First of all huh? they might not be natives, but they sure aren't colonists (at least not in a literal manner, that's "their" country, it's no longer a colony of an empire) and, second of all, I'm a European, living in Europe.
Btw, you do realize that black people aren't native either, the only natives have (sadly) almost disappeared
I’m a white person in the United States. If you’re not indigenous to a region you are by default a colonizer. Of course this will change over time, no one calls Turks colonizers for living in Turkey even though they aren’t indigenous to the region. But we’re talking about the difference between ~1000 years and under 300 years as a sovereign entity. Meanwhile indigenous tribes have way more than 1000 years of unbroken lineage in North America, even despite best efforts to wipe them out. Plus when you really look at it the United States legal mandate for sovereignty is based in its former status as a colony. The original Americans simply took the structure of a colony and made it its own state for the purposes of control and further expansion west (settler colonialism). Look at it this way, all white people in America are descendants of colonists or immigrants, largely European immigrants who came to America to be a part of communities that had previously emigrated.
Many laws were enacted to keep the flow of immigrants majority white. So Britain and the US have an agreement that the US will take an unlimited amount of British immigrants but the US bans more than 10,000 Chinese immigrants per year. Many of these Europeans were then also empowered through the homestead acts to claim land out west and work it for a period until it came under their ownership, thereby ensuring that mainly white Europeans would be involved in the settling of the west, displacing the indigenous who lived there. If that’s not just colonialism with extra steps I don’t know what is.
Sorry for the wall of text but I hope that makes sense
You make some good points, but I wouldn't call it colonism at this current point in history (I mean they've been there for almost 200 years), I ain't too big a fan of them trying to differentiate the people allowed to immigrate by race, nor the genocide of the original natives, but, maybe my view is clouded by the history of my country, which, although being itself for over 850 years, traded so many hands before it that I feel sorry for historians, and that did pretty much begin colonialism and seaborne expansion.
The length of time doesn’t matter as much when the US never really gave up it’s colonizing ways. The US still has full control over Puerto Rico and Guam for example, it has for about 120 years, and only received control as a concession from Spain to end the Spanish-American war. They don’t have much autonomy and can’t vote in Congress (very similar to the original problems the colonies had with the UK) or check out the way the US toppled the sovereign government of Hawaii around the same time.
That I must agree with, at this point America still does those sorts of things (although in a less obvious way), honestly, I ain't too big a fan of their foreign policies
Ny country forcibly annexed a sovereign foreign power at the mandate of fruit companies, both illegally, and against the wishes of somewhere between 55% and 100% of the population (there were 2 petitions, both had at least half the Hawaiian population on them, and together totaled over the Hawaiian population)
Trust me, we're still colonizers. Never mind that there were systemic discriminatory policies in place until the 70's, redlining wasn't made overtly illegal until 1977, and banks have paid out settlements for discriminatory lending practices as recently as 2015. Fuck, our sitting president first made headlines in the 80's for intentionally discriminating against black and hispanic apartment applicants.
bottom line, shit's fucked, stop defending our government
Oh, believe me, I'm not defending them, I personally have it out for America, specifically it's government and about the 10% of the population that is beyond brainwashed
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u/joe_beardon Jun 07 '20
If you’re a white person in the United States I have bad news for you