's 2020, y'all.

LabR@t · 11 Jun 2020 at 19:30

The Self-flagellation crew can harp on about as much as they want.

I will simply ignore them.

Angilion · 11 Jun 2020 at 19:49

fez said:
Thats far too sensible. We need to create a very complicated "guilt" chart that shows how each country has been nasty to each other and then we need to break that down even more to show how different groups within each country have been nasty to each other and then we can all decide who to be sorry to for people we never met or had anything to do with. Then that will fix everything wrong in the current world.

The thing that baffles me most is that the ideal is that people see no colour or race and no one treats anyone differently and yet we are currently pushing an agenda that puts white and black people into distinct groups and literally reduces them to a group identity.

It's only baffling if you think that the people pushing that agenda support that ideal. They don't. They are absolute racists who utterly oppose that ideal. They have usurped it to corrupt and destroy it while using it as a shield, like a virus infecting a cell and turning it into a factory to produce more of the virus while using it to hide from the host's immune system. None of them are arguing for the scenario you outline despite the fact that it is the logical conclusion to their claimed position. They're all arguing solely for racism because racism is their actual position.

gailjon said:
Apologising for something that you had nothing to do with is an empty gesture that does nothing to help any situation.

It's not an empty gesture. Making an apology is making a declaration of guilt. The demand is that people of the "wrong race" feel guilty for being the "wrong race". Which is nothing new. All that changes is what "race(s)" are deemed to be wrong.

Even if someone genuinely believes in the idea that a person is responsible for the actions of their ancestors, it still isn't an internally consistent argument because any person will have ancestors who did different (and in many cases opposing) things. For example, it's possible that some of my ancestors were slaves and some of my ancestors were abolitionists and some of my ancestors were in some way involved in the slave trade and some of my ancestors were thieves and some of my ancestors were robbed and some of my ancestors were murderers and some of my ancestors were murdered and etc, etc. There's no internally consistent way to assign me responsibility for the actions of all my ancestors. Not even if it was possible to know all the details of the lives of all of my ancestors, which of course it isn't. The position is not really about the actions of a person's ancestors. That's just an excuse, a facade, a viral invasion of a cell. The position is purely racist. It's solely about attacking people for being the "wrong race" and browbeating them into feeling guilty for being the "wrong race".

Angilion · 11 Jun 2020 at 19:58

Destination said:
I think we should nuke the pyramids.... built by slaves after all, tear them down, signs of oppression.

It's unlikely that the pyramids were built by slaves. There weren't many slaves in Egypt at that time (probably not enough for such huge building projects) and the remaining evidence indicates the builders had a status that would have been very strange for slave labourers. While it's true that in some cultures some slaves had high status, those slaves were not slave labourers. They were doctors, teachers, secretaries (in the original sense, i.e. "keeper of secrets") for very powerful people, that sort of thing. Not labourers. The people who built the pyramids were probably free men who did the work for pay or soldiers assigned to the work or volunteers doing work they considered important and holy or, more likely, a combination of those people.

SexyGreyFox · 11 Jun 2020 at 20:41

Destination said:
I think we should nuke the pyramids.... built by slaves after all, tear them down, signs of oppression.

No they weren't, that myth was put to bed decades ago.
Most of them were farmers who couldn't work for months because the Nile had flooded everything.

Shocky-FM · 11 Jun 2020 at 20:57

Wouldn't care at all, associating blame on people today for the actions of people that are long dead is just stupid.

There were slave trading posts in Africa long before Europeans arrived, Muslim Arab countries were involved back the mid-7th century (maybe earlier than this), Europeans didn't arrive until the 15th century..

It's like asking a black man if he would feel responsible if his ancestors were involved in selling black slaves to Arabs or Europeans....... It's just as stupid a question.

Tony Edwards · 11 Jun 2020 at 21:38

Beerbaron said:
Cant change the past, we can only learn from it.

Maybe we are doing things now which might be deemed as racist in many years time.

You may have missed it but this is what it is all about. We are (or others are) doing racist things right now.

fez said:
The thing that baffles me most is that the ideal is that people see no colour or race and no one treats anyone differently and yet we are currently pushing an agenda that puts white and black people into distinct groups and literally reduces them to a group identity.

You obviously arent listening or taking any notice. This is what the protests are about. Blacks feeling they are in distinct group that gets mistreated because of their colour. Just like when a lot of EU migrants left because after the vote in 2016 they felt unwelcome because of all the racist abuse they were getting.

How so many people can pretend that the UK isnt full of ignorant racists is beyond me.

Malevolence · 11 Jun 2020 at 22:26