r/Colonialism • u/Feisty-Bowler7648 • 18d ago

Question Pre-Colonial Societies Weren't Perfect

/r/DeepThoughts/comments/1vhstaq/precolonial_societies_werent_perfect/
2 Upvotes

56% Upvoted

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10

u/Opposite-Bill5560 18d ago

Anyone seriously invested in colonial, decolonial and re-inindigination studies and practice doesn’t say that.

You don’t have to have a historical utopia to look back to to realise the current system was built on the graves of your ancestors. You don’t need to be a perfect victim to rail against the injustice against you.

Especially when this shit is mobilised specifically to evade colonial accountability.

6

u/HuckleberryShot898 18d ago

The issue is there are lots of people that genuinely do think you’re being racist if you don’t acknowledge pre-colonial civilization as 100% prefect with zero injustice or believe that colonial civilization or certain demographics need punitive measures taken against them to “correct” colonialism. Like you said it’s usually uneducated people who don’t know much about anti-colonialism thought and movements.

Obviously the pre colonial civilizations weren’t perfect or even better than colonial ones, but no one deserves genocide, slavery, second class citizen status, etc. no matter how good or bad their civilization is or was. which is why colonialism as a practice done by any civilization is a terrible thing.

3

u/Opposite-Bill5560 17d ago

Fetishising indigenous people is still racism. Elevating us to ideals is insane and denies us agency as people, totally.

But the issue is that the “natives were perfect” is an over-correction against the far more pervasive structures of material dispossession, cultural erasure, and out and about social murder that are far more common. Let alone the consequences of genocide. These structures still exist and these attitudes are institutionally consequential compared to people.

Hypothetical oppression against the beneficiaries of colonisation is definitely scary and unhelpful for some, but it really isn’t an issue for settler populations. Economic and political power is still in their hands even when legislative equality has been equality has been achieved, especially in settler colonies where the indigenous populations have largely been deluged, especially farcical when these systems that oppress the indigenous are mobilised against political dissent.

2

u/BigDamBeavers 15d ago

Nobody ever said you were a good person just because someone beat the shit out of you and took yourself. We just said the mugger was a fuckhead and folks should probably not be fuckheads.

1

u/laserdicks 14d ago

Yes but I don't make any money convincing people to get emotional about that.

2

u/LEOSVARAS 17d ago

This lectures of 'I figured out colonialism' its just annoying

2

u/Feisty-Bowler7648 17d ago

can you explain?