in_the_top_one
Vital Football Legend
I suppose a simplistic answer would be not to worry so much about where it ends as where it begins. To begin reparations with the simple step of discontinuing the pillage. We might not be responsible for the powerful position in which we now sit, but we gladly continue to press home the advantage.How on earth can we, not one of us having ran an Empire, make amends for what Imperial Britons (all dead) did to 19th and early 20th century Africans (all dead)?
Where does it stop?
Our ancestors exploited Indian and African ancestors. They were the latest in a long line of people to do so in both cases. Yuval Noah Harare makes quite a compelling argument in this case.
Should we also pay compensation to the French for the rape and pillage during the Chevauchee's of the 14th and 15th centuries?
How much should we be demanding from the Italians, Germans, Danes and Norman French for their invasions? 200,000 supposedly died in the harrying of the north by the Conqueror and it was laid waste; what is the compensation package for that?
Humans are shit. Now and in the past. There is absolutely no possible compensation that we today can offer to mitigate what dead people did to dead people, nor can we take the blame for long term consequences of that.
I am no more to blame for Empire than a German youth is for the Holocaust. We were not there. The spoils of society we enjoy are built on sweat and blood of our own ancestors in the sweatshops and factories of Victorian and Edwardian England; the long term spoils of empire are largely still with the same families who had it originally.
If we take it down a level, you could have the same argument within Britain. Why should any government try to level the playing field? The individuals in cabinet aren't personally responsible for inequity in the UK so why should any efforts be made?
Apples and oranges to some extent, granted, but there are parallels. Wouldn't you agree that it is in everybody's interests to raise the fortunes of the less well off? Especially when the existing power structures are responsible for the disparity? If that's true locally, why not globally?