What’s the point of blaming dead generations? That doesn’t achieve anything for society. Guilt doesn’t fix things.
If my dad stole your car five years ago and I inherited it, I wasn’t involved at all, but you still had your car stolen. Would it be fine for me to say “I’m not a thief, you should blame my dad” and keep driving it around?
Of course, a car is a trivial example. Seizing entire communities’ land, kidnapping and massacring them, for starters, is obviously a bit harder to forget about after a few generations, because the consequences still impact people today.
How far back in time can you go to right wrongs? Everybody has ancestors who have done wrong. Indigenous Australians had wars before white people arrived.
At some point you have to leave the past in the past and build a more equitable world for all, today.
At some point you have to leave the past in the past and build a more equitable world for all, today.
Yep.
Unfortunately, some people confuse equity with “just treat everyone the same, I don’t need to do anything about the things my ancestors stole”. That leaving the past in the past means ignoring its continuing impacts. As long as systematic disadvantage from stolen land and oppression is ongoing, it’s not the past - it’s the present.
What’s the point of blaming dead generations? That doesn’t achieve anything for society. Guilt doesn’t fix things.
If my dad stole your car five years ago and I inherited it, I wasn’t involved at all, but you still had your car stolen. Would it be fine for me to say “I’m not a thief, you should blame my dad” and keep driving it around?
Of course, a car is a trivial example. Seizing entire communities’ land, kidnapping and massacring them, for starters, is obviously a bit harder to forget about after a few generations, because the consequences still impact people today.
How far back in time can you go to right wrongs? Everybody has ancestors who have done wrong. Indigenous Australians had wars before white people arrived.
At some point you have to leave the past in the past and build a more equitable world for all, today.
Yep.
Unfortunately, some people confuse equity with “just treat everyone the same, I don’t need to do anything about the things my ancestors stole”. That leaving the past in the past means ignoring its continuing impacts. As long as systematic disadvantage from stolen land and oppression is ongoing, it’s not the past - it’s the present.