My ancestors are whiter than yoursWhy should we allow the Irish to claim moral superiority because their ancestors lacked the opportunity to be imperialists? The Irish were not too moral to be imperialists, they just didn't get the chance to have a go because they were conquered before they had a chance to send out ships to get colonies overseas. Why should we allow black people to claim moral superiority because their ancestors were sold to the export market rather than the home slave market? Why should we allow Jews to claim moral superiority because their ancestors were persecuted? I am not responsible for the imperialism of past generations. At the time imperialism was a virtue, but my ancestors lacked the spark to join in. The closest my ancestors ever got to the imperialists, for good or ill, was my grandfather, just turned 18, he was enlisted in the great imperial war machine and was dispatched overseas on a vital mission. He was sent to Ireland to learn the art of the farrier. That's it, my guilty secret is out, my ancestor was a part of the great evil British Empire, making shoes for mules. At least he was training to make shoes for mules. He was stood down as the war ended before he could be dispatched to anywhere with British Imperial mules in desperate need of shoeing. Nobody is responsible for the sins of anybody else, not their parents, still less their more distant ancestors. Least of all is somebody responsible for the sins of other people who happened to live alongside their ancestors. My ancestors were farmers and artisans not soldiers, adventurers, pirates or colonists. I bet I could visit the birthplace of all my great great great grandparents without ever straying more than thirty miles from my home. My ancestors did not rape India, or Australia or Ireland. Not guilty. But even if my father had personally launched a raid and wiped out a tribe of Tasmanians with his bare hands that wouldn't make ME guilty of anything. As it happens my father's sole contribution to the British empire was working as a police officer with the RAF in occupied Berlin, and the closest he came to evil was being in an honour guard designed to tower over the Russians who were guarding Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov.That puts me four degrees of separation from Trotsky, Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt and Hitler. Not that this says anything about me either. Nobody is better or worse because of the people they come from. Being born white is not to be born guilty. Nasty things have been done in the past by people who are white, and British but that does not make me guilty of anything and it does not require me to apologize for something I have no control over. The idea of sin in the blood is sinister and pernicious, whether it is the Christian notion of all mankind being born evil because of a mythical action by mythical ancestors acting under the advice of a talking snake or the idea that being born white requires people to be guilty and apologetic for something they didn't and couldn't do. So your ancestors were never imperialists. Bully for you. If you're Irish that's because they never had the opportunity not because they lacked the drive and dogma to do it as many other small Christian nations across Europe demonstrated. Luxembourg never had an empire but Holland and Belgium did, because Luxembourg didn't have a navy or even a seaport. Not because Luxembourgers are saints and Belgians and the Dutch are all vicious racist bastards to a man. If you are black your ancestor may have been a slave of a white man, even a white man with my surname, a cousin of my ancestors. But you didn't choose to be born black out of a sense of moral rectitude. Who our parents are is not a reflection on our morals at all, for good or ill. |
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