Watch a video tour of the tourist sites if London. Or look what is in the imperial museum. Or the Victoria and Albert museum. The looted wealth of of their genocidal empire is still celebrated as a national treasure. India still has not recovered from British occupation, which only officially ended 75 years ago. And that’s like 20% of the entire current human population.
Comment on How are slavery reparations fair?
Dave@lemmy.nz 1 year agoThe original OP argument is that those captors or slaves don’t exist anymore. Even the countries barely exist. Is this a matter of descendants being responsible for their ancestors crimes?
I think there’s a strong feedback loop argument here but I’m not sure that’s the point you’re making.
Maturin@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Dave@lemmy.nz 1 year ago
My comment is not about the validity of reparations. It was a direct reply to the one above it, which seemed to imply that reparations are because of the actions of past people, when in my view it’s about the proceeds of the crimes rather than the crimes themselves.
Maturin@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
[deleted]Dave@lemmy.nz 1 year ago
I think they can and should be separated.
If they are not, then you are saying that you are making people responsible for a crime that was committed well before they were born.
By separating the crime from the proceeds, you can justify why reparations should be paid, without the defense of the crime being committed by someone else.
protist@mander.xyz 1 year ago
Do descendants have the same responsibility as their ancestors who actually owned slaves? No. But do they bear some ongoing responsibility as a benefactor of a system that was built around their ancestors owning slaves? Yeah they do.
All of this is incredibly messy, but approaching it at a governmental level is definitely something I support, because slavery was sanctioned and even encouraged by the government we’re talking about, which has existed continuously