re: #37 fizziks

We have no problem saying “Germany did this” and reparations were paid by Germany in spite of the fact that not all Germans had a hand in or supported the atrocities of the WW2 era.

And anyway, I disagree with your claim that A is just as much of a falsehood as B. Arabs DID start the African slave trade, Not all of them, but in the same way that we say “The Chinese invented gunpowder” we don’t mean every single Chinese person, it is perfectly reasonable and historical fact to say that Arabs started the African slave trade. However Jews did not start the African slave trade.

Germany is a state, doofus. A state can have obligations, an ethnic group cannot. Germany robbed and murdered Jews and other peoples, which is why it had to pay. You, however, didn’t identify any particular Arab state responsible for crimes (which would have been absolutely legitimate), but rather explicitly explained that you mean a particular ethnic group.

There is no analogy with “The Chinese invented gunpowder” whatsoever. The collectivist language is inherently suspect, but we overlook it in this case because inventing powder is not something negative. Saying “Chinese as a group murdered tens of millions of people and are therefore responsible” would be racist.