Not a simple topic- and this sort of steps right in it. I mean- does it really matter if it is white Americans or anyone else saying it? It doesn’t matter if it’s a traffic cop or your gardener- if a stop sign is red and they say it is red- who is saying it doesn’t change the facts.
On the topic of complexities- stating at home has little to do with anything. If you work in your home country loading bombs on planes or building ships for a foreign invasion are you not part of the invasion because you never left home? Just because ones ancestors didn’t migrate to a colony doesn’t mean they didn’t work in politics or business or administration or any of the other fields that would be directly or even indirectly involved in colonization.
Most of the world has a lot of names for America- but most of us have never bombed another country or visited a sweat shop or interfered in a foreign government or any such thing- yet we are under the flag and we benefit none the less by and large no?
I’d say the majority of Americans don’t have a problem admitting that our country has done or is doing some messed up things. But of course ultimately it is semantics. It is inaccurate to say “Europeans are colonizers” because not Al Europeans and not even all European countries can be said to have directly or even indirectly participated in colonization, and we can quibble over who even is considered European both historically or in the modern sense. Of course colonization and conquest and such are found through human history across cultures and geography by almost any and all peoples who had the stability and technology to do so. So the semantics of course is that the statement is largely general- that through “modern history” the general region of Europe and those in it were known to be the most prolific colonizers and due largely to the time period and circumstances are one of the most wide spread and extensive regions to do so since antiquity. The fact this all happened relatively
recently and that European colonization shaped- perhaps even made the modern globe and world we live in is another factor.
The United States has had a profound place in the technology and culture and economics etc. Of the globe in the 20th and early 21st centuries and exists due to European colonialism. The scale and scope of the Atlantic slave trade and the Caribbean etc etc. and the subsequent impacts those have had is also directly linked to European colonialism. The geopolitics and socioeconomics of Africa and “the Middle East” are all heavily tied up in European colonialism. The “modernization” of Japan, their emergence from isolation, the creation of communist China, related events etc- all linked directly to European colonialism.
So it is very difficult to discuss the modern world and its history without European colonialism coming to the foreground, and of course simply looking at much of the world or living there will often provide reminders. So no- not all Europeans participated in colonialism and to call Europeans colonialists is not accurate- although of the 61 colonies or territories remaining in the world- almost all of them belong to European countries or countries that are tied in administration to European nations or countries that were themselves once European colonies. So I mean- even if one or their ancestors did not actively create or migrate to a colony, that does not mean that one did not or is not currently participating in or propagating colonizing.
So yes. It can be complicated.
On the topic of complexities- stating at home has little to do with anything. If you work in your home country loading bombs on planes or building ships for a foreign invasion are you not part of the invasion because you never left home? Just because ones ancestors didn’t migrate to a colony doesn’t mean they didn’t work in politics or business or administration or any of the other fields that would be directly or even indirectly involved in colonization.
Most of the world has a lot of names for America- but most of us have never bombed another country or visited a sweat shop or interfered in a foreign government or any such thing- yet we are under the flag and we benefit none the less by and large no?
The United States has had a profound place in the technology and culture and economics etc. Of the globe in the 20th and early 21st centuries and exists due to European colonialism. The scale and scope of the Atlantic slave trade and the Caribbean etc etc. and the subsequent impacts those have had is also directly linked to European colonialism. The geopolitics and socioeconomics of Africa and “the Middle East” are all heavily tied up in European colonialism. The “modernization” of Japan, their emergence from isolation, the creation of communist China, related events etc- all linked directly to European colonialism.
So yes. It can be complicated.