ELI5: What was the history of North American genocide again?

[Lamia]

@gracchus

Jordaddy

Who is this?

@LurksNoMore

Plausible deniability, basically.

Thanks for the explanation, I have never heard that in english.

@MalevolentPixy

Don’t think that you live in a white supremacist culture, especially in the Americas? Look around. Look at your government, from the low rungs all the way up to the top.

Are you using a European-derived form of government such as a republic or parliament? Congratulations, you’ve got white supremacy baked in. Is that government populated mostly or in large part by descendants of European colonists? Congratulations! You have white culture! What’s the most commonly practiced religion? Is it a form of Christianity? White Culture, Baby. Are the most common or official language(s) from Europe? Take a wild guess what that means.

Unless the Natives/First Nations/Aboriginal People are running your country under a governing system they traditionally used and you have assimilated into their language and religious practices… it’s pretty much a guarantee you are living in some flavour of white supremacist system. And nobody here is saying that you have to give all that up, just that you recognize how it works to privilege the culture of whiteness and suppress others. Listen to those voices and work for ways to suppress them less.

If you don’t want to do that, then admit that you are happy and comfortable living in a white supremacist culture. It doesn’t mean that you are a flag-carrying, torch-waving Nazi. It just means you’re okay with being indifferent to people less privileged than you, because you would rather not have to be uncomfortable, thinking about these things.

Ok, when you say supremacist you don’t mean skinnhead (activist supremacist), you mean that the Europeans arrived, and instead of dropping their culture and assimilate into the native culture they, thinking theirs was the superior culture, forced it on the unwilling natives. Unfortunately for the native population, part of the european culture was the fact that non europeans where subhuman. Hundreds of years later, the decendants of these “original” europeans obliviously live in this eurocentric place that now priviliges them over the original natives. Did I get that right?

[milliefink]

@Lamia

Did I get that right?

Pretty much, except that you left out “supposed” before “fact.”

There’s no good reason to let skinheads and other overt white supremacists to take over that phrasing.

[Lamia]

@milliefink

“supposed” before “fact.”

I was basically saying it from their perspective.

Ok, this is an interesting conversation then. Before Pixie’s explanation the whole thread was a bit confusing. My guess is that most in this thread are more familiar with the nuances accepted where as some of us that are new to this thread read it as something else.

@MalevolentPixy

Unless the Natives/First Nations/Aboriginal People are running your country under a governing system they traditionally used and you have assimilated into their language and religious practices… it’s pretty much a guarantee you are living in some flavour of white supremacist system.

With this premise in mind, what would be a “hail mary” (no pun intended) solution to rectify this, say in the USA?

[Lamia]

I guess the subject of imigration and what constitutes a native population and culture is a little too boring for this forum. We will just let this unimportant subject resolve itself as it histoically has.

[Entity447B]

You don’t think that a silver bullet solution for white supremacy in the US might have been a bit of a tall order?

ETA: Less snarkily, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ ideas on reparations might bear some adaptation to the matter of the native population, perhaps.

[Lamia]

I actually like the idea of reparations. Both for decendants of past slaves and certainly for the people we stole land from. I just have not yet seen a good plan for it.