this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2024
194 points (93.3% liked)

Funny: Home of the Haha

5641 readers
626 users here now

Welcome to /c/funny, a place for all your humorous and amusing content.

Looking for mods! Send an application to Stamets!

Our Rules:

  1. Keep it civil. We're all people here. Be respectful to one another.

  2. No sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia or any other flavor of bigotry. I should not need to explain this one.

  3. Try not to repost anything posted within the past month. Beyond that, go for it. Not everyone is on every site all the time.


Other Communities:

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Well that's the problem isn't it? If the knowledge exists but it isn't as widespread as anything else, it is much more likely to become the accepted "discovery point" of something.

While I think its rather unlikely for the idea of Belgians being the inventors of chocolate becoming widely accepted as fact by the people who matter when ruling on discoveries, it isn't that much of a stretch to see why it's "whites" who are listed as the discoverers of things since they're the ones who had the power to make it a reality.

I'm not advocating for the stance that "well, the Europeans won so they should get to be listed as discoverers of things," but on a certain level that is the unfortunate reality of the situation for many things: Europeans conquered and smashed their way (whether on purpose or accidentally) into being listed as the discoverers of many things. If the records of X thing existing didn't exist until the Europeans cataloged (stole) it, there isn't much to be done in changing that reality without concerted efforts by people to change that.

Overall, I think we've taken a lot of steps in rectifying that situation, but its a difficult process to complete, especially when it comes to oral histories.

I will also note that the hostility isn't really productive. I don't think anyone who is interested in this topic is terribly likely to have some hatred of the natives who were likely aware of things before Europeans, so to immediately act with hostility only really serves to hurt the cause of spreading awareness about the discoveries of indigenous people.