05-04-2011, 04:03 PM
Hi,
I'm waving a white flag furiously over here, because i see a potentially valuable conversation starting to spin out of control and turn ugly. :cursin: When the conversations here get personal, they have a tendency to get unpleasant. I don't think this is because personal = bad, but because personal = vulnerable, and defensiveness tends to rule the day.
Rudie: i don't think Grace62 is a xenophobe or neocolonialist trying to justify the displacement and genocide of Amerindian peoples.
Grace62: i don't think that Rudie is a radical polemicist uninterested in pragmatics and policy options.
If i could offer a humble reframing (if not, tell me to buzz off - i can take a hint): Grace62 has indicated that there are real problems of exploitation and respect for the law that exist as a product of immigration patterns today, and these exigencies require attention. This means trying to find practical, current solutions for problems that may appear to be relatively ahistorical. Rudie has pointed out that despite the appearance of the current problems, there is a long and troubling historical context that frames today's challenges. This history of colonialism and past injustices (that have real and contemporary consequences) impel us to frame our responses to today's policy questions with these in mind.
So the challenge is: how do we square this circle? Can we frame the current policy demands in a way that acknowledges that we don't begin on even ground, or an assumption of equity? Is there a place for acknowledgment of past injustices in contemporary policy? Or, is it appropriate to leave the sins of the past in the past, unaddressed, because those immediately responsible are long dead?
I don't think any of these questions invoke forum members' ethnicities or personal histories by default.
I'm waving a white flag furiously over here, because i see a potentially valuable conversation starting to spin out of control and turn ugly. :cursin: When the conversations here get personal, they have a tendency to get unpleasant. I don't think this is because personal = bad, but because personal = vulnerable, and defensiveness tends to rule the day.
Rudie: i don't think Grace62 is a xenophobe or neocolonialist trying to justify the displacement and genocide of Amerindian peoples.
Grace62: i don't think that Rudie is a radical polemicist uninterested in pragmatics and policy options.
If i could offer a humble reframing (if not, tell me to buzz off - i can take a hint): Grace62 has indicated that there are real problems of exploitation and respect for the law that exist as a product of immigration patterns today, and these exigencies require attention. This means trying to find practical, current solutions for problems that may appear to be relatively ahistorical. Rudie has pointed out that despite the appearance of the current problems, there is a long and troubling historical context that frames today's challenges. This history of colonialism and past injustices (that have real and contemporary consequences) impel us to frame our responses to today's policy questions with these in mind.
So the challenge is: how do we square this circle? Can we frame the current policy demands in a way that acknowledges that we don't begin on even ground, or an assumption of equity? Is there a place for acknowledgment of past injustices in contemporary policy? Or, is it appropriate to leave the sins of the past in the past, unaddressed, because those immediately responsible are long dead?
I don't think any of these questions invoke forum members' ethnicities or personal histories by default.