Why don't the Postcolonial users of Western culture send a formal "Thank You"?

I've seen threads and considered apologies for colonial cultures.
A lot of those tribal colonial cultures had documented warfare, cannibalism and other uncomfortable features.
Most of them lived in grass huts, and didn't even know the wheel.
They did have knowledge I respect, but that's not my argument here.
The point is they drive cars, they have houses with solid roofs, they have doctors and education.
How can they not thank people for this?
OK it was also imposed - but traditional life was very hard too.
Isn't it time they also said "thank you"?
Many descendants of tribal peoples are also very rich and successful in the modern world.
Why must certain people apologize for (post)colonialism, and others enjoy it, and they demand an apology.

I'll apologize when they recognize that they should say "thank you" too!

Your forgiven, only a forgiven person can truly forgive

Wow, I must wrap my mind around that post!

Well you're forgiven too.

Monty Python: The Life of Brian.
What have the Romans ever done for us?
Well apart from the aqueduct, sanitation, order, wine...
Sheer humerus honesty:

reply to post by halfoldman


Not quite sure what native americans should say. "Thank you for taking our lands, killing us and herding us like cattle onto reservations"?

That doesn't quite sound like a good sound bite.

he's south african, and he's talking about the black people there.

he's still bitter that the rightful owners of the country have taken it back and now he's a second class citizen.

but they have alot to be grateful, grateful for apartheid, racial bigotry, injustice, poverty, diseases, segregation, slavery, the springboks and most importantly the wheel.

white south africans didn't colonize south africa to bring culture, technology, healthcare and education to the black population out of charity and righteousness.

they colonized south africa to steal it's many resources, mainly gold.

reply to post by halfoldman


Thank you Germans for colonizing our lands, enslaving us for 700 hundred years and enforcing Christianity. And thank you also for masonry (though first building were churches and fortresses that were used to try and destroy us and our culture) and writing (though for the first few hundred years we were not allowed to learn writing, reading because school was just for Germans). Although we would have learned those thing from other cultures without you killing thousands of our people people and trying to destroy our culture. Also although we Latvians survived colonization - our Baltic brothers Prussians were not so lucky and were fully colonized, germanized, their culture and their nation destroyed.

What we really want to thank you about is that you made us into one nation. Our hatred against you the oppressors merged our 5 tribes Curonians, Latgalians, Selonians, Semigallians and Livonians to form Latvian nation so that we could with the help of our neighbors kick you and Russians out of our land in 1919 though it was just for 32 years when we were occupied again by USSR but at least they didn't colonize our land with 9 million Russians like it was in your plans to destroy our nation. And now again we are free. Free to speak in our language, free to sing our songs and free to call ourselves Latvians.

What I tried to say with this is that colonists enforce their culture and traditions on natives. They do think of themselves being better than natives. Contact with other civilizations should be peaceful and we should learn from one another not try to enforce our ideas on natives by terrorizing, killing them and their land.

Cheers.

reply to post by halfoldman


Indigenous Australians are worse off now than they ever were in tribes. They were at harmony with their environment. They had their own social system, medicines, shelter etc.
The Aboriginal culture is the oldest surviving culture on the face of the earth. What does that tell you?
They were fine before the English settled here and raped and pillaged to their hearts content.
Indigenous Australians are the poorest in Australia with the shortest life expectancies.
Their communities are plagued with alcoholism and drugs and one out of every three Australians are racist against them according to the most recent study.

www.dailytelegraph.com.au...

I'd also like to know how you think the Postcolonial people who lived in perfect harmony with their environments should feel about the environmental devastation wrought upon their lands but the very people you think they should be thanking.

I cannot believe you show such an ignorant view of the world. How about I take your house, kill your kids, rape your spouse - perhaps your children and granchildren will should thank me at some future date when some of their situation's improve...

reply to post by randomname


Are you endorsing the way the so called 'rightful owners' treat the citizens of this country?

As far as I understand no one has claim to any land. Africa belongs to all who live in Africa. Secondly, these 'rightful owners' are as much immigrants to South Africa as the Dutch and the British.

Would it be fair if the Europeans treated the blacks living amongst them like crap? Mean, Europe isn't their rightful home so... it's fair,right? Or would it be fair in America for instance? Brazil doesn't belong to them either yet I don't see anyone making a fuss about it.

Read up and enlighten yourself before you make uneducated comments like that!

I might say thanks for the beef if I didn't hear about the buffalo or the caribou
I might say thanks for the Chlorine water if I hadn't heard about drinking out of streams
I might say thanks for the wheel and cars if I hadn't heard about the canoe
I might say thanks for democracy if I hadn't heard about the Haudenosaunee
I might say thanks for the TV but ....
I guess I can say thanks for the language that allows most indigenous groups to communicate .Oh the phone and the computer are very cool thanks.....peace

reply to post by randomname

Well, if we didn't bring culture and technology there's lots of rural spaces where blacks own tribal land (and always have), and they're welcome to dispense of their designer clothes and luxury cars and they can live in their grass huts like their ancestors with their muti and their intertribal "crushing wars" (Mfecane).
Common, if everything whites brought was so bad I challenge them to do it.
Instead they are abandoning those areas in droves.
But it looks that under ANC rule they will revert back to the stone age again in any case.
Our hospitals (once the best in all Africa) are almost there.
The black population increased manifold under apartheid and colonialism.
Since then we have infants dying of preventable diseases in ANC-ruined hospitals, we had 350 000 people who died needlessly of Aids under Thabo Mbeki. We have more poverty and people streaming in from every ruined African hell-hole.
Yeah, and all they can still do is harp on about colonialism! Ironically using technology that came from it.
I guess they're in denial. Understandable really.
So, all the Africanists - ditch the Johnny Walker Blue Label, the R7000 hair extensions, and live in grass huts and scratch in the dirt for food from dawn till dusk. I dare you all - just for one month.
Should trim some lard from those morbidly obese junk-food man-boobs.
It would make a great reality TV show.

I'm not saying tribal life was all bad, but it is hypocritical to enjoy all the Western technology and then to sill try and make people feel guilty all the time. That is wrong and hypocritical, and sooner or later the begging bowl will no longer be filled through white guilt.
Not that all "indigenous" people are guilty of this - some criticize such attitudes too.

reply to post by Bee2010

Indigenous Australians are worse off now than they ever were in tribes.

I think every country is different, and I cannot comment too much on Australia.
However I can imagine that some Australians would find that statement very disputable.
Despite many horrors the fact is also that some tribal people simply walked out of their traditional lifestyle from one day to the next, because they found settled life easier and more desirable. It's very easy to romanticize past lifestyles now. Nothing against that, they just shouldn't knock current benefits either and be grateful for them too.
In fact modern technology can help preserve culture, and its helped to connect tribes that formally thought of themselves as separate nations, and attacked each other on sight.

reply to post by halfoldman


Probably because they were attacked by the devil. And no one tells the devil thank you. Just figured I'd give a straight up answer.

reply to post by Vicarious10000

Who was "provably attacked by the devil"?
Perhaps time to stop using all the devil's play-things then, and demanding more of them.
Perhaps time to stop demanding the devil's education and his medicine?

Why doesn't everybody just stop being butthurt about history?

It happened, it can't be changed and those of us alive now can't be held responsible for the actions of people from generations past. We can't effectively move forward if we're always looking backward.

reply to post by halfoldman


If it's in your face why not ask for it? Do you even know anything about history? It was the colonials who thought the natives were the devil. I'm saying the colonials were the devil. As a matter of fact when does our cacausion race not think they are superior to everyone else?

Everything the white man touches turns to Sh!+

reply to post by Vicarious10000

The colonials thought different things at different times from fearing and hating the natives during the frontier wars, to the romantic (and persistent) notion of the "noble savage". There was always a lot of exchange, both of DNA via inter-marriage and of food and culture. One can happily admit that we are all cultural hybrids to a degree, and eat foods from the Columbian exchange, or use words from African languages and Arabic mathematics.
It is when a certain group loses sight of that fact, and think they are entitled to imported technologies and lifestyles as if they fell from the sky, which signals something very concerning.
In SA, what they don't realize is that the expertise of that technology will leave when the whites and some other professionals leave.
We are used to being described as the devil incarnate, but they love, love, love all our devilish things.

I'd say let us get past this "colonizers"/"colonized" are the devil.
I think descendants of the colonized are reminded often enough of how "evil" they are.
I suppose that as a male (apart from very dangerous circumcision rites in SA that kill dozens of boys every year) it would be more comfortable in African society. The women had to do most of the work.
Liberal academia is so weird, in that it pays lip service to all kinds of historic tribalism.
But, it also complains and aims to change gender inequalities.
Yet, gender inequalities are often the most stubborn, existentialistic aspect of tribal cultures to change.
The liberals who argue for some modern "human zoo" that remains unchanged to their romantic stereotypes of indigenous peoples also forget that being deprived of modernization is considered a violation of colonized peoples' rights. They want the electricity and modern housing. It's when it is not provided fast enough that they complain. However it cannot be provided to fast expanding populations, not even with the best will.
It's not even sustainable in the West.

Western liberals are not so enthusiastic on female circumcision, child-brides, wife-beating and other aspects of tribal life.
In aboriginal justice people are sentenced to corporal punishment (usually a spearing through the thighs).
If the sentenced person runs away, they attack the closest relatives.
Should modern police help these relatives, or leave them to their tribal fate?
Should this be allowed?
Or consider slavery and the force-feeding of girls, like in Mauritania.
This is a documentary on Mauritania:


Of course I'm simply raising questions, and there are no easy answers.
SA is different to most postcolonial set-ups in that the "indigenous people" form the majority and have ruled the country since 1994.

reply to post by archasama

Thanks for a fascinating post which shows that colonialism was not a North/South issue, but also happened in Europe.
I'm not so sure what you mean by "Germans", since Germany was a late 19th Century construct.
The capital of the Prussians became the capital of Germany (Berlin), and before 1871 it was a collection of Feudal fiefdoms. So it is a bit strange that you say the Prussians were victims, rather than colonizers. But so it goes with inter-tribalism.
Prussia was actually considered a vital component of that German "nation" construct.
There were Germanic speakers, but no essential "Germans", and the "tribes" you mention actually conquered us? (Well, I'm from the Saarland, which was always disputed between France and Germany.) We had waves of different conquerors ruling our tribes, from the Romans to the Huns and Mongols, and various other tribes.
Well, I'm glad you're happy and free now, and you don't have to be two-faced about demanding a culture that you also supposedly hate.
en.wikipedia.org...

reply to post by halfoldman



Let me enlighten you my friend. Old Prussians

During the 13th century, the Old Prussians were conquered by the Teutonic Knights, and gradually assimilated over the following centuries. The former German state of Prussia took its name from the Baltic Prussians, although it was led by Germans who had assimilated the Old Prussians; the old Prussian language was extinct by the 17th or early 18th century.[1]