White people moving to colonized countries is kind of gross

[ScorpioKent]

Following on from a post I just read where I didn't want to change the conversation from one about homesickness I was thinking about if I could move there.

And I felt really uncomfortable about it for the following reasons and I am probably being unreasonable but I can't shake the discomfort of the thought.

I couldn't live in a country being white, knowing that my people enslaved and subjugated and dispossessed the native population. People I know that moved from UK to Australia eventually pick up the...they have so much given to them, why don't they try harder, they are all wasters/ alcoholic/ crims...narrative about aboriginals after a while. Lots of doublethink and denial of history needed to get to that mindset. Of course, America suffering under the psychological guilt of doing similar to their indigenous people. Plus transatlantic slavery.

It's no wonder, psychologically, the country is built on guilt, denial, paranoia, right to arms, and a continued denigration of the indigenous to justify theft of land. If you have committed a crime on a people the national psyche has to be built on lack of empathy and dehumanization in the first place.

And then years pass, subsequent people move there. Are those feelings there at all?

No, I do NOT see the difference.

YANBU, you are being ridiculous.

Well aren’t you sooooo righteous and good.

Oh wait - no one cares

Unless you object to black people being in “white” countries, just accept in modern times people move around the globe.

There are plenty of white people from countries that didn't colonise anywhere .... Should we also not emigrate because we are white?

And there are plenty of white people whose countries were colonised too.
So they were colonised, not colonisers.

In that spirit, and as a thought experiment, how would you feel about moving to

a) Belfast
b) Gibraltar
c) Zimbabwe?

I don't get how you've left out the USA and Canada.

I am me and I am not and will never accept the blame for the actions of another persons or their wrong doings committed before I even existed. I will however treat all people with compassion and kindness regardless of their origin/race or background while I am alive.

You think the Scandinavian countries will worry about raping and pillaging the UK when they stole our country through invasion and kept it, Romans the same, the French and so on. Slaves were then transported back to home countries, or kept in this country.

Do you think the French and Dutch colonisation means they feel the same as you? I doubt it

its history, take a look at it for the last 1000 years, slavery as we knew it stopped hundreds of years ago (in the main, you still get enforced slavery of people even in this country), although it was only in the last century that segregation stopped

Countries have apologised it happened and lessons learnt
However you are entitled to feel how you do, but others don’t, so you just need to accept that and move on

My white ancestors went on strike against slavery. Not all white people are to blame and most did not benefit from slavery - only those at the top. What about the black slavers in Africa. Should their descendents leave the country? What utter twaddle!

I moved to Canada and do not think like that at all towards indigenous First Nations

In fact I'd say on the whole attitudes among first generation immigrants such as myself are a lot more genuinely outraged and progressive then Canadians whose family has been there for generations. And that the experience made myself as a British person far more aware, real life aware not book aware, of what Britain and other European colonial powers did to the world.

Possibly the most extreme and ridiculous virtue signalling I've seen

Black people's role in the slave trade is rarely mentioned.

It actually comes down to money not race. And that's the problem this type of guilt tripping race theory runs into because there's so many white people who buy into it but don't want to address the economic part of the debate. That's why they get really confused when black and Hispanic people like Trump. It doesn't compute.

Humans become slaves because another human has power over them and can exploit them for financial gain. This is not dependent on race. Race can be a factor in terms of power but ultimately it comes down to money and means.

The white slavers were happy to do business with the black slavers because it made good business sense to them. Understand this and other things make more sense, particularly in a contemporary context. It also explains why there are loud conversations about black American slavery of the past but not modern Uyghur slavery in China.

Am I exploiting people and imposing on them or am I contributing and integrating to the community I am becoming a part of by fully making efforts to understand the local sensitivities, cultures and histories are more appropriate conversations to have. This includes when you do business with somewhere or visit somewhere - not just move there.

What does any of that have to do with you?

Why do you feel uncomfortable?

Do you usually feel responsible for the actions of others?