Thanks for your measured and reflective response. The one thing I’d say is in response to this passage I highlighted. Virtually every nation was “built on [what you’d call] systemic oppression.” We are in no way unique there. History is a series of wars, skirmishes, conquests, displacements, pillagings and untold barbarity. If we start trying to sort it all out to find who’s descended from the “oppressed” and who’s descended from the “oppressors,” and then attempt to set everything right, there’ll be no end to it. I’ve made a detailed argument here about such issues:
We need to leave history to the history books and start tackling our present-day problems from a “presentist” vantage point. If we see real injustices that could be corrected, great, but let’s not rummage through the past to establish racial pecking orders as an overreaction to earlier racial pecking orders. I was presenting my own family history not to claim a place in the medal round of the Oppression Olympics, but rather, to show that the whole game is far more complicated that it looks and needs to be called off.
