Interestingly enough, Crimea used to be a major center of slave trade all the way into 1700s. Christians were sold to Islamic world and vice versa.
https://mikedashhistory.com/2015/01/15/blonde-cargoes-finnis...
I just hope US people would realize allmost none of their North-American cultural tropes are applicable elsewhere as a foundation for anything, really.
Example: I am a finn. A middle class male in a high income country. What this means is: I am of the indigeneous population in this country (one of the population surges after the ice age). My kin where hunted as slaves and sold to asian slave markets.
Finland never participated in the colonial era except as a dirt poor third world economy to be exploited.
There is xenophobia and racism as elsewhere, but there is no historical past we should be particularly ashamed off.
If I were to come to US I presume I would be categorized based on my skin color in the "population whose ancestors benefitted from an inhuman trade" where as the truth would be "whose ancestors were the oppressed". I don't find it insulting or anything, but I do get the sense that the strength of the US tropes would make it impossible to discuss this in US context without myself being labeled a white power supremacist or something worse.
It is even more absurd in the UK, where in fact multiple groups of white people were successively displaced by conquest (Celts, Angles, Saxons, Normans, etc), and yet collectively, "Anglo Saxons" are perceived as oppressors, even if many decend from a group of people who were themselves oppressed.
Russia did not really recover from that outbreak, and some other countries may still have it ahead.
Have you tried renting an apartment in Moscow without “Slavic” looks?
Russians do not run their country for a century, but yeah, they may respond by not renting you their crappy and overpriced flat.
Do you have a source for that?
Поэтому интернационализм со стороны угнетающей или так называемой «великой» нации (хотя великой только своими насилиями, великой только так, как велик держиморда) должен состоять не только в соблюдении формального равенства наций, но и в таком неравенстве, которое возмещало бы со стороны нации угнетающей, нации большой, то неравенство, которое складывается в жизни фактически.
Lenin
And it absolutely applies to the USA of 2020s
Therefore, internationalism on the part of the oppressor or the so-called "great" nation (although great only by its violence, great only in the way that the oppressor[1] is great) should consist not only in observing the formal equality of nations, but also in such an inequality that would make the oppressor, large nation compensate the inequality that develops in life in fact.
1. a correct meaning here would probably be "bigot"
A lot of this, I think, is the result of geography rather than the Finns (or rather, their leaders) being different / special.
Romania never participated in the colonial era as well but it's not they wouldn't have liked to. Only neighboring Habsburgs, Russia and the Ottomans there was little direction to go. By the sea, they'd have to cross Bosphorus and Gibraltar straits to reach the open ocean so forget it either.
But once the opportunity present, there was no hesitation to jump and snatch. Took Dobrudja from Bulgaria after they got beaten shitless in the Balkan Wars by a coalition of Turkey, Greece and Serbia. Invaded Hungary opportunistically in WW1 after posing neutral for a couple years and managed to shoot a few poor unsuspecting border guards before being pushed back and nearly wiped out by German troops (lead by a young Erwin Rommel), after which sign an armistice with the Central Powers and invade Moldova to "secure" some space. Then 12 hours before the end of WW1 declare war to Central Powers again and be technically on the winning side. Invade Hungary again and "secure" Transylvania.
>> There is xenophobia and racism as elsewhere, but there is no historical past we should be particularly ashamed off.
The past is mostly presented as "special military operation" :P
Doesn’t this apply to everywhere though. I’m sure every country would have loved to colonize places but didn’t for various reasons.
I don’t think there are “evil” countries that colonized because they are evil. All countries that could, did.
Fortunately, recently people became more moral and have worked to limit this. Although cynically, I think it’s because the less evil way is no more lucrative.
First, about the Bulgaria thing. I grew up in a Romanian city just north of the Danube, Bulgaria was 11 km away (12-13, if you include the width of the Danube itself). In my home-town's central park there was (still is, afaik, I left that town ~20 years ago) a monument devoted to the Romanian soldiers who had died in the Second Balkan War, i.e. the war that you mentioned. They died when their boat had sunk while crossing the Danube. The majority of the Romanian deaths in that war (and there were a few) were the result of typhus (if I remember rightly), either way, what I do remember is my dad telling kid-me how stupid it was for us to get into that war whenever we were walking in front of that monument, how stupid our deaths had been. Of course, those deaths and that war were not mentioned in our history books.
What was also not mentioned were the atrocities committed by the Bulgarian soldiers once they invaded back, around 1917. It was really eye-opening to see photos of naked, dead, raped women in a Carnegie-report written just after WW1, a report that was mentioning places a few kilometers away from the village where my grand-parents had lived. I stumbled upon that report in an antiques-shop here in Bucharest a few years ago, again, no mention of those atrocities had been made in our history classes.
> after which sign an armistice with the Central Powers and invade Moldova to "secure" some space.
That was not an invasion, if you had read something, almost anything, on that subject you would have known that. Granted, I don't fault you for that, even here, in Romania, that event is seen in the wrong light, i.e. as a celebration of Romanians coming together after 100 years of Russian occupation. There was a coming back together of Romanians but there was nothing celebratory about it, as people who were alive back then and who were witnessing the whole thing actually said. It was a thing that the Germans wanted us, Romanians, to have, as compensation for the losses they had been inflicting on us (the union happened in March 1918, the Buftea peace treaty was signed in May 1918).
I will not go into the can of worms you opened about Transylvania because it's just not worth it, but the truth is I had expected better from HN readers/writers in here, no matter their nationality and ideological affinities.
>>A lot of this, I think, is the result of geography rather than the Finns (or rather, their leaders) being different / special.
My intent was not to signal virtue, merely the lack of historical action resulting in a system that could be economically or politically identified as colonization
Why? Geography, demographics and economy. Everyone was dirt poor - no economic elite to speak of. And the population was and is tiny.
Nonetheless, we're a country where Black Americans are subject to all sorts of disadvantages. My parents experienced the segregated South. It wasn't that long ago. The attitudes that allowed for de jure segregation to persist didn't simply disappear in the 60s. No reparations were made for 350 years of de jure oppression. This casts a long shadow materially and societally.
Generally, few people think of white people as being hardcore white supremacists simply for being white. Although I would say that Black people do want to see white people be actively anti-white supremacy, not just neutral, because white people are still the demographic majority and wield overwhelming political and economic power. So basically, there can be no justice to be found for Black Americans without the active participation of white people.
This is what all the other posters are saying. Nearly everyone has some ancestry that was oppressed for an extended period of time and they are not receiving reparations for it. Why should black Americans be different?
When you consider how small changes made early amplify over time, there’s other groups of people with orders of magnitude greater claims to reparations.
Punishing the son for the sins of the father is not healthy for society nor fair.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reparations_(transitional_just...
I'm not here to play Oppression Olympics and say that Black people deserve reparations more than anybody else. This push to compare and contrast often is used to deflect, delay, and ultimately disrupt the solidarity of marginalized people. So I only ask that people just understand the plight of Black folks in America in and of itself, and ask themselves what feels just.
This piece makes a compelling summary of the situation of Black folks in the US:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-cas...
To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if reparations never happen for Black Americans within my lifetime. But that doesn't mean it's not justified. At the very least, what most Black people demand is a fair shake at jobs, wealth, security, and dignity. It is violations of these basic human rights and justice that get us out in the streets.
Most history books are filled with stories of gross injustices, exploitations or just plain horrors. Hardly any of those are ever later compensated by any reparations - that’s just how the world goes.
My ancestors escaped from Prussia and immigrated from Sweden in the late 19th century, well after Slavery and the Slave trade was over and lived in hovels dug into the side of hills in the wind-swept and tree-free plains of the mid-west. In a area on the North American continent that was never touched by slavery.
They became farmers and worked the land. My father didn't even have central plumbing for a great deal of his childhood. Had to piss in buckets when it became too cold and too dangerous to go to the outhouse in the winter.
Yet I have plenty of people all over the planet that I should be ashamed to have European heritage living in the USA and that it's my fault there are a lot of poor black people. And that I owe them money and should "check my privilege" because of it.
Ignoring that slavery touched the entirety of the continent, I'm going to guess that means your German ancestors ended up in the Midwest. Probably on Native American lands.
To this day, Native Americans are 20 times more likely to lack indoor plumbing than Whites. Roughly fifteen percent of the Oglala Lakota County, containing the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in South Dakota lack indoor plumbing. Meaning this year they likely had to piss in buckets as the outhouse was too dangerous.
It goes back even further than modern humans that likely directly caused or at least aided the extinction of the Neanderthal.
By that logic there isn't a square inch anywhere on the planet that wasn't "touched by slavery".
Which renders the whole notion pretty much irrelevant and diminishes the role of slavery in USA history.
He explicitly stated in his comment that they settled in the Midwest.
Might be everybody on all sides of this conversation needs to calm down a bit.
Doesn't change anything I said, it just means I guessed based on a German immigrating to land "never touched by slavery" unnecessarily.
While there are systemic (and observable in aggregate, though often not individually) benefits to having white skin in the US, the idea that there’s a uniform “White” experience and that it is universally one of privilege is obviously wrong, and it’s also needlessly divisive.
The term white privilege is an accusatory polemic -- from a certain white perspective. Likewise a fish may not have the perspective to understand water, some whites may not understand they live in a social milieu that privileges them by disadvantaging everyone else.
The term white privilege is an inversion of the indubitable reality of anti-black discrimination, probably an unnecessary inversion.
Do the "plenty" of people have an issue with you having a German ethnicity? How so?
> And that I owe them money and should "check my privilege" because of it.
You are conflating different things here.
"Reparations" aren't a way to funnel money from "you" to "black people". That's another oversimplification, akin to saying that Medicare is about taking from richer people to put money into poor people's pockets.
"Privilege" has more to do with the colour of your skin, than your ethnic background.
No I am not.
Race is a political grift. It has been a political grift since the beginning. It's a way for some individuals to exploit social divides for personal profit. It's a political gamesmanship.
It was a grift when "white" was first legally defined during the colonial era. It is a grift now.
The greater wedge they can drive between people the greater the potential for personal profit and political power. If you want to eliminate racism in the USA then the worst possible way you can do it is by trying to force some idiotic and unrealistic notion of "equity" on the american people in the name of racial injustice.
And I agree with that. Also, I would say that the main issue here is money, not skin colour. Poor people are basically getting screwed so billionaires like Musk or Bezos add a couple more zeroes to their bank accounts.
But I cannot ignore the fact that there is racism embedded in the system, and that it is a massive problem.
I see this a bit like gender inequality back in the 70s and 80s. Are we going to ignore it, like our grandparents and parents did, or will be acknowledging it?
There are huge numbers of white people who don't like the status quo but see the "check your privilege" rhetoric as arguing that they haven't earned anything in their lives. If you come from a working-class white family like OP's, that's a slap in the face.
The answer isn't to say that people like OP are just misunderstanding what you mean and should listen better. The answer is to change the rhetoric so that it actually reaches the target audience.
This is a ridiculous and racist statement. This places the children of Bill Gates on the same "privilege" footing as a newly arrived Mexican immigrant who happens to have enough European ancestry to have white skin.
There are a huge number of factors that may or may not give someone a foot up in life and their external appearance is just one relatively small contributing factor.
One example I can think of where your two disparate examples may experience the same privilege in many parts of the USA is in a pulled over by police but prior to a driver’s license being shown scenario.
That's not to say that there aren't some important aspects of privilege that are influenced by skin color. It's simply that those are overshadowed by other aspects of your background.
Is it "racist" to point out that a racist will not look at someone's background, and will focus on evident skin features to make a character judgement? Really?
It's called prejudice for a reason.
> This places the children of Bill Gates on the same "privilege" footing as a newly arrived Mexican immigrant who happens to have enough European ancestry to have white skin.
This is a ridiculous comparison, because you are adding a new component, which is loads of money.
I myself am a hispanic white living in the US. I'm not rich by any means. But even I can tell how differently people look at me, compared to other hispanics with darker skin.
I didn't say that. Mine was a comment limited to OP's assumption that some people (it wasn't clarified "who" these people are), think he is privileged because of him being of a certain ancestry, which is not true.
But he doesn't have German ethnicity...? His ancestors moved to the US in the 19th century.
Where does the money start? Him. Where does the money go? Them. So, reparations are a way to funnel money from him to them. You can do all kinds of wordplay and commentary and invention of new terminologies, but those are all distractions from "reparations funnel money from him to them."
And what's the upside to having white skin but not having the generational wealth that supposedly comes from colonialism? There's many "white" countries that never colonised anyone, are still poor and certainly don't benefit from their "whiteness" today...
You're seeing it through both a Mexican and American lens. White Mexicans look down on indigenous Mexicans and there's definitely racism in the US, but how should someone from Czech Republic, Ukraine or Finland feel about their "privilege" today?
Edit - it's also been pointed out but should be again that the word 'slave' comes from the word for Slavs who unfortunately were frequently enslaved...
That’s not the basis for conversations around white privilege (at least not to anyone whose spent even the barest amount of time reading about it).
The issue is that all that history has created a systematically biased culture, one where a Finnish immigrant in 2022 will be treated better than a black person who can trace their American heritage back 300 years to forcible bondage, based purely on the color of their skin.
As a middle American born in the latter part of the 20th century I’ve participated in no more colonialism or slavery than you have. I’m not personally responsible for that history. But I’m cognizant that being white gets me a leg up in many places including Finland.
But would a Finn be treated better or worse than a black immigrant? Thomas Sowell has pointed out the difference in outcomes between black Americans and black immigrants to a small, similar area (New York, if I recall correctly). As they are impossible to tell apart for a stranger it makes for an interesting comparison.
Coleman Hughes has also pointed out the same kind of analysis using data comparing outcomes for white people[1]:
> Indeed, it is rare to find any two ethnic groups achieving identical outcomes, even when they belong to the same race. A cursory glance at the mean incomes of census-tracked ethnic groups shows Americans of Russian descent out-earning those of Swiss descent, who out-earn those of British descent, who out-earn those of Polish descent, who out-earn those of French descent in turn. If the disparity fallacy were true, then we ought to posit an elaborate system that is biased towards ethnic Russians, then the Swiss, followed by the Brits, the Poles and the French. Yet one never hears progressives make such claims. Moreover, one never hears progressives say, “French-Americans make 79 cents for every Russian-American dollar,” although the facts could easily be framed that way. Similar disparities between blacks and whites are regularly presented in such invidious terms. Rather than defaulting to systemic bias to explain disparities, we should understand that, even in the absence of discrimination, groups still differ in innumerable ways that affect their respective outcomes.
[1] https://americandigest.org/long-read-the-racism-treadmill-by...
But that was a problem during WW2 as well between US forces and their host countries, e.g. the UK or New Zealand where litteral fights were caused by white GIs insisting in racial segregation be implemented by Scotish pub owners and shops. The locals sided with the black GIs.
It's a role with great benefits. Thus the attraction of a narrative that supports that role.
I will grant you that Finland was not very successful in establishing empire besides mostly erasing Sami identity and language but that's not for the lack of trying.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Finland
Either they found some land that was uncontended, or they fought for it. I guess finding and making use of uncontended land has the moral high ground, but I think it's the exception. And if one's ancestors fought for it, I don't see why "I was here first" gives any special moral high ground. Especially because "here first" is not always very clear.
The American South - AFAIK - is unique in the percentage of families that 1) had wealth, and 2) had slaves.
Most of those people were independently wealthy immigrants, or descendents of them.
Beside the American South - you're not going to find any group that can be considered a majority that directly benefited from slavery.
Finland indirectly benefited from slavery - at the very least - by not DIRECTLY being enslaved in the slave trade. Sure, maybe not as indirect as New York City or London, but there were benefits...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Ocean_slave_trade
I hadn’t heard of the Zanj Rebellion of the 9th century in Basra:
Even as its centered around US perspective, it does a very good job at setting the stage of what slavery meant in europe and throughout the world.
It’s fascinating that one of the main reasons that transatlantic slavery turnout out as something that persisted for sooo much longer in US rather than slowly decline naturally like in the rest of world, was a technological invention made to make the life of slaves better. Talk about unintended consequences.
The only big perspective that was missing I think was the Asian slavery in India, where someone who was a slave could become a legitimate ruler and there have been some examples of those.
Where “slave” could actually turn out to be “forced high education to turn children into high value clerks and scribes”.
But didn’t they also take female slaves too, some being concubines?
"Castration: A fair proportion of male slaves were imported as eunuchs... in practice, emasculation was frequent"
(and yes, it did also carry a high rate of death.)
My understanding was that adults were rarely castrated, rather boys from certain regions were targeted (I believe boys from modern Sudan were preferred by the Ottomans)
But, this is such a well-documented aspect of Ottoman slavery that it doesn’t depend on any particular Wikipedia page.
This was known to be full-on castration.
It opens up so much possibility. Modified humans as household/industrial appliances.
Tomorrow's XBox might be your genetically tweaked second cousin.
One of the things discovered in the grnomr sequencing project that was conductef in Iceland.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Abductions
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51hXkmBB-YL.jpg
https://www.michaelbackmanltd.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12...
> The label "Turkish" does not refer to Turkey; at the time it was a general term for all Muslims in the Mediterranean region since the majority were a part of the Ottoman Empire. During the 17th century, the majority of those called "Turks" in Algeria, were disowned Christians that had converted to Islam. They were mostly Spanish, Italians, and provençaux (French).
In my experience, most "Western" understanding of European history evolved in the last millennium is completely bereft of the recognition that it was influenced by a heavyweight to their East.
Why did Columbus sail west? Why were the Portuguese going around the horn of Africa to get to Asia?
Wildly speculating, I'd suppose european concubines were very much sought after by slavers and their 'customers'. And even more so blonds and redheads for their 'exotism'.
Now some Algerians look very european. You can even see redheads, though I remember redheadness appeared independantly in Europe and the Levant I think.
The same was true about the Guanche, who used to inhabit the Canary Islands before their Spanish conquest. They were "whiter" than the Spanish who conquered them.
Here’s a link to the episode directly for people who use other podcast listeners (or just hate Spotify)… https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-68-blitz-...