Spoke to a family member today. Talked about how I’m gonna write a student thesis on Wu Zetian, the only female emperor of China. Was promptly met with “but why not write about women like Margaret Thatcher? So many more references and much more recent!”
Cue me asking why I should study a known European figure rather than somebody more unknown (and more interesting imo) overseas? Family member goes on to tell me how “easy it was for medieval women overseas to gain power, they just had to marry their emperor husband!”, and how European history is so much more interesting and tragic and worth analysing because everything is so complex in Europe compared to those “primitive cultures.” Family member then jumps to how Europeans have invented EVERYTHING and how everybody else copies us (clothes, music, science) and Europe is the sole inventor of everything apparently. I get up and leave.
Apologies for the rant. Do y’all have any supporting words or advice on how to speak to these individuals? I thought I could post this here because I appreciate y’all’s anti-colonialist attitude, but do feel free to remove if it’s appropriate.
China was inventing paper, printing press, gunpowder, public exam system for government officials, straps that go across horse’s chest instead of their neck so you can attach a plow without choking them (europe would literally never figure this out until cars were invented), systematized formal philosophy, etc. while Europe was fucking sheep and living in mud and grass huts and dumping their shit into the street and ransacking more civilized people like the romans and ottomans. europeans are so warlike and barbaric they could not even stop from pillaging and enslaving each other in viking raids. Europe was a primitive literally shit covered backwater until the industrial revolution made textile production less lucrative for the ottomans. the first european king charlemagne was an illiterate warlord who could not even spell his own name. europeans literally did not believe in washing their hands, that was ‘moorish heathenry’ not for christians. european royalty would use dogs to lick their hands after meals, peasants would simply go filthy. europeans would wear flowers to cover the smell of shit and sweat and piss. europeans thought of chastity as a virtue, and in some communities in europe it was considered improper for a woman to ever bathe, to preserve her ‘chastity’ and ensure she was never sexually attractive to men. european vikings would wash their face and blow their nose in the morning, in/into a single tub of water, passed around one after the other, in order of seniority, without changing the water, much to the chagrin of Islamic travellers chronicling their disgusting hygiene. europeans did not have divorce, in many cases of legal marital dispute the man and woman were forced into marital duels with both stitched into leather suits (bearing a cross so you know its holy) and the man waist-deep in a pit with a club, the woman free to move and armed with a stone wrapped in her wedding veil (see below).
this family member is nothing short of an ignorant racist fool, a history channel watcher who, via dunning-kruger, thinks they are well informed and educated on history.
I would either be combative in that discussion and draw them out into untenable positions, e.g. asking them if they think that the advent of paper money or the invention of gunpowder or the printing press etc. were important to human civilisation before getting stuck into them about their ignorance or I’d just kill them with kindness and railroad the conversation into an opportunity to gush over Chinese history and overwhelm them with my passion and knowledge about the subject that it would leave their case for studying Margaret Thatcher instead looking rightfully threadbare by comparison. It would depend on my mood, how offensive they were being, and how important my relationship to them happens to be.
The alternative approach is to adopt the position that you do not need to justify yourself to anyone and replying with something like “Because I am interested in this” or “It’s okay to let people enjoy what they enjoy” or even simply a “No thanks”.
This is my method too. It kind of depends if the person just has “western exceptionalism” brainworms (because we are literally raised and schooled that way, even more so if they are older) or if they are outright racists because the former, if they give you a chance to speak and really listen, can be exposed and change their views. I’ve seen it happen. From my experience, many people in the Midwest live in this (90-95% white) bubble where they are untouched by anything outside their personal experience and wherever they get their information. And this person’s high school probably never taught world history, and if they even went to college they didn’t have a need or desire to take it. They don’t know what’s out there except through the lense of however their media decides to portray it. They don’t have the ability or desire to expand their worldview.
i can excuse the western chauvanism/rascism. But I draw the line at suggesting anyone study Margaret Thatcher
how European history is so much more interesting and tragic and worth analysing because everything is so complex in Europe compared to those "primitive cultures.
Thats just western chauvinism/ racism, you could mention how the east was more tech advanced than the west for centuries, or the islamic golden era, but i think their racial prejudice are just going to end in them going on a racist rant so i would just not talk to them
I wish I could tell you but I had a friend who really believed that “colonialism was about uplifting other cultures” and every conversation with her devolved into a fucking exhausting battle and I basically just gave up and haven’t talked to to her in a year now.
