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Comment by lewispollard | Hacker News Reader

> All the individuals listed are American, but most of the people who have shared this on my timeline are British. In trying to express their solidarity with black Britons

Aren't they trying to express their solidarity with black Americans? Just because it's happening outside of your country of residence, doesn't mean your compassion and empathy ends at the border.

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While solidarity is a good thing what happens is that due to the (multiplying) effect of social media it overrides and dominates the local debate. The issues that are suddenly pushed to the front are not the issues we need to be dealing with over here in order to do something about racism or to improve our society.

For example here in the Netherlands neighbourhoods are built in a way to mix people of all social standings. A gay couple has a bigger chance of getting attacked on the street then a person of any colour or background has of being shot by the police.

Social media is 99% noise anyway, it's not really the place for considered debate. Given that these platforms are globally connected and not local, it's not surprising that emotional international issues dominate over local issues.

Maybe because it was Britain that started all this mess with slavery and human trafficking, so Britons should indeed try to repent, or some day face the wrath of the whole world.

Britain did more to end slavery than to start it (though it did also benefit greatly from it in between).

That's probably what makes you feel better, but nope, your kingdom was built through exploitation, killing and looting.

You forgot to mention rape. I'm told that 1 in 200 people on this planet can claim genetic heritage with Ghenghis Khan. That happened via rape together with the 'exploitation, killing and conquest' but no one in their right mind wishes to visit this mind-numbing inglorious fact on his descendants and not just because that would be impossible. Who knows? Maybe you and I are one of those descendants. Familiarity with world history will tell you that there are no groups of superior beings anywhere who abstained from the activities mentioned. Some won and some lost. The latter, not for the want of trying.

Perhaps it's time to take a couple of minutes to watch the sources and destinations in Slate's The Atlantic Slave Trade in Two Minutes animation.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_history_of_american_s...

Nah mate. You need to keep reading.

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