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RobertoSantaClara t1_iu4l6ac wrote

Reply to comment by Oscarboy3333 in Canada House of Commons unanimously agrees to describe residential schools as genocide by shpydar

> this shit will never happen in the US.

The USA already apologized and paid reparations to Japanese internment victims under fucking Ronald Reagan back in the 1980s. What makes you think something like this "will never happen" in the US?

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TrainingObligation t1_iu4rjaq wrote

Reparations for internment of Japanese Americans is nowhere near the same level as admitting treatment of indigenous peoples as genocide. The latter is what the US will never admit to, is the OP's point.

Also, since you think reparations are such a simple gesture that absolves the sins of previous governments... when will descendants of African American slaves see their reparations? All I ever see in response to that are dismissive excuses like "it happened over a century ago, not to you / I'm not personally responsible for it / too complex", etc. The US will fully convert to metric before they ever pay out appropriate reparations to the Black community.

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RobertoSantaClara t1_iu4tl0t wrote

>Reparations for internment of Japanese Americans is nowhere near the same level as admitting treatment of indigenous peoples as genocide.

It's the government acknowledging a wrong doing, under a very conservative executive mind you, and taking action to try and right past wrongs. Is it perfect? Obviously not, but nothing in this world ever will be, not unless you invent a time machine.

>The latter is what the US will never admit to, is the OP's point.

"Never" is a very strong word mate. Do people think culture and values are static? The USA today is virtually unrecognizable from what it was 60 years ago.

> Also, since you think reparations are such a simple gesture that absolves the sins of previous governments... when will descendants of African American slaves see their reparations?

Paying reparations to Japanese internees is a hell of a lot easier given that:

A) They were still alive in the 1980s

B) accurate records of who was imprisoned in them and the property they lost are available

C) defining who the victims are is easy; if you were imprisoned, you were a victim.

Paying reparations to "the black community" in today's world becomes a lot messier because then you have to find a way to define who is considered "Black" and who is "not Black". What about recent Nigerian immigrants whose ancestors were not enslaved? What about Jamaican immigrants whose ancestors were slaves in British Jamaica, but not in the USA? How about places like Louisiana, where you have descendants of slave owners who were the mixed-sons of enslaved mothers and slaver fathers? Would somebody like Obama be entitled to these reparations to the Black American community, if his father was a Kenyan whose ancestors were never enslaved in America and his mother was a white American? Is a white guy whose distant ancestor was a slave entitled to reparations too?

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Oscarboy3333 t1_iu4q0f2 wrote

What a fuckign stupid comparison. Wake me up when when they declare it as a genocide on what happened to the natives and black Americans. What US did to the Japanese was geopolitics. And wake me up when the American Right wing nutjobs are okay with it instead of throwing a tantrum.

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RobertoSantaClara t1_iu4um2q wrote

> What a fuckign stupid comparison.

Why? It's an example of Government acknowledgement of their responsibility for past actions, that's exactly what this thread is about.

>Wake me up when when they declare it as a genocide on what happened to the natives and black Americans

Sure, you claimed it will "never" happen. Never is a big word, lets wait and see. Do you happen to have a crystal ball that can see all the way into the future end of the universe?

>What US did to the Japanese was geopolitics.

Oh, and this isn't? Canada isn't going to truly "decolonize" itself anytime soon, saying sorry for past atrocities is also geopolitical PR because ultimately it won't change anything. You can't un-murder someone and you can't decolonize a country founded by colonizing. Canada, as a state, is here to stay and it won't cede its ultimate sovereignty over the landmass it controls to any Amerindian movement seeking to re-establish true independence and sovereignty over the land.

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