Germany didn’t end the Holocaust — Americans and Russians did. Germany would be burning jews today if they had one.

America DID end slavery — and fought a bitter war to do it. Plus, millions of whites have battled since then for civil rights.

So Germany built some monyment?

Big deal — they didn’t stop killing jews — they were stopped by others.

If you want some stupid meaningless monumment – go build one. We have monuments about ending slavery. Take a look at Gettysburg, take a look at Lincoln’s Memorial.

Here’s the thing, man: to some people, this issue runs deep. There are people who are going believe that the U.S. is the worst country on earth, and compare us to every other repressive regime that exists or ever existed. And, from someone who did serve, it does get tiring to hear after a while.

But, regardless of how you or I feel about people bashing our country, the things that dna outlines did happen (had to look at the numbers myself this morning). You make a point; we shouldn’t be beholdened to the past. I agree. That doesn’t mean, however, that we can just completely write it off.

Well, Robert E. Lee and other Confederates were racist. Yet there’s no shortage of monuments to them. Exhibit A is Stone Mountain, Georgia.

I know, D., I know; racism is merely a state of mind, and it’s only as effective as the degree to which we let it bother us … yadda, yadda, yadda.

I think you’re missing the point of the monuments. They’re not just for the dead and the living who are related to them, they are for the Germans. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, and so the Germans are determined to remember, rather than rationalize.

Also, I understand the “genocide is counterproductive to slavery” argument but you haven’t really addressed the fact that the Middle Passage was ultimately responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people. The fact that the system was set up to preserve some for labor does not discount the outright unbelievable number of people who were murdered. Your argument is not unlike someone saying the Holocaust wasn’t “genocide” because the Nazis didn’t actually succeed, or because they used the Jews for slave labor and they were therefore a vital part of the German Economy. It’s why you’ll never see me buy a Volkswagen or a Mercedes.

In this context, genocide applies as the only appropriate word to describe the SCALE of death, both in the Holocaust and the Middle Passage.

ps. As far as the black experience in nazi germany, Hans Jurgen Massaquoi’s autobiography (the title in German is “Neger, Neger, Schornsteinfeger”) about growing up black in nazi germany is good.

pps. Yes, Germany was conquered, and this has something to do with the way they deal with history, but it wasn’t until the social upheavals of the sixties that German society really came to grips with the past. The idea that they learned all of this at gunpoint from the American military is not entirely correct. Austria and Japan, for instance, also committed atrocities during WWII, were also conquered, but are much more “American” about their past.

ppps. Another interesting historical tidbit: America never protested the Nurnberg Laws because they were in large part lifted from Jim Crow legislation.

“Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

“Except as a punishment for a crime…” means slavery is legal for criminals. Private prisons are one of the fastest growing businesses in Amerikka.

Prison labor? The war on drugs aka the war on black people? Black incarceration rates? Understand?!

Would you apologize for something that you were still perpetrating?

D, you need get a grip and read the Genocide Convention of 1948:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Any questions?

This is one of the great reasons this country is falling from its perch of “super power” due to its arrogance that the so called leaders and citizens have.

The past is alive and well in the present due to slavery, and, its not going away becase people don’t want to admit it was wrong.

I’ll put down some euros betting Germany will erect a monument for African-AMERICAN slavery before America does, just to show us up.

Not only is America’s DNA programmed to forget past exploitation, but we as black people, separate from any official national/gov effort, have yet to fully acknowledge the pain and impact of a system like slavery.

We have emerged from a brutal phase in an ongoing abusive relationship, and we haven’t begun to process it in a healthy way.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2170159,00.html

I get the feeling we will see that German monument before any type of effort to come to terms with the history of slavery in America.

america would prefer that people forget.

more needs to be done regarding slavery.

Seriously, I find it fascinating that Germany, as a country, posseses the humility to erect monuments to those people they killed, and that includes Jews. I think an earlier poster failed to realize that the monuments to Jews ALREADY exist in Germany, they were referenced indirectly in the article.

Further I disagree that slavery could not be classififed as genocide because outright killing of slaves would be counterproductive to slavery. Counterproductive or not, many of those taken as slaves perished on the way to America and/or on the way to their final destination due to neglect starvation and poor treatment. The slave trade decimated whole villages and tribes back in Africa. The slaves that did survive the journey were so brutally treated that many died unnatural and early deaths.

Contrary to assertions that the point of holding slaves was to hold them and not to exterminate them, most american slave owners were so violently cruel and inhumane in their treatment of slaves that they inspired both England and Canada to outlaw slavery long before America. Further American slaveholders treated slaves as the original “renewable resource”, there was no care taken not to damage the merchandise – not when there was an entire continent of replacements to be had back in Africa.

It is estimated that as many as 4 to 6 million Africans taken for the slave trade died. Given that slavery was based on the notion that the color of our skin was reason enough to assume our subhumananity and to enslave us I don’t know what else you could call slavery but a systematic destruction of a race or culture. In my dictionary that spells genocide.

I think the argument only proves the point the author was trying to make in the first place. In this Country many find it easier to downplay the severity of slavery and the following jim crow oppression than to face the real consequences of such actions and the lingering effects. Its easier to make theoretical, academic and technical arguments than it is to take a good long hard look inward and challenge cherished beliefs about the structure of our society and how it came to be.

Your spirit is the essence of who you are as a human being. Without it, you’re an empty vessel existing only for the purpose and pleasure of someone or something other than yourself.

A slave owner could no more have their slave possessing a sound mind and spirit, any more than you can tolerate your dog not recognizing you as its master.

And you still didn’t answer the question: what do you call the systematic killing of the minds and spirits of millions of Black Africans?

If you take a look at the Holocaust, Jewish national identity-”spirit,” if you will-was essentially formed out of that event. Their identity wasn’t killed off; if anything, it was born FROM an attempt at genocide.