Re: Is white racism nec. all bad?
Donald Edwards (warrl@blarg.com)
2 May 1995 23:27:03 -0700
Robert Hartman (hartman@informix.com) wrote:
"As it turns out, this week is the 50th Anniversary of the liberation
"of the Nazi death camps.
They all got liberated in the same week?
Without meaning to cast aspersions on the significance of the events...
I suspect that they were a bit more spread out.
" In a class I'm taking on social implications of
"psychology, we said a remembrance for the dead and the survivors of
"the holocaust.
"Afterward, I insisted that we remember the other genocides in the
"Century: the Poles, Gypsies, homosexuals, and political prisoners
"in the camps, the Kulaks in Russia (I didn't remember the Ukranians),
"the Cambodians (I also didn't remember the Cultural Revolution in
"China, nor the rape of Nanking). Other people mentioned the Kurds,
"the Somalians, the Rwandans, the Bosnians, the Armenians, and the
"Native Americans.
Wrong century, on that one. Still a tragedy, though.
" (I could probably add the Angolans, the
"Salvadorans and Guatemalans, and victims of all the "low intensity"
"conflicts in Latin America.)
"My point in doing so was to remind us that if we only remember the
"Jews, we haven't learned a thing. We cannot stand idly by while
"genocide takes place. We must do what we can to put a stop to it
"wherever the temptation may arise.
"And the most effective way to stop it is to stop scapegoating other
"people. Hitler could not have succeeded if people had bothered to
"shout back that Jews were people too. Nor could he have succeeded
"if people had recognized that targeting their anger at someone else
"doesn't help. It only makes things worse.
"Expressing one's anger is one thing. Calling other people names is
"quite another.
Not necessarily.
Calling a *class* of other people names, is something quite different
and quite unnecessary.
However, quite often there are specific individuals or small groups
(legislative bodies) which are responsible for specific problems.
Calling them names seems like a natural place to start...
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