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It's irrelevant even if it's true. Colonization is being argued as inherently immoral.
Yes. It is relevant, however, in the context of demanding reparations and other forms of coercive political action as remedy. Without proving that colonisation is the reason for the poor state of any given population of people it's about as pertinent to anyone's present plight as the Norman Conquest.
One can easily make the case that reparations are owed one way or another for the original act of victimization and that whatever happened to the victim afterward is irrelevant to the matter. If someone kidnapped you and turned you into a slave for 10 years but while enslaved you spent more time than before reading books and so after you escaped you became richer than you had been before I kidnapped you, it would not invalidate the argument that the person who kidnapped you owes you something.
Given that both colonists and colonised are all dead now, who would be paying the reparations to who?
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So ... that's a "yes chad" to the question of Norman Conquest reparations? If so, there's going to be a long line behind the Anglo-Saxons.
Perhaps a statute of limitations of mere decades isn't the best idea, but isn't punishment at least a little tricky if you and the person who kidnapped you have both been dead for a century or two? We tend to laugh at the idea of posthumous execution in modern times, but that at least seems more just than "take it out on the great grandkids".
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Firstly, your hypothetical isn't exactly analogous to the situation under discussion, since in your hypothetical it is not the act of victimisation that directly caused the richness of the slave, whereas when it comes to colonialism it was what the colonisers did which ended up improving health and living standards (and it did so while the colonisation was happening, which is yet another dissimilarity to your hypothetical).
Secondly, in line with your stated moral principles, I hope you are in favour of Arabs compensating the Assyrians and approx 50 other ethnic groups for the 7th century Muslim conquest of the Levant. Or hey, as mentioned, the Norman Conquest of 1066. According to this article people with Norman surnames today are overrepresented at Oxbridge and elite occupations like medicine, law and politics. Reparations sure seem to be in order.
Alternatively, we could let bygones be bygones, instead of demarcating a special class of victims and making grievance inheritable. But that's just what my preference regarding public policy is, as a person who grew up in a post-colonial country themselves.
I believe that @Goodguy is arguing not that reparations should be paid, but rather that, if an act is immoral, the fact that victims ultimately benefited from that act does not imply that the perpetrator is immune from responsibility for that act. To change their hypothetical very slightly: " If someone kidnapped you and turned you into a slave for 10 years but while enslaved [taught you to read] and so after you escaped you became richer than you had been before [they] kidnapped you, it would not invalidate the argument that the person who kidnapped you owes you something."
My comment was specifically created to address the arguments of people demanding reparations. I appropriately scoped my point for making the claims I did in my original comment: "This is not necessarily a case in favour of colonialism and colonial policy, but if someone wants to claim that whites should feel some sort of endless historical guilt for the plight of third-world countries today and subject themselves to a system of racial reparations, they’ve got another thing coming." As a result, any supposed "counter" to my original point which is not related to the discussion of reparations is attacking a point which I did not make. I would also add that I do not necessarily believe colonisation was moral, but I also do not believe responsibility for colonisation is inherited, and thus the hypothetical still fails. The way people argue for intergenerational guilt is to claim that the effects of colonisation still persist, but if negative effects attributable to colonisation aren't demonstrated, that argument isn't an effective counter.
Furthermore, I would also dispute your characterisation of the reply to me. The argument that was being forwarded by my interlocutor was that reparations should, in fact, be paid. To quote: "One can easily make the case that reparations are owed one way or another for the original act of victimization." The user's other comment in this thread is also pretty clearly forwarding a case for it.
EDIT: added more
I see the key part of that quote as "one way or the other."
Regardless, it does seem to be that the argument that reparations are unjustified because "the colonized benefited from colonization" does not really address the argument that colonization was an inherent wrong (an argument, BTW, which which I completely disagree: As far as I am concerned, it is an argument manufactured (or adopted, since it is really a Western idea) by local elites and foisted upon the hoi polloi; it is essentially, "Your oppression by outsiders is immoral! It is we who should be oppressing you!"). Arguments re inheritance of responsibility are much stronger, in my view.
If reparations are owed "one way or the other", that's still arguing in favour of reparations in some form regardless of whether the colonised benefited or not.
Sure, but as already noted my original comment wasn't really meant to address that argument, since even if it is true, arguing that colonisation was an inherent wrong doesn't in and of itself justify guilt let alone reparations because often the people responsible are dead. To adapt the hypothetical a little bit, if my grandfather kidnapped your grandfather and enslaved him but taught him to read, and so after he escaped he became richer than he would've been had he not been kidnapped, this could be argued to be a moral wrong. Nevertheless, I think it would be unfair for you in the present day to claim grievance and demand that I take responsibility for the actions of my grandfather because he committed a moral wrong. In the case of colonisation, it's even worse because a whole nation of people is implicated regardless of whether they even have any ties to those at fault. It's the worst form of guilt by (involuntary) association.
As a pedantic note - this hypothetical ignores that it's also the case that colonisation improved health and living standards while the colonisation was happening and in some cases had legitimacy via the support of locals, whereas in this hypothetical the slavery probably resulted in a loss in life quality and improvements came only after it ended, but it demonstrates the point that even if you make that concession it doesn't change much.
Yes, I agree completely. Local elites do also tend to like blaming the West for the state of things, instead of placing the blame where it belongs (since said elites and officials are often in fact responsible for the myriad issues in their communities and countries). I think this is an aspect of the public discourse that actually hurts people in these countries, instead of helping them, and the culture of guilt in the West really only helps foster and intensify it.
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