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Comment on How are slavery reparations fair?

NuPNuA@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

This has always been an issue I get stuck on. If we hold current people liable for the crimes of their ancestors, how far back do we go?

The trans-atlantic slave trade was abhorrent, but slavery didn’t begin or end with it.

Do Egyptians owe Jews reperations due to how they were treated? Should the Italians compensate half of Europe and North Africa for what the Romans did? Should Arab nations pay the UK and Ireland for the people kidnapped by the Barbary Pirates?

The Ottomans were still keeping slaves until the early 1900s, long after the western European powers had ended the practice, why aren’t we seeing calls for reperations from Turkey to Slavic nations?

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orrk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
we go as for back as needed to achieve a somewhat just society.

Let’s take your example of the Jews in Egypt (other than the fact that the source for Jewish slavery in Egypt is just religious texts without any archeological evidence ever found): is there some great opportunity divide between an Egyptian and an Israeli? no, so we obviously don’t need to worry about that.

or for the Ottoman-Slavic question: do Slavic peoples have less opportunity than those of modern day Turkey? no, so we don’t need to worry about that.

and yes, Italians (and many other parts of Europe) do send different types of aid to Africa for these reasons

Do Black people in the USA have massive opportunity differences in comparison to the WASP population? yes, they do, thus it is right to conduct these reparations. You may not be the only people to have committed slavery, but you sure still wear it proudly, and you are still a deeply systemically racist nation.

TLDR: it’s not about revenge, but righting wrongs.

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- NuPNuA@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  You seem to be operating under the assumption I’m American, I’m not.
  
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  - orrk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    none of these targets Americans, you can make the exact same arguments for England and their colonial holdings (the thing OP was referring to), to Russia and the rest of the Soviet, or Russia and the rest of Russia, etc…
    
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Savvy95@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Even currently in some rich Middle East countries, there are technically slave workers - construction & household to name 2.

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- NuPNuA@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Exactly, maybe we should worry more about ending it now than what happened two centuries ago.
  
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  - Flibbertigibbet@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    We can do more than one thing at once.
    
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