Sunday, August 7, 2022

Court Scientist, Niel deGrasse Tyson, On European Colonialism (a Recent Tweet)

"European colonial history in six words - 'Is that Yours? It's mine now.'"............This is quite a touchy subject for me (my long time readers know this already but for the newer ones......). a) The fool implies that white Europeans are the only "tribe" in history to engage in this type of behavior (ignoring completely Xhosa against Khoikhoi and San, Zulus against multiple tribes, Comanches against Apaches, Muslims against Hindus in India, Mongols against Kievan Rus', Ottoman Turks against Armenians, Sioux against Crow and Ojibwa, and Maori against Moriori, to name a few) and b) he's also operating under this low-information notion that European colonialism was uniformly negative (ignoring the fact that white Europeans brought infrastructure, medicine, economic growth, education, trade, reliable energy, agriculture, an end to slavery, the provision of material requisites to establish self-government and in many cases to prevent extinction, etc.). I mean, I get it that the guy's more of a celebrity than a scientist these days but to leave himself so wide open to refutation, quite surprising, I thought. 

No comments: