(edited 8/16/20)
...to which I reply "WTF is wrong with you?"
Of course, he's Flemish, so that should be a good enough reason, right?
Not by a long shot.
St. Damien was not a "colonizer." He was not an oppressor. Say what you will about Europeans in Hawaii at the time in general, but St. Damien was there to serve the leper colony that lived on that island. He eventually contracted leprosy himself and died there.
Not denying that colonization happened, or that it brought trouble with it. But St. Damien was amongst those who were trying to take some responsibility for and mitigate the harm done, and made the ultimate sacrifice--whether that's good enough or not, it's the most anyone can be asked to do. He didn't drive Europeans out of Hawaii like St. Patrick and the snakes of Ireland, but the lepers would still be suffering from leprosy whether or not white men were still around.
If your woke anti-colonialism won't permit someone to do that much, then most of the Woke Left needs to sit down, shut up, and think about how your life got to a place where your outrage justifies erasing history but not actually alleviating the pain of people you claim to care for, because they're not doing anybody any more good than that.
Yeah, yeah, he taught Catholicism. He was still instrumental--biases in Western reporting against indigenous contributions to these efforts notwithstanding--in improving the life of people in the Molokai colony. He dressed lepers' ulcers, helped build homes and schools, organized farms. I know this still constitutes impurity of action to the Woke, but I don't see the Woke doing even this much good. Just some symbolic gesture so inflammatory that it is counterproductive.
You're being behalfist over the Hawaiians. Being disrespectful to their beliefs is othering and infantilizing. And all your Marxist-derived critical theory is European, anyway--didn't you realize Marx was an old white German man who abused his family and domestic staff? Knowing that, shouldn't you be asking if his class warfare theories are just some next-level patriarchy that is merely hiding behind Wokeness?
Of course, he's Flemish, so that should be a good enough reason, right?
Not by a long shot.
St. Damien was not a "colonizer." He was not an oppressor. Say what you will about Europeans in Hawaii at the time in general, but St. Damien was there to serve the leper colony that lived on that island. He eventually contracted leprosy himself and died there.
Not denying that colonization happened, or that it brought trouble with it. But St. Damien was amongst those who were trying to take some responsibility for and mitigate the harm done, and made the ultimate sacrifice--whether that's good enough or not, it's the most anyone can be asked to do. He didn't drive Europeans out of Hawaii like St. Patrick and the snakes of Ireland, but the lepers would still be suffering from leprosy whether or not white men were still around.
If your woke anti-colonialism won't permit someone to do that much, then most of the Woke Left needs to sit down, shut up, and think about how your life got to a place where your outrage justifies erasing history but not actually alleviating the pain of people you claim to care for, because they're not doing anybody any more good than that.
Yeah, yeah, he taught Catholicism. He was still instrumental--biases in Western reporting against indigenous contributions to these efforts notwithstanding--in improving the life of people in the Molokai colony. He dressed lepers' ulcers, helped build homes and schools, organized farms. I know this still constitutes impurity of action to the Woke, but I don't see the Woke doing even this much good. Just some symbolic gesture so inflammatory that it is counterproductive.
You're being behalfist over the Hawaiians. Being disrespectful to their beliefs is othering and infantilizing. And all your Marxist-derived critical theory is European, anyway--didn't you realize Marx was an old white German man who abused his family and domestic staff? Knowing that, shouldn't you be asking if his class warfare theories are just some next-level patriarchy that is merely hiding behind Wokeness?
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