this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2026
975 points (99.1% liked)
Microblog Memes
10185 readers
2722 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Pro tip for white people, because your colonizer indoctrination has made you blind to this:
No one that gets invaded by anyone ends up better than they started. Yes, that includes all the countries you've invaded too.
As a PoC who grew up in the West the colonizer indoctrination is directed at everyone here, not just white people. We're just more likely to decolonize our mindset due to attachment to communities negatively impacted by colonial institutions.
Pro tip for Americans* All children in American schools, no matter the race, are receiving colonizer indoctrination.
Have you even met any Americans? If you have, then you'd know this, if you are American .. then bless you, you haven't seen the world. This is purely a culture thing. There are actual Venezuelan immigrants in my state who are MAGA and are CHEERING for the takeover of Venezuela.
I legitimately thought this a while back. American indoctrination is sleepwalking people into being comfortable with autocracy.
I have an American coworker whose family are undocumented from the Philippines that overstayed their visa. He himself has no papers when he was brought here as a child, and right now is just a green card holder through his husband. He is constantly astounded that they are MAGA, but have no energy to deal.
Yes exactly. If that's all you know then of course it's right and normal. We are not taught everything and if we are, the US is always painted in a very positive light. The USA does no wrong and if it was wrong, it wasn't that bad. I'm sure you know the rest of the poem.
I generally agree, and I have the same mindset. So you can imagine how surprised I was when my Taiwanese friend told me how much better off Taiwan was after the Japanese occupation. Probably the only Asians with a positive opinion of Japan...
Their family probably came to Taiwan after the Japanese invasion.
Japan was notoriously brutal to the indigenous population, but most of the people in Taiwan came there in the civil war.
In fact, stamping out the indigenous culture has been an ongoing part of the post civil war Taiwanese government, and it's only recently that the Taiwanese language has been allowed to be taught in schools.
I guess it's only the case for the Mandarin-speaking population
To be fair, the Japanese occupation of Taiwan ended in 1945, so who knows what you're friend is basing that on.
He said his grandparents told him so
This completely misses the point and no one thought that.
Most Europeans and Americans believe this.
"If we just invade them and force them to adopt our ideologies for 80 years there will be so much natural progress.
And as payment for our contributions, we can monopolize all their their resources to our private companies where locals will work for near-slavery conditions."
You need to talk to some MAGA folk.
In the short run, no. In the long run, it depends.
Many countries that were colonized had absolutely terrible child mortality rates. Parents had to expect that a third of their children would die before they became teenagers. One in five didn't make it to one year old. Being colonized eventually brought medicine which reduced childhood mortality so parents didn't have to watch their children die.
How important that is depends on your point of view. Maybe you personally don't care much about your children dying, and having unspoiled nature is more important. If so, then maybe there are no major benefits to being invaded / colonized, even decades or centuries later.
For the folks that told me "no that isn't what people think" here you go. Hot fresh colonizer mindset, for your pleasure.
There you go, someone who is unwilling to actually think.
My friend from India said this once. The British are like when someone visits your apartment and they brought cake. Then proceeds to smash your TV and kill your grandma, and steal your safe. At least you have cake I guess.
Yeah, not particularly a good trade off.
The British might have killed grandma, but they also eventually shared medicine that ensured that junior didn't die.
In 1800, more than 1 in 2 children in India died before reaching 5 years old. From 1900 to 1915 it dropped from 535 deaths per 1000 to 332. By the time India gained independence it had dropped to 260.
I'm not arguing that colonization is wonderful. But, it tends to happen when a technologically advanced civilization encounters one that's technologically behind. The eventual result is that the less technologically advanced civilization has their technology level advance. One of the most dramatic results of that is that childhood mortality drops. Does that make you better off? In the modern world, most parents would say that the death of a child is one of the worst things that can happen in your life. Parents would do just about anything to avoid having that happen. Then again, in civilizations with high childhood mortality, there appears to be much less of a bond between parents and children, because parents don't invest emotionally as much in their children because they know they might die.
So, maybe from the perspective of an Indian in the 1800s, the colonization wasn't worth it. But, would a modern Indian be willing to go back to a pre-colonization lifestyle, not only with massive childhood deaths, but also with a rigid caste system, constant internal wars, etc.?
I find it telling that you don't think India would have figured out some of the issues without the British's "help" is pretty classic colonialist thinking. And without the British they would be back to "pre-colonial" times right now. That's wild.
And why do you keep going on about that one factor? It's barely relevant in modern times. Many uncolonized countries are also doing fine with their infant mortality rate, with or without colonization. Why? Because global medical collaboration, change in poverty rates, and higher education rates. Raising infant mortality rates is also to the benefit of the British. More people alive means more labor and resources, it was not from the goodness of their heart. If you have statistics comparing infant mortality rates of previously colonized VS uncolonized countries and that shows something of statistical significance, then we can talk.
Constant internal wars are part of a nation figuring it out. China had Warring States for hundreds of years before unifying. They did it without "help". I'm sure India would have been fine too without interference. I've heard the same brain dead logic that Aboriginal tribes were fighting amongst themselves anyways, so the British did them a favor too.
And I can tell you don't know anything about India's history because the British co-opted and greatly exacerbated the social effects of the caste system to their benefit. The rigidity made the people easier to exploit and govern, by dividing the people. Please read up on it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-48619734
This and the Hutus and Tutsis are prime examples of colonialists stirring the shit. That not only killed grandma, killed all her children, and grandchildren too.
Sometimes things are invented multiple times. But, typically it's hundreds of years between their invention. I find it telling that you somehow think that India, which was hundreds of years behind in technology, would have magically discovered that technology on their own without contact with more technologically advanced civilizations.
Because it's widely seen as one of the most important changes in human history.
Ah, ok. Figuring it out is good if it's your own people killing you. It's only bad if the person has white skin.
Please address all my points.
And here you go: https://www.eduresearchjournal.com/index.php/ijhars/article/download/82/75/192
Why do you think only white people had extensive medical knowledge. That's so ignorant.
Wow, very original rebuttal. Thank you. Sorry, I'll add it's also bad when the Japanese colonized parts of East Asia.
No.
Japan?
Nice
Has anyone ever said that racism is bad even when it's against white people? Just don't do it to anyone as we're all the same, and such?
Pro tip: just replace any color with a different color. If all of the sudden it sounds offensive to you, then it was offensive to begin with.
I now sincerely wonder how many people will come by to tell me that racism towards white people is fine because a group of white people were assholes, so we all must be assholes
The worlds tiniest violin has never stopped playing for the white folks subjected to what they think racism looks like.
And another "racism is okay if it's against the people I don't like" type
Make fun all you want, you know what you are
Taking someone else's yogurt out of the fridge and murder are both wrong, but I'm far more concerned about the addressing the latter than the former.
It doesn't say that it's right or okay, just silly to compare the two as if they're the same.
Yes, you're right, one thing is worse than the other, but they're still the same thing
Racism is racism.
You can't say you want racism to stop by making racist remarks. If you really want discrimination to stop, be it for race, color, gender, sex, preferences, whatever, then just stop being racist first. Stop it all.
You can't just be racist to other and say "well I'm justified, because your kind has treated me worse", because like that it'll never stop
What does it look like?
Even "women cannot become doctors"-Afghanistan?
Yes. Motherfuckering liberals still out here like, "We had to murder hundreds of thousands of your civilians to save you from yourselves," even about a project that (entirely predictably) ended in complete, abject failure and left everyone worse off except oil companies and arms dealers.
It's incredible how much this 1800s colonizer mindset lives on in modern day people.
Maybe the region would not have stalled their progress so much if they weren't invaded during colonization, cold war, and the US oil fetish.
So yes, even slightly browner people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_Afghanistan
That is the current reality of Afghanistan, yes? Is this before or after their most recent invasion by the West?
This is straight after the US left