burninmylight said:
SlayerRondo said:
burninmylight said:
Egann said:
If Native Americans deserve reparations for something done 150 years ago, then I deserve reparations for all the generations my ancestors lived in serfdom for generations on end.
It doesn't work that way. Neither guilt nor claim to restitution are inheritable.
I'll go out on a limb here and say that the Native Americans didn't have a great claim to the North American lands, anyway. They weren't culturally utilizing any of its resources. It's true that the way the white authorities handled them was abominable, but it's also true that most Native American tribes were basically squatters, even by their own admission. The idea that they "owned" the land is incurably revisionist: Native American cultures have a weak concept of ownership, and practically none of it directed towards the land. To many tribes, saying you owned the land was like saying you owned the sky. These are not things they believed you could tangibly own, even as a collective. |
Just because they had a different concept of ownership and property doesn't mean they (the people and tribes around in the 1400s and on) were any less entitled to the land than those that came in for colonial purposes and the extraction of resources. To call them squatters is flat out insulting; squatters take residence on land that or property that they don't have lawful permission to use. It sounds like the idea of them following buffalo on a set migrating path on unclaimed territory being "squatting" is the revisionist history here.
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While i agree that all people should have a fair claim to land, why does that mean the Native American's get peperation's?
If i want land I have to pay for it. Should native American's not have to do the same as I?
We all lost out at some time but weve reached a point where we have to say that enough is enough and view everyone as an equal citizen. Should we help the disadvantaged? Yes of course we should , no matter what race they may be.
But handout's do not work, opportunities and equal treatment do.
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I"m not arguing for or against reparations in the form of giving back land, but you can't compare yourself to them. If you were forced out of your neighborhood and into a small, rickety shack in the wilderness, you'd be arguing for the restoration of your home without having to pay for it. I'll assume you or your ancestors from a couple hundred years ago never had that problem, so naturally it's going to be harder for you to understand.
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It's going to be hard for them to understand as well because it happened to their ancestors not them.
My family came from a nation where the ruling classes bled them dry for hundereds of yerars, do you think I'm going to get any reperations?
Also my parents did not any special privileges or wealth, they had to work for what they had, and if the people with native American ancestors want their own land, they should go through the same process the rest of us had to, by working for it.
