Plague Journal, Stain Removal
From this Thursday morning’s New York Times:
Biden plans to declare that the Ottoman killings of Armenian civilians during World War I were genocide. It could fray relations with Turkey, which rejects the designation.
This up-welling of truthful, coherent speech has been long in coming. No other president has was able to overcome the fear of losing Turkey as a US ally by speaking the truth. Atrocities were committed against the Armenians by the Ottoman empire. Large numbers of Armenian Turkish citizens were exiled into a desolate desert, abandoned there to die of starvation and exposure. Biden’s intention to ask for accountability is a stark contrast to the former occupant of the White House, whose speech was a litany of lies, a roundhouse denial of any correspondence between acts and spoken words.
Do you think the time has come for a official admission of our genocidal policy toward the indigenous peoples occupying this continent upon arrival of European settlers? What measures can be taken to make amends? Surely our society would be strengthened, by removal of this stain upon our body politic.
4 thoughts on “Plague Journal, Stain Removal”
The question of restitution for atrocities committed by one group of people against another is a very delicate matter and one that is fraught with unintended consequences. On one hand, the repercussions of things such as attempted genocide linger over generations creating a cultural ethos that stigmatizes the descendants of the victims. On the other hand, giving material goods and financial assistance to those who did not personally experience this trauma can actually exacerbate the stigma.
Germany has paid out billions of dollars to Holocaust survivors, but the vast majority of that has gone directly to those who personally experienced the horrors of “The Final Solution” as the Nazis called their attempts to exterminate the Jews.
I agree that owning up to the behavior of your culture is certainly a critical part of the healing process and yet so many countries continue to exist in a netherworld of denial. Turkey is certainly one of them as is Japan for what they did to Koreans, Chinese, and prisoners of war doing the 1940s. Cambodia, Rwanda, Darfur, along with Protestants vs Catholics and Sunnis vs Shiites are all in the recent past. Plus we have the ongoing horrifying issues with regard to Uighurs in China and the Rohingyas in Myanmar continuing unabated.
More than any restitution, our species must recognize the human toll of this kind of futile and incredibly cruel behavior. It begins with admitting the truth, but the policing of the world to extinguish genocide in whatever form it takes, must be the responsibility of all nations, regardless of the potential expression of interfering in the politics of sovereign nations. This aggression is not acceptable in the age of the global village and we must show that the wholesale destruction of any culture or ethnic population will not and can not be tolerated.
To make amends, is never to make up for lives taken, or the impoverishment of their children. At best any action would be a gesture to show the sincerity of any apology. Those in power are disingenuous to retain uncontested right of decision, their ability to reenact past actions at a future time.
And yes, a reeducation, an extended, reinforced consideration of the meaning of cruelty, futile short-term thinking is called for. What a shocking turn of affairs if the communist party in China were to cease and desist their brutality toward the Uighurs, and we our over policing and killing of Black citizens…
Thank you for your response. My sense is that there is a difference between the concerted efforts of a government to eradicate a minority and the effects of systemic racism we see in this country. As much as there are currently state legislatures that are enacting laws intent on suppressing the rights of minorities, there does not appear to be (at least with the current administration) a national program to deprive an entire subculture of their lives. Both are heinous, but at least the racism we witness in this country can be addressed whereas the genocidal actions of a government to wipe out an existing race becomes mob violence on an almost apocalyptic scale.
There is a distinction with a real difference, certainly. Citizens of color are not officially rounded up and forced to live in a security zone. Yet this is lost on Black families who have lost members on account of tacit permission for police who are agents of the state to respond with deadly force to persons of color. We’d be naive not to recognize that the last administration would have doubled down on racist policies if by hook or crook, it had remained in power. State power is so distributed, — there’s no longer a Bastille for the dispossessed to storm. Racism can be addressed IF those in power have the will and the patience for the task.