@DavidDoesLemmy @vividspecter Too sad you feel this way. I don't carry the guilt: but I am aware. And I am sympathetic.
DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone 3 days ago
It’s not my guilt to carry. I wasn’t born or wasn’t involved in these racist acts. Blame the people who were
Numabiena@c18.masto.host 3 days ago
eureka@aussie.zone 2 days ago
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.
DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone 2 days ago
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.
eureka@aussie.zone 1 day ago
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.
princessnorah@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 days ago
No one is asking you to feel guilty. We’re asking you to acknowledge the past, and to acknowledge the privilege that brings you. To use that to help forge a path of reconciliation forward together as a nation.
DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone 3 days ago
I’m all for that. But I think many people feel more responsible for righting the wrongs of their ancestors than of other wrongs. I think we should help all those struggling, independent of who caused it.
TinyBreak@aussie.zone 3 days ago
Not having a go here, genuinely. I genuinely want to know: what does this mean? I voted yes, but it was a lot of vague comments and a voice to parliament all sounds great. but no ones ever said “here’s 3 simple things we should be working on”.
spiffmeister@aussie.zone 3 days ago
Three things to work on would be truth, treaty and voice? Those aren’t simple though.
I think the nation accepting the voice would have been a step towards reconciliation, since it would have been a sign showing the nation accepts wrongs that exist in its history.
TinyBreak@aussie.zone 2 days ago
no, they are buzz words that could apply to a number of things given different context. A list of actionable items makes things achievable. Voice is dead in the water, Murdoch and limp dicked support from the albo government saw to that. So what can we actually DO to help here.
Thats the part I never see articulated.
trk@aussie.zone 3 days ago
Who’s denying any of that though?
eureka@aussie.zone 2 days ago
Sometimes it’s not even about denial of what happened, but rather a mindset that the past doesn’t affect the present anymore.
I often-enough hear people saying things along the line of, well, past generations took the land but society is better and less racist now, we collectively apologised, and my family weren’t even here at the time, so we have no obligation to do anything now. Almost like if my dad stole your car ten years ago, died after, and I say well I’ve never stolen anything in my life, it was my dad’s car, this car is mine, stop complaining about the past. It doesn’t make sense to start acting like equal treatment is fair after so much is stolen and so little is given back. But I know people who believe morality is that own individual behaviour, whether they are doing hurtful acts, and disregard their own position in society, how they got there and who suffered to allow that to happen.
Guilt isn’t what people are asking for, guilt actually doesn’t do anything useful, but rather we need people to realise that it doesn’t matter that we personally didn’t commit massacres and seize land, because the consequences of those acts still disadvantage current generations of the victims, and it’s not resolved if we dismiss the consequences as someone else’s sins.
01011@monero.town 3 days ago
Many. Pretending that you don’t benefit from past criminality is passively doing the same thing which seems to be the default of a lot (most?) white westerners.
DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone 3 days ago
Criminality is a tricky one. What was legal in the past may not be legal nor ethically sound today.