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The UN has voted 123-3 in favour to condemn the enslavement of Africans and the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Something, something, same map. (thelemmy.club)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml
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[–] 51 points 5 months ago* (13 children)

And Europe abstaining... Still very far from a reckoning, not to mention reparations

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  • [+] -25 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (7 children)

    I wouldn't vote in favor of allowing other countries to whack me with a trout baseball bat for something I did 100 years ago.

    Edit: You didn't understand the reference.

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  • [–] 27 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    The problem is that you still benefit from those actions and the people stolen from and enslaved still have generational poverty and underdevelopment.

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  • [–] 9 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    Yeah, it’s just the old classic of choosing between doing the right thing or the self-sustaining thing. Choosing the right thing will probably be extremely unpopular once it catches up and it’s time to pay, and it will destroy a lot of your political capital. But it is the right thing to do.

    Choosing political self-preservation over the right thing isn’t meaningfully different from choosing the wrong thing.

    I get the instinct to signal that you know the other side of it is evil, unethical, by abstaining, but it’s the same net effect in practice. It will pass, it would’ve passed either way, you chose the wrong side of history, even if you thought you were clever, for… what? When this shit finally after decades and centuries catches up with us and we have to face our actual, real legacy, try to make it right though it never can… you can then say, to your constituents, that you didn’t vote for this?

    It’s such a fucking cynical thing, the political landscape of today.

    I get that there’s no winning play here, politically, if you are one of the oppressors of the old, but exactly one of the ways this could’ve gone, and could go in future too, is actually ethical and proper. Everything else is just playing for minimal political points for self-preservation that changes nothing other than small, irrelevant local things in this grand scale.

    All this to say I get what this is and why it is done, but it’s just so cynical it almost makes it worse than straight out voting no like the US. At least they aren’t being a rat about it, straight up own to their stance that it was all good in their opinion. At least that’s shooting straight, not ratty.

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  • [–] 16 points 5 months ago

    One way to think about it that helps is that reparations now will pay off in the future. Much of the problems of today are due to imperialism, an ongoing process, and the systemic underdevelopment of the global south. Even within countries, like the US, slavery and a lack of reparations has resulted in generational poverty that harms society at large. Decolonization and correcting the record allow us to all move forward into a better world.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    Well, it's a vote on a historical actuality. Like a vote on water being wet. It's not about wacking anybody.

    The fact that the countries voting against lived history speaks to the truth of it needing to be addressed.

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