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Re:Berkeley Uses Optical Scanning to Recover Indigenous Voic... by pbhjpbhj on Thursday October 26, 2017 @07:30AM (#15557952)
At what point do you say "no one alive had anything to do with this, address things you can change"?

Racism won't ever cease to be a problem if we continue to say "your ancestors did this, so you can't do that" rather than just treating people as people.

Re:Berkeley Uses Optical Scanning to Recover Indigenous Voic... by SwellJoe on Thursday October 26, 2017 @04:25PM (#15562697)
"At what point do you say "no one alive had anything to do with this, address things you can change"?"

Well, we could maybe start thinking that way if it were true. The US government is still actively in violation of treaties, stealing land and resources on behalf of oil companies and other business interests. Indigenous people in the US face more discrimination, both systemic and cultural, than nearly anyone.

The notion that settler mistreatment of indigenous peoples is a distant memory, hundreds of years in the past, is just plain wrong.

Racism won't ever cease to be a problem if we continue to say "your ancestors did this, so you can't do that" rather than just treating people as people.

Stolen artifacts are sometimes returned to their country of origin. Is that wrong, just because a theft happened a long time ago? Archaeologists and anthropologists today will work with the governments and communities their work is about to ensure it is a respectful dialog rather than a theft of cultural resources. Are you saying that's not a good thing?

It is an incredible feat of mental acrobatics to call it "racism" to extend the same courtesy to indigenous peoples that is extended by anthropologists and archaeologists working anywhere else in the world to the peoples they study.

Re:Berkeley Uses Optical Scanning to Recover Indigenous Voic... by alphonsegaston on Thursday October 26, 2017 @10:51AM (#15559311)
When society reflects that kind of “people as people” equanimity you cite. This is certainly not the case for indigenous people today.
Re:Berkeley Uses Optical Scanning to Recover Indigenous Voic... by pbhjpbhj on Thursday October 26, 2017 @10:58AM (#15559388)
We'll never get there by saying "we're not there yet, so it's fine to discriminate on race/culture/nationality under _our_ terms, because we're doing it for the right reasons".

The whole concept of calling people wrong for cultural appropriation, for example, it's just racism. If you want to keep racism, then keep doing that.

Same here: "you don't have the right ancestry so you can't do this". It's racism. We can keep it; I'd rather not.

Re:Berkeley Uses Optical Scanning to Recover Indigenous Voic... by eesmith on Thursday October 26, 2017 @10:26AM (#15559057)
If only we had a profession which studied different cultures so we could get some idea of what it means to "treat people as people", instead of treating others as reflection of one's own culture.

Perhaps we could call it "anthropology", from "anthropo-" for "man, people, humanity" and "-logy" for "the study of".

Then we could let anthropology researchers figure out the best way to handle these sorts of issues.

Re:Berkeley Uses Optical Scanning to Recover Indigenous Voic... by pbhjpbhj on Thursday October 26, 2017 @11:14AM (#15559565)
Sorry my culture is that those, outside my culture, with smug arguments aren't allowed to respond negatively.

Retract your comment or prove you're wrong by maintaining it.

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Also, are you saying anthropologists would never intefere or contradict a distinct cultures wishes? I know that's not true.

We should let the rich decide who pays taxes too, as they have most experience of it, no.

Re:Berkeley Uses Optical Scanning to Recover Indigenous Voic... by eesmith on Thursday October 26, 2017 @01:01PM (#15560785)
Since it wasn't clear, my comment was to point out that anthropologists are likely to have a better idea of what it means to "treat people as people" than you do.
Re:Berkeley Uses Optical Scanning to Recover Indigenous Voic... by microcolonel on Thursday October 26, 2017 @10:54AM (#15559346)
> Perhaps we could call it "anthropology", from "anthropo-" for "man, people, humanity" and "-logy" for "the study of".

They might get a bit smug if we teach them a couple of Greek words.

They might start to think that their faeces are aosmic (ά- without, -οσμο odor).