[HN Gopher] Undoing the Alhambra Decree
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Undoing the Alhambra Decree
Author : drdee
Score : 24 points
Date : 2023-06-26 22:49 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedial.world)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedial.world)
| csense wrote:
| You're giving people alive today a benefit (free citizenship) in
| compensation for a wrong that was done long before anyone living
| today was born.
|
| I see a lot of ethical problems with this sort of thing [1].
|
| It's basically original sin [2] in reverse.
|
| If you go back far enough, just about everyone's a descendant of
| someone who's been wronged by a government, and just about
| everyone's [3] a descendant of someone who has blood on their
| hands as a participant in those wrongs.
|
| Why are some groups more deserving than others?
|
| Why does _anyone_ deserve _anyone else_ giving them _anything_
| today for stuff that happened hundreds of years ago?
|
| If you say that today we should give back stuff that someone
| unfairly took from someone else, doesn't that mean the government
| of Spain should turn in its keys and put somebody else in charge?
| Depending on which historical period you pick, Spain might
| rightfully belong to France (Napoleon), Algeria (Muslims), Italy
| (Roman empire) or the Basques (as the descendants of Spain's pre-
| Roman tribes).
|
| [1] Reparations for slavery in the US is another example.
|
| [2] Original sin is a doctrine in some religions that says it is
| okay for you to be punished for stuff your ancestors did long
| before you were born.
|
| [3] Genghis Khan is an ancestor of ~0.5% of humanity:
| https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.16767
| NilMostChill wrote:
| Reparations (in general) aren't really about punishing
| descendants for their ancestors transgressions, it's about
| balancing out the systemic oppression and inherent handicap
| that is/was affecting a given population. Granted, it's not
| always like that but it's incorrect to claim it's specifically
| about punishing later generations.
|
| As US reparations is the first example let's use that.
|
| it's less "screw those white people because they don't deserve
| it after what their ancestors did" and more "this group of
| people are actively struggling because some assholes decided
| they weren't going to treat them as people for 300 years, we as
| a society are somewhat responsible for that so let's try and
| give them a hand up to where they would have been"
|
| Also, in case the "yes but white people struggle also" argument
| is in the forefront of your mind, yes they deserve help too.
| Helping the lees fortunate isn't a zero-sum game.
|
| Original sin is indeed bullshit, but that's not what this is.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| > _Helping the [less] fortunate isn 't a zero-sum game._
|
| Yes, it is, and it's fine to be honest about that.
|
| I'm not less fortunate.
|
| I support helping the less fortunate more.
|
| And I realize doing so is going to require sacrifice on my
| part -- I'm going to have to pay more in taxes/redress to
| fund that help.
|
| The difference is that morally, I find it hard to have a roof
| over my head, a bed to sleep in at night, security provided,
| and food every day... and quibble over my marginal tax rate,
| versus someone who doesn't have those things.
|
| But then, I've always looked at income as society's money
| rather than fundamentally mine. I am able to earn what I earn
| because I exist in a broader organization and society.
| majormajor wrote:
| People can add value to the system through their actions.
| This goes back to one of the reasons for the private
| property, market-based economic systems - the idea of
| _improvements_ , of non-zero-sum benefits. The cliche of
| making the pie bigger instead of just fighting over the
| size of our individual slices.
|
| Many paths more commonly taken by the less fortunate are
| themselves _net negative_ to society as a whole. Like crime
| or drug addiction /disease that socialized programs end up
| paying for.
|
| So if we could be effective in redirecting people from
| those paths to healthily contributing ones instead, we
| could get to positive-sum. I'm already paying a lot of
| money for "today's result" things like property insurance,
| incarceration, and first responders for people, in the long
| run is taking action to fight the root problem more
| expensive?
|
| (One of today's problem is that we mostly try to intervene
| at adolescence or later, at which point a ton of damage has
| already been done.
| NilMostChill wrote:
| > Yes, it is, and it's fine to be honest about that.
|
| No it isn't , it's usually framed that way for politically
| derived reasons.
|
| Helping one less fortunate person doesn't _have to_ take
| directly take from another less fortunate person, there are
| more than just the less fortunate in the game.
|
| it's an often parroted point right now, but if the ultra
| rich were taxed at the same rate as everyone else ( in
| whatever region was appropriate ) there would be a large
| influx of money that _could_ be used to improve public
| services, support networks, education etc.
|
| I personally don't think it would be used for that in any
| meaningful way, the system as a whole is broken, but it
| could in theory.
|
| > I'm not less fortunate.
|
| > I support helping the less fortunate more.
|
| Agreed, same
|
| > And I realize doing so is going to require sacrifice on
| my part -- I'm going to have to pay more in taxes/redress
| to fund that help.
|
| Also agreed, in principle, but what you can personally
| provide pales in insignificance when compared to the sheer
| grinding machine that modern capitalism has become.
|
| It's similar to "no plastic straws to stop climate change",
| yes, but also how about the 80+ % of actual climate change
| caused by the fossil fuel industries. less of a
| "whataboutism" and more of a yes, but also fix the bigger
| fucking problem.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _Reparations (in general) aren 't really about punishing
| descendants for their ancestors transgressions, it's about
| balancing out the systemic oppression and inherent handicap
| that is/was affecting a given population._
|
| Continuing with the US slavery example... if systemic
| oppression and inherent handicaps exist, is a direct transfer
| of funds really a solution? It's a one-hit-wonder that might
| appease some voters in the short term but doesn't get at the
| root of any current problem.
|
| Blacks in US are largely less able to obtain health care (for
| myriad reasons - less money, worse insurance, mistrust of the
| medical profession, etc). A lump sum of $15k to every Black
| person in the US doesn't fix the problem. $15k buys them one
| major medical treatment, if that.
|
| Same for education. A lump some might put a single generation
| through college. But, if there are systemic impediments to
| Blacks attending college (money, quality of primary and
| secondary education, etc), a lump sum transfer doesn't fix
| it. At best, it creates a generation of better educated
| Blacks who might push their kids into college, but all the
| other structural problems still exist.
|
| Basically, we should address those problems head-on and with
| solutions that solve the problem permanently (or as close as
| possible).
| wholinator2 wrote:
| Does anyone know what those solutions are?
| NilMostChill wrote:
| > Continuing with the US slavery example... if systemic
| oppression and inherent handicaps exist, is a direct
| transfer of funds really a solution? It's a one-hit-wonder
| that might appease some voters in the short term but
| doesn't get at the root of any current problem.
|
| Systematic oppression and/or long term ramifications of
| period of oppression is provably true.
|
| ignoring the politics of it i don't think a straight up
| cash injection would be an efficient means of solving any
| of the mid to long term problems, but it is certainly an
| effective measure in helping short term survival.
|
| The difference between "better access to education and
| employment for my kids so they can live better lives" vs
| "food and medicine so my children don't die this month"
|
| > A lump sum of $15k to every Black person in the US
| doesn't fix the problem. $15k buys them one major medical
| treatment, if that.
|
| Though i think i know what you mean, "15k to every black
| person" is fairly broad and i think a bit reductive in this
| case, it would probably need to be something weighted
| against need and how much the person was affected by the
| situation being addressed by the funds.
|
| Problem is it's really difficult if not impossible to do
| that effectively, think of it like a whole society version
| of a class action lawsuit, except the payout amount is
| directly tied to the level of effect the original issue has
| had on each person, individually.
|
| To be clear, this doesn't mean "non-black person X" doesn't
| get support and help. Ideally this would need to be
| something on top of an already working support system for
| everybody.
|
| Everyone gets equitable support up to a certain level,
| certain groups get additional support where needed _because
| to get them to an equitable level they need additional
| support as they 've started at a lower starting point due
| to whatever fuckery occurred way back when_
|
| This is some utopia-level idealism though and I'm not
| expecting it to happen in the real world, but a good faith
| attempt would be nice.
|
| > Same for education. A lump some might put a single
| generation through college. But, if there are systemic
| impediments to Blacks attending college (money, quality of
| primary and secondary education, etc), a lump sum transfer
| doesn't fix it.
|
| It doesn't fix _all_ of it, but it might fix _some_ of it
| in an incidental way, though as i said, lump sum probably
| isn 't a good strategy for long term fixes.
|
| > At best, it creates a generation of better educated
| Blacks who might push their kids into college, but all the
| other structural problems still exist.
|
| Yes, but the overall bump in education (assuming education
| is a reliable means of measuring future quality of life)
| would go some way to beginning to fix the structural
| problems.
|
| > Basically, we should address those problems head-on and
| with solutions that solve the problem permanently (or as
| close as possible).
|
| Agreed, but that should also be part of a plan to alleviate
| the short and mid term problems as well.
| tough wrote:
| [flagged]
| thebooktocome wrote:
| > If you go back far enough, just about everyone's a descendant
| of someone who's been wronged by a government, and just about
| everyone's [3] a descendant of someone who has blood on their
| hands as a participant in those wrongs.
|
| This is the fallacy of gray.
|
| https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallac...
|
| "Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same
| shade. You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you
| replace it with a one-color view . . ."
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| There's tons of positive stuff you can inherit from your
| parents. All of that is similarly "original sin in reverse". I
| don't see any problem with that as an overall concept.
|
| You don't have to take anything from anyone to give citizenship
| to people that should have had citizenship.
| pessimizer wrote:
| 100% estate tax, then.
|
| edit:
|
| > [1] Reparations for slavery in the US is another example.
|
| This is gross. My mother was arrested for going into a whites-
| only Pizza Hut as a child. My grandmother and the rest of that
| side of the family were kicked off of their family farms
| because the US wouldn't give out farm loans. Black people
| didn't get the GI Bill, and The Greatest Generation went to
| fight Nazis with a segregated military. Jim Crow lasted until
| my grandparents were _in their thirties_. I went to a defacto
| segregated grammar school where we had to share textbooks.
| Black people have slightly more than the amount of wealth they
| had when they were kicked out onto the highway after 300 years
| of work from birth to death.
|
| I think you're choosing the window that's most convenient for
| you. You don't want anybody to be able to make claims on what
| you yourself have, so you want any claims made before you were
| born dismissed. There's no reasoning about why you should have
| all the benefits and none of the liabilities from your parents,
| other than spurious associations with other things you don't
| like.
| narag wrote:
| _I see a lot of ethical problems with this sort of thing_
|
| It's bad policy, but the motive might be fake. I have neither
| read the law nor I intend to read it, but I suspect that it's
| just literature. The real reason must be culture, mostly the
| language.
|
| Most immigrants here are from Hispanic America. They already
| speak Spanish so it's easier for them to adapt, also there's a
| common history and blood, we're family.
|
| Also lots of Romanians, they learn the language really fast.
| majormajor wrote:
| You spend a lot of time focusing on recipients of something
| here and whether or not they "deserve" it. And you're framing
| it as if there should be some universal principle that applies
| to every situation.
|
| But what about the givers? Do you think there's _universal_
| ethical problems that apply to any particular group that
| chooses to give a benefit to others that were harmed in the
| past? Is there no possibility for legitimate benefit - even if
| only symbolic - to the givers?
|
| If I knew _my_ ancestors were active or complicit in a certain
| atrocity, do I need to worry about Genghis Khan in order to try
| to offset that?
| linksnapzz wrote:
| I would think that undoing the decree would involve inducing
| Spanish (or those desiring to emigrate to Spain) Catholics to
| convert to Judaism.
|
| Which would be odd public policy; but OTOH would make a fine
| premise for a very funny Adam Sandler/Sacha Baron-Cohen movie.
| tobinfricke wrote:
| Portugal recently ended its equivalent of this program, due to
| fraud.
| wageslave99 wrote:
| As a Spaniard my 2 cts:
|
| - The law had an expiration date for sure (don't know why). Maybe
| to avoid convenience nationality acquisitions?
|
| - "Why would the descendants of Spanish Muslims not have the same
| opportunity if the objective is ... to reconcile Spain with its
| past?" Because the Moriscos[1] rebelled against the Crown[2],
| while the Sephardic Jews were expelled because of their faith
| (the last Jews of being expelled of Europe).
|
| - "This hypocrisy led Cembrero and other commentators to
| speculate the law for Sephardim was proposed for economic
| reasons, or as an effort to appease Israel after Spain voted to
| recognize Palestine in the United Nations, or as a retaliation
| for the Catalan separatist movement." This is speculative from my
| point of view. There was an earlier law that allowed the
| Sephardim to get the Spanish Nationality but with the condition
| of residence created by a dictator in the first quarter of the XX
| century Miguel Primo de Rivera[3].
|
| - All Hispanic-American citizens can acquire the Spanish
| Nationality after 2 years of residence. You can see that there
| are a ton of Spaniards of Hispanic-American origin in Madrid, for
| example.
|
| - Calling the PP ( _Partido Popular_ )[4] "a party with Francoist
| roots" is a bit of stretch. PP is the typical center-right party
| like the German CDU, Les Republicains in France or the Democrats
| in USA. However, Vox[5] would be to the right of the PP and that
| Party could be seen as an inheritor of Franco's dictatorship.
|
| - I'm sorry that there are racist judges, like this one, that
| asked tricky questions to void the nationality request of some
| people. He was investigated by the Judges Control Institution but
| they saw no wrongdoing in 2010 ( _a dog does not eat other dogs_
| ).
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morisco
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebellion_of_the_Alpujarras_(1...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_Primo_de_Rivera
|
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Party_(Spain)
|
| [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox_(political_party)
|
| Edit: sources and format
| master_crab wrote:
| "Because the Moriscos[1] rebelled against the Crown[2], while
| the Sephardic Jews were expelled because of their faith (the
| last Jews of being expelled of Europe)."
|
| Wait? What? Every Muslim woman, child and man in Spain rebelled
| against the crown? Going to call bullshit on that.
|
| But let's say for a moment you might even be passably correct?
| Why did they rebel? Was it because they were being violently
| subjugated by the crown?
|
| (Keep in mind that crown went on to do a lot more subjugating
| in the New World. The Spanish crown loved murdering people who
| weren't Catholic.)
| mistrial9 wrote:
| [flagged]
| KoftaBob wrote:
| >I met living Portugese here who were taught that "Jews
| killed Jesus" .. for real
|
| "As the religions professed by the Israelites (Second Temple
| Judaism) and the Romans (Pagan) were different,[7] and since
| at the time Jerusalem was part of Roman Judea, the charges of
| the Sanhedrin against Jesus held no power before Pilate."
|
| "Pontius Pilate finally asks Jesus "What is truth?". This was
| said after learning that Jesus did not wish to claim any
| terrestrial kingdom. He was therefore not a political threat
| and could be seen as innocent of such a charge. [10]
|
| Stepping back outside, Pilate publicly declared that he found
| no basis to charge Jesus, asking the crowd if they wanted
| Jesus freed. They demanded instead the release of Barabbas
| and called for Jesus' death. Fearing a revolt, Pilate
| relented."
|
| While Pontius Pilate technically was the one who carried out
| the killing, it was very clearly Jewish Sanhedrin elders and
| many Jewish people of the area who were the ones calling for
| Jesus' crucifixion.
|
| I get that "Jews called for Jesus death" can quickly jump to
| anti-Semitic stuff, but that doesn't mean we need to deny
| what actually happened.
| angst_ridden wrote:
| The difficulty is in the "what actually happened" when the
| only documentation is from hundreds of years after-the-
| fact.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| [flagged]
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| See Acts 4:27. Jesus' followers singled out Herod and
| Pontius Pilate, but blamed the Gentiles _and_ the Jews
| for the death of Jesus. (And, in the next verse, state
| that this was all God 's will and plan.)
|
| Blaming the Jews _alone_ seems wrong. But so does blaming
| the Romans alone.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| The romans did the literal killing because Judea was a
| roman province, and therefore it was up to the Roman
| garrison to carry out the punishment.
|
| The people who *called* for the punishment were largely
| the Jewish Sanhedrin and people of the crowds.
|
| So if we're going to be pedantic, a more accurate
| statement would be "The Jewish people petitioned their
| Roman overlords to kill Jesus on their behalf".
| sigzero wrote:
| "Commentary" is extra-biblical and doesn't mean it is
| true or correct.
| wageslave99 wrote:
| I'm sorry but... what's your point? Is there anything you
| want to know about the Jews in Spain?
| ebiester wrote:
| I know we were taught about the pirate states of North
| Africa, especially with regards to the treaty of Tripoli in
| American history.
| elnatro wrote:
| [flagged]
| 36486907thrw wrote:
| [flagged]
| NoRelToEmber wrote:
| To add come crucial context the article deceptively chose to
| omit: the Alhambra decree was passed in 1492, the same year that
| Spain was liberated from seven centuries of Moorish conquest and
| colonization [1], during which it had been used as a literal
| source of Christian slaves [2]. That partly motivated the decree,
| as "Both Muslim and Catholic sources tell that Jews provided
| valuable aid to the invaders" [3].
|
| I was also surprised to see the article cite, as reason for
| opposing reparations for this decree, that it did not extend the
| same courtesy to the Moorish invaders - all without mentioning
| they were invaders, or that there had been any invasion or
| occupation. It even implores Spain to "reconcile with its past",
| when reconciliation with the past is what _brought about_ the
| Alhambra decree in the first place.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquista
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Spain#Slavery_in_Al...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Spain#M...
| bibanez wrote:
| I think history is a bit more complex than that. The article
| you link about slavery in Spain also tells that the Spanish did
| the same to the moors. Also, in 1492 Spain as such didn't
| exist. The Moors invaded the Visigoths! It was no more a
| rightful invasion that what the Visigoths themselves did when
| Rome fell. I see the reconquista as a very effective example of
| National Myth. I personally don't really agree with it.
| adolph wrote:
| Moore complexity: the Visigoths didn't necessarily invade
| Roman Gaul or Iberia but were resettled there after their
| time in Rome, which wasn't the Roman capital when they sacked
| it.
|
| _In 418, [Western Roman emperor] Honorius rewarded his
| Visigothic federates by giving them land in Gallia Aquitania
| on which to settle ... and eventually were invited into Spain
| by a Roman usurper in the autumn of 409 .... This was
| probably done under hospitalitas, the rules for billeting
| army soldiers. The settlement formed the nucleus of the
| future Visigothic kingdom that would eventually expand across
| the Pyrenees and onto the Iberian peninsula. That Visigothic
| settlement proved paramount to Europe 's future as had it not
| been for the Visigothic warriors who fought side by side with
| the Roman troops under general Flavius Aetius, it is perhaps
| possible that Attila would have seized control of Gaul,
| rather than the Romans being able to retain dominance._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visigoths
| NoRelToEmber wrote:
| > I think history is a bit more complex than that.
|
| I am introducing that complexity. It is the article that
| omitted it.
|
| > 1492 Spain as such didn't exist. The Moors invaded the
| Visigoths! It was no more a rightful invasion that what the
| Visigoths themselves did when Rome fell.
|
| So you should have no trouble or qualms justifying the
| colonization of the Americas or India using that same logic,
| correct? It's strange how fluid and complex identity is in
| some cases, but straightforward in others. The Alhambra
| decree wasn't passed by "Spain" either, but by Castile and
| Aragon, yet we have no trouble drawing a line between these
| entities, at least when we want to assign blame.
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(page generated 2023-06-27 23:02 UTC)