Discussing Differences: A Letter to My Son (a few years from today)
The letter below summarizes my thoughts on a touchy subject. I have put them in the form they are in because I don’t think my son is old to have that discussion in its entirety right now.
To My Dear Son,
One of your mother’s hobbies is investigating her ancestry. She spends a lot of time on various websites, tracking down distant cousins and having email conversations with strangers about whether they might possibly related. She also took a genetic test to give her more information about her ancestry and convinced me to do the same.
I didn’t pay enough attention, but my recollection is that taking into account your mother’s background and my own, your blood, so to speak, is primarily Ashkenazi, Irish and Iberian. In our culture you learn a lot about the Ashkenazi and the Irish, but not so much about Iberia, so let me share some of its key history with you. Perhaps more important than anything else was the conquest by the Moors and the long campaign to drive them out. In 711 AD, these Arab-African invaders crossed the straights of Gibraltar. It took two decades for the Moorish expansion in Western Europe to be halted. A Frankish army under Charles Martel defeated the Moors at the Battle of Tours, but that didn’t help your ancestors; the invaders would enslave and subjugate Iberia for almost 800 years.
Over 8 centuries, a lot happens. There were times when the Moors could be described as benevolent overlords. At other times, the Moors were vicious, crushing their subjects underfoot with little remorse. But the desire for freedom remained through all of that, and eventually, there was the Reconquista. In 1492, the Portuguese and Spanish people finally managed to take back their countries.
A natural reaction might be anger or even hatred toward Arabs and Africans for perpetrating such an outrage on your ancestors. You might even think restitution is in order. That might be a natural reaction, but it is a bad one for a number of reasons:
1. These events happened a long time ago, and they didn’t happen to you. Sure, there is path dependence, and perhaps your circumstances would be very different had the Moors been less cruel, but that is conjecture and wishful thinking. What you deserve, morally, for the suffering of your ancestors is nothing. Absolutely nothing. For the same reason, I might add, you don’t owe anyone else for what happened to their ancestors either.
2. The people who invaded Spain and Portugal and oppressed your forebears are long since dead. Their descendants who were expelled to Africa in the decade or two beginning in 1492 bear no guilt. How could they?
3. 800 years is a long time. Time enough for the invaders and the invaded to mix and match a little bit. The Moors bred with the locals, sometimes by force and sometimes with consent. As a result, there may even be a touch of Moor, however diluted, in your gene pool. It doesn’t show up in the tests your Mom took, but that may well be due to imprecision of the current commercially available technology.
4. In the same way, some Africans today have Iberian genes. Perhaps more than you do, in fact.
5. The sad fact is, we are all, with the possible (but extremely unlikely) exception of the San, descended from oppressors and invaders. And we know one thing with certainty: your ancestors gave better than they got. This is self-evident from the fact that you are here and an uncountable number of bloodlines were wiped out.
As a result, the wise thing to do is to treat everyone with the same respect, at least until they prove they don’t deserve it. But not everyone has wisdom. Sleights perpetrated against their forebears motivate a lot of people. Making matters worse, one person’s oppression is another person’s heroism. For instance, Osama bin Laden, whom you will one day study in a history class, talked frequently about reclaiming Al-Andaluz (i.e., the Iberian Peninsula). To him, the Moors were conquering heroes spreading the One True Faith, and their expulsion was an injustice that must be avenged.
So while you should treat everyone the same at first, try to develop the ability to tell if a person feels the same way. Be very, very wary of those who carry around the past like a crutch or a club. Some of them are dangerous. Most will accomplish nothing, and the reasons for it will generally lie close to home. But people don’t easily accept mediocrity, especially when it is self-induced. People like that will blame you for their failure. These people don’t respect themselves, and they certainly don’t deserve respect from you.
Love,
Dad
I’m not sue where this post is headed, but………..!
“….these Arab-African invaders crossed the straights of Gibraltar.”
That’s a little inaccurate. The Moors were Arabs centered in and around Syria. In the mid 700s, as a result of fighting for control of Islam much like today, one group won out over the other and the losing side left town, so to speak. They headed west across north Africa and finally settled on the Iberian peninsula called Al–Andalus. In effect a large army of Arab Islamists fled across north Africa and established a new home land for themselves in Iberia. Arab-Africans is stretching the description.
“What you deserve, morally, for the suffering of your ancestors is nothing. Absolutely nothing. For the same reason, I might add, you don’t owe anyone else for what happened to their ancestors either.”
This is an interesting and disturbing point of view. Interesting because it loses focus on the 600 years that past following the over throw of the Islamist regimes that had been in power for the preceding 700 years. Disturbing because it references “others” who may be said to have claims related to the treatment of their ancestors. That is especially true given the inaccurate focus on the African origin of one of the groups that may have some kind of claim to make. Point 4. reiterates the connection to Africans, though the Moors would be much more accurately described as Arabs that ended up in Iberia after a trip across north Africa.
Jack,
1. This is what comes up when I enter “Moors” on Google and click on the first definition:
2. My son didn’t live through most of the period following the Reconquista either. In fact, at some point during that period his ancestors were booted from Spain. (See my point on intermarriage of groups in the main post.)
3. The 600 years that followed, though, should weaken anyone’s claim to being morally due something as a result of one’s ancestors’ suffering. Only two years after the Reconquista, the Spanish and Portuguese had the effrontery to get the Pope to split much of the New World between them at the Treaty of Tordesilhas, damn the English and the Dutch and other claimants. Not long after, both were among the significant world powers. In less than a century, they were contending with England for the position of dominant power in the part of the world they knew about. Clearly, 800 years of colonization and subjugation of one’s ancestors does not equal a person or a group’s inability to achieve.
4. Forget about Africans if it bothers you. Take any group that has suffered oppression. (And pretty much group has suffered oppression.) How exactly does the argument change? Why do six year olds from that group today owe my six year old something, or why does my six year old owe them something?
5. Back to the 600 year issue you mentioned. At what point does the claim go away? I can see any argument the moral claim being relevant if it was 1492, and my son was a 6 year old Grenadan. In that case one can say he had been oppressed. But what if he was 6 years old in 1500? Or 6 years old in 1510? In those cases, he wouldn’t have suffered through the occupation. What if he was 6 in 1560? When does my son’s moral claim based on occupation endured by other people end?
6. And does it extend further for groups that don’t successfully navigated the end of their oppression? For example, do 6 year old South Koreans today have less of a moral claim from Japanese 6 year olds than 6 year old Papuans? Or is the moral claim the same?
Jack,
If I might bring up another issue… by your standards I am sure that my six year old has a greater moral debt to descendants of the Aztecs, who seem to have been a rather blood thirsty bunch, than to the descendants of the victims of the Aztecs. After all, their surviving victims had been, shall we say, greatly reduced in numbers by the time the Spanish arrived in Mexico. Historically, descendants of the perpetrators of a particular injustices often heavily outnumber descendants of the victims.
Worse, it seems that the Aztecs were actually invaders from points much farther North. So perhaps from the perspective of the tribes wiped out by the Aztecs, the Spanish were just bringing cosmic justice.
But seriously, you want to tell my six year old, a six year old descended from Aztecs, and the non existent six year old who would have descended from a tribe slaughtered by the Aztecs how to compute who has a moral debt to who and who deserves moral credit, all based on events that happened a hell of a long time ago? Or do you want to say “here and now treat everyone the same?”
Jack,
Sorry for multiple responses but it occurs to me that my last line of my second comment could be misunderstood. Perhaps a better way to phrase it is that for any number of reasons, I think society works best if we confine moral obligations and credits to the living based on how the living behave.
What is the limit to how far back one can go. Do descendants of the Gauls demand reparations from the Italians (the Descendants of the Romans)? Or do the descendants of the Gauls demand reparations from the descendants of the Franks? The Britons and the Anglo Saxons,….
To my mind 2 to 3 generations is a good limit for this.
Lyle,
Why is it better to pick an arbitrary number of generations of people who weren’t victims nor perpetrators of a policy than just stick to the actual victims and actual perpetrators?
Should the grandchild of survivors of death camps, whether run by the SS or the Soviets or the Khmer Rouge, be owed something by the grandchildren of those who operated those death camps?
I don’t follow reparation arguments as they’ve occurred too closely. The Algerians threw the French out of Algeria so they’re good. No one knows with any reasonable precision where the Aztecs or other Americas native people originate. We do know that most people now living in the USA are late comers with no ancestral call on land or original sovereignty. Also, the Europeans who took over Palestine would lose their rationale for all their unfriendly behavior if reparations are illegitimate. I’ll have to give this reparations business a bit more thought. Who owes what to whom, when applied to large groups over long periods of time, seems to depend on which group has the biggest guns for the longest time.
Oh, by the way, reparations should not be thought of as payments between individuals. Or even large groups of individuals. The only unbroken line across generations is between persisting governments and its citizens, or other persisting governments. So, for example, the current people living in Israel and claiming that territory as a sovereign state have persisted there since about 1949, with some predating the establishment of their government by fifty years. There had been people living there, on the same land in the same location, who proved to be of a less than hospitable nature. At least to those who came and described themselves to be the new Israelis. So given that no clear and persisting line between the new Israelis and their ancient forefathers, upon which the new Israelis could lay a claim for reparations, the 60 or 70 years of the current group has been mostly the result of turmoil and rough stuff.
The question comes up as to how long is too long for a group to give up, or establish anew, a claim for reparations? We have two groups within our own sovereign state, the USA that is, that face that quandary. What we do know is that most of us, relative to the two groups referenced, have only secondary claim to substantive ownership rights in regards to the assets of the state. So which citizens may lay claim to the assets of the sovereign state in the form of reparations. From whom has the state taken away and to whom has the state failed to give?
Jack,
The San mentioned in the post are the original inhabitants of South Africa. Working off memory, I believe a couple of thousand years ago the Khoi Khoi arrived and pushed them onto marginal lands. Later, Bantu descended tribes who oppressed both the San and the Khoi Khoi. Eventually Europeans arrived who oppressed them all.
Now, the San are still oppressed. IIRC SA has eleven official languages. Khoisan, the language spoken by the San is not one of them. Other sleights are more significant.
Now, genetically, it is easy to tell the San apart from the Whites and from other African descended tribes. (There is a bit of blurring with the Khoi Khoi but even there it is usually possible to find the distinction.)
So here we can tell apart the original claimants of the land even a few thousand years after the fact. And not incidentally, they are also the perennial victims.
And unlike Israelis, to use your example, nobody believes any of the tribes predate the San. So to use your Israeli example, what do you propose? Reparations? Not going to happen. Heck, equal rights would be a step up at this point. But Say we wanted racial justice based on ancestral claims. What if the San want everyone else booted from the country? We can identify who is San and who isn’t and know they are the original claimant. If we go by ancestral claims, it would be immoral not to support that desire by the San who would finally be left in peace after two thousand years.
Additionally, as mentioned in the post, my son can be shown empirically to be part Irish. Genes don’t lie. We know with certainty his ancestors were oppressed by the English. Should the English government be coughing up some money? Why or why not?
Personally, this sort of insane rabbit hole diverts from people getting on with their lives.
Re the number of generations. Just the affected generation is one limit, I suggested going to the point were the folks never actually knew the victims and only heard second hand stories of what happened. Interestingly this is what happened in Vicksburg MS with respect to the fourth of July. Recall Vicksburg fell to the union on July 4 1863. It did not celebrate the 4th until 1963 because of this.
It appears that in many respects second hand stories don’t quite have the affect of stories which are told by those directly affected. (Part of why the efforts now to collect oral histories of those involved in the whole WWII events before they depart the scene.)
Just asking — how do the confederados of Americana in Brazil fit this picture? They left by choice but equally it can be argued that the Sephardi Jews left mainly through choice regardless of some nasty persecution.
Assuming white privilege exists then how should the minorities fairly overcome decades of economic exploitation?
This discussion reminds me of a thoughtful essay on PBS by Richard Rodriguez, the poet. He reflects on his ancestry, Mexican, composed of indigenous people and Spanish conquerers and his awareness of the cruelty and indignity inflicted on one set of ancestors by the other. Basically, he concludes that he has to come to peace with the seemingly random unfairness of the history, embrace what seems worthwhile and spiritual from both branches and go forward living those things and rejecting the ugliness from both branches. It’s probably the only approach with a chance of helping advance humankind.
Let the dead bury the dead. All else is vanity.
Lyle,
I have a recollection of being told my father had first cousins who died in Death Camps in Poland in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Perhaps I am overly insensitive but I don’t think a German my father’s age should owe my father a moral debt for that. Meanwhile my maternal grandfather had the grand tour of Europe from the driver’s seat of a tank from June 1944 to mid 1945. At one point his unit had the unhappy distinction of most continuous frontline combat service of any American unit in any war the US has fought. I was just about the only one to whom he would tell stories, so I am the generation who remembers that. I cannot imagine how my grandather’s experience, even if I was the only one to who he would describe it, qualifies me to be owed some moral debt by the grandchildren of those who survived because of his actions. As much as I appreciate his stories they happened to him, not me.
Tonu,
In our society that is considered the relevant question. I think it isn’t relevant at all. What is relevant is how to make sure all individuals have as fair shot as possible. If groups, however one defines them, have different genetic predispositions to different diseases and different physical characteristics, there will be all sorts of different outcomes when measured at a group level. But an individual is not his/her group. (And that ignores the issue of which group an individual is in.)
Note that nobody says the Tibetans are a master race, or an inferior one, or should in any way be given different rights and responsibilities simply because they are as a group disproportionately likely to carry genes which make life in high altitude environment easier. And not every Tibetan has those genes anyway. Everyone has different skills and talents, even in any single group.
JackD,
I haven’t seen the essay and I will look for it. But what is missing from your description of the essay is a recognition that even if Ancestor A was in a group victimized by members of Ancestor group B, by virtue of A surviving to the point in time where it was victimized by B, it is almost a certainty that A had victimized some C. Everyone is happy to be compensated for his/her groups’ victimhoid, but nobody wants to pay for their groups crimes.
To clarify:
If two groups differ only by the degree to which it’s members get myopia, it is clear they will differ on a wide range of outcomes involving vision. And vision can affect factors as disparate as ability to read and ability to avoid getting headaches when staring at written material, which in turn affects ability to study and acquire knowledge. Assuming a single dimension of difference in inputs can be enough to guarantee a wide dispersion in outcomes. And since the genetic tests doctors suggest for fetuses seem to vary according to where the parents’ ancestors came from, it is clear that input differences by group, on average, move along various dimensions.
But do what? What matters is that we do right by every individual. Giving people who look like me in a generation or two compensation for mistreating me is no comfort to me.
De Gaulle,
Welcome to Angry Bear. All first time comments go into moderation. Apologies for the delay approving yours.
As to your point, I agree with the statement but perhaps not so much with the context in which it was originally stated. IMHO the deities, if they exist, can take care of themselves. Other people, on the other hand, often need our help far more than any deity could possibly need worship.
Mike, I don’t recall Rodriguez making that point though he may have. It’s certainly valid. Human history is in large part a story of conquest and cruelty. Fortunately, that’s not all there is.
Yet, countries do compensate victims. My husband’s parents received a tidy sum from the German government for losing all of their property and their parents after Kristallnacht. Now my husband, his siblings and all of our children can get German citizenship as well. Seems that’s the least that should be done, even 3-4 generations from the aggrieved. If payment wasn’t forthcoming at the time (surprisingly it was for German Jews), the descendants of victims of atrocities are due something.
Sanctimonious Purist,
Welcome to AB.
I am no expert on German reparations. My understanding, which may be wrong, is that Germany (for the most part West Germany) paid three types of compensation:
1. To the survivors
2. To Israel to facilitate taking in survivors
3. To those whose families lost property
For the most part, it would seem those would be attempts to pay those who were directly victimized. If the state that succeeded the Nazi regime had any moral obligation based on being a successor state, those direct victims were the ones owed.