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absolutelyshafted t1_ixw7pyr wrote

Reply to comment by wheresmattynow in TIL, that by 1860, there were nearly 4 million people enslaved in the United States. by MookieV

Textbook example of whataboutism

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wheresmattynow t1_ixw825t wrote

yes what about the millions enslaved right now in Liberia

what , not convenient to talk about slavery when talking about slavery?

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Frosty_404 t1_ixwaphy wrote

People don't wanna think about how bad other people/countries/races are. Only white North Americans and Western Europeans are bad. Never mind the atrocities being committed around the world every day.

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absolutelyshafted t1_ixwbmla wrote

White people get a bit more flak than others because they called themselves morally superior for hundreds of years.

You can’t have extremely brutal slavery in the 1800’s, and then prison slavery also targeted at blacks in the 1900’s, and call yourself morally superior. It just doesn’t work

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Frosty_404 t1_ixwd23m wrote

Oh don't get me wrong we're awful. We do awful shit all the time. But so does everyone else IIRC Iran is supposed to be executing some 14,000 prisoners from the protests and is saying the virgin women should be raped first so they can't go to heaven. You can't have that going on in the world and say whites are the only bad people

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absolutelyshafted t1_ixwomds wrote

Yeah but nobody actually says that

The thing is white people have always claimed to be the better ones in comparison to everyone else INCLUDING in terms of atrocities and whatnot. This was a dominant ideology for the past 100 years and just recently has fallen out of favor. And even today it’s still super common for whites to claim that Africans and East Asians are the most brutal and apathetic races in terms of genocide

This whole thing of “yeah maybe whites did slavery on a mass scale among other thing, but look these other people did stuff like that too” is a classic example of whataboutism

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FrankieGrimes213 t1_ixwpxvl wrote

As a white person, I was raised with the idea no matter white people do as a race, Asian people will do it better. I was never taught whites were superior, just typically efficient.

And people who claim whataboutism typically hide behind that word so they don't have to have introspection on their hypocrisy.

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billbuild t1_iy25i5b wrote

> I was never taught whites were superior, just typically efficient.

Pretty efficient system of transplanting people across oceans to make their production of cotton, tobacco and sugar efficient for generations. The pretty efficient to call the same people they raped, killed, child molested dangerous when that brutal practice ended creating the highest levels of incarceration in the world for shit like selling weed and drugs that were brought into the country by the heirs of their oppressors. That’s some efficacy right there, be proud and tell your kids how smart great grandma and grandpa were! Or just vote to ban the books, either way.

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FrankieGrimes213 t1_ixwpgs1 wrote

People who claim whataboutism usually have a hard time facing their hypocrisy

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