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KosherNazi t1_j8srqme wrote

Reply to comment by NickRick in 'Land, heritage and culture protected.' U.S. court sides with Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe by zsreport

Is it the right thing? Why should descendants of people who were wronged be entitled to special rights? Why don't other people who were wronged get special rights? Like... all the millions of descendants of slavery? Their slave great-great-grandparents were even promised "40 acres of a mule" and never got it.

Generally though it just seems like an error in public policy to be rewarding people of the present (who did not directly suffer any harm) by taking from other people (who are not directly responsible for the suffering of those people in the past). Is that justice? It doesn't feel like it.

Teach about the past so it doesn't happen again in the future, sure, but it's an endless rabbit hole if you start trying to turn past grievances into present property rights. It's monetizing the ghosts of the past.

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Forward-Candle t1_j8svghw wrote

So the government can do heinous things, and as long as they wait long enough to admit it was wrong, nothing can be done about it? Sounds like quite the loophole to me.

This is more to do with the legal right of Indian tribes though— there's an enormous amount of land that legally belongs to various tribes due to treaties which are still in effect. The government has been illegally violating these treaties for centuries, in some cases.

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KosherNazi t1_j8sxlax wrote

> So the government can do heinous things, and as long as they wait long enough to admit it was wrong, nothing can be done about it? Sounds like quite the loophole to me.

Yeah, that's how time works. Unless you can re-animate the dead you can't give them back what you stole.

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Forward-Candle t1_j8t02a1 wrote

The policies which created racial inequality were practiced well into the 20th century. There are still people alive who were stolen from their families and forced into boarding schools. This isn't old history

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amos106 t1_j8t1nwq wrote

That's true but inheritance and generational wealth are real things in our modern society. If we want to make things equal we can either remove wealth inheritance rights from everyone or we can try to compensate the decendants of people who were wronged in the past. Anything else would be treating certain groups as second class citizens.

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jennybens821 t1_j8t09y6 wrote

Due to the phenomenon of generational wealth, the descendants of people who were wronged in the past are indeed still suffering as a result of those wrongs.

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