And you think everyone before western colonization was enlightened and multicultural? Sure their political regions were more complex, but in-groups and out-groups have existed in every region since at least the dawn of civilization, and those in-groups were typically defined by a range of factors including but not limited to culture, language, ancestry (and by extension, ethnicity), and religion.
You must have been sleeping through World History class if you think everything was kumbaya all around the world until the Europeans showed up…
edit to add:
I’m sure we all want the world to be such that everyone can just get along and coexist with each other, but that’s simply not the world we live in. And seeking simple solutions to complex problems is never helpful. Pretending everything would be perfect if it weren’t for those pesky Europeans is reductive. You can scream “blame white people” till you’re blue in the face, but ultimately you’re just playing into the same racialized dichotomy that you feign to be criticizing.
After all, it was always just a sliver of white people even within European societies which were the dominate classes there, who oppressed everyone they could, including the rest of the white people they shared a nationality with. The vast majority have always been disenfranchised, just like everyone else. And everyone else had their aristocracies too. Let’s not pretend that’s an exclusively European thing.
I said that multiculturalism was the norm, not that everyone was holding hands and singing kumbaya. I also am not saying that colonialism is new or unique to Europeans, it just so happens that European nations are the most recent colonial powers and we happen to be living in the historical period immediately following their rise to hegemony. Obviously conflict and colonialism existed prior to European colonization, but it has never before had the global reach and dominance that European nations achieved. The fact remains that prior to colonization by Europeans, many regions around the world were more diverse and politically complex (i.e. multiple cultural, religious, and organizational paradigms existed parallel to and in conversation with one another). Though there was conflict, it was more local and restrained with different groups finding ways to coexist even if the relationship was tenuous. It’s impossible to deny the profound impact of Europe’s global conquest on the political environment in which we all currently live.
It’s hard not to be cynical in this world.
And you think everyone before western colonization was enlightened and multicultural? Sure their political regions were more complex, but in-groups and out-groups have existed in every region since at least the dawn of civilization, and those in-groups were typically defined by a range of factors including but not limited to culture, language, ancestry (and by extension, ethnicity), and religion.
You must have been sleeping through World History class if you think everything was kumbaya all around the world until the Europeans showed up…
edit to add:
I’m sure we all want the world to be such that everyone can just get along and coexist with each other, but that’s simply not the world we live in. And seeking simple solutions to complex problems is never helpful. Pretending everything would be perfect if it weren’t for those pesky Europeans is reductive. You can scream “blame white people” till you’re blue in the face, but ultimately you’re just playing into the same racialized dichotomy that you feign to be criticizing.
After all, it was always just a sliver of white people even within European societies which were the dominate classes there, who oppressed everyone they could, including the rest of the white people they shared a nationality with. The vast majority have always been disenfranchised, just like everyone else. And everyone else had their aristocracies too. Let’s not pretend that’s an exclusively European thing.
I said that multiculturalism was the norm, not that everyone was holding hands and singing kumbaya. I also am not saying that colonialism is new or unique to Europeans, it just so happens that European nations are the most recent colonial powers and we happen to be living in the historical period immediately following their rise to hegemony. Obviously conflict and colonialism existed prior to European colonization, but it has never before had the global reach and dominance that European nations achieved. The fact remains that prior to colonization by Europeans, many regions around the world were more diverse and politically complex (i.e. multiple cultural, religious, and organizational paradigms existed parallel to and in conversation with one another). Though there was conflict, it was more local and restrained with different groups finding ways to coexist even if the relationship was tenuous. It’s impossible to deny the profound impact of Europe’s global conquest on the political environment in which we all currently live.