What is also very telling is Lemkin's belief h
that he transformed his personal disaster (he lost 49 members of his family during the Holocaust) into a "moral striking force." In his memoirs, Lemkin states, "Was I not under a moral duty to repay my mother for having stimulated in me the interest in Genocide? Was it not the best form of gratitude to make a "Genocide pact" as an epitaph on her symbolic grave and as a common recognition that she an many millions did not die in vain?"
Here, I assert that Lemkin had a tremendous burden and an incredible amount of nervous energy driving him to see that the atrocities of the Jews and other groups of minorities that were overtly targeted for destruction were recognized and that these episodes were prevented from occurring in the future. For Lemkin, and many others, the plight of Afro-Americans did not seem to match up in that the crimes against them did not stem from a pronounced plan initiated by the federal government to disable or destroy them as a people. However, the Civil Rights Congress presented a very different perspective in "We Charge Genocide." I have only seen statements being made by those who contested their evidence which denied U.S. government involvement in the acts that were committed as a result of a unified effort between local police, local politicians, judges, and vigilante groups to persecute and eliminate Afro-Americans. So my frustration and confusion lies within this strange manner of publicly criticizing the U.S. for remaining quiet about genocide that was taking place against the Jews but forgiving the U.S. government for remaining quiet about the torture and murder of Afro-Americans. And this strange manner of using increased population numbers to justify the crimes is also puzzling. Wouldn't it make more sense to examine the death rate of the group that has been victimized as compared to other groups than to take this blanket approach of examining whether their numbers are increasing overall? Nowhere in the U.N. defintion of genocide or in Lemkin's writings does it indicate that the rate at which a group rebounds should be used as a criterion to establish whether or not genocide has taken place?
No, I do not have the article Kristin! Thanks so much for your comments and the reference. Could you send it to me? I love that you pointed out the use of the term 'obviously'. I will use this quote. It appears that Lemkin, with plenty of support from others, was insistent that lynchings were individual assaults, as opposed to a structured, unified method used by hundreds of genocidal murderers to intimidate and destroy the spirit of an entire group of people. Thank you for your comment and your support.
ReplyDeleteJoya
On Thu, Apr 7, 2011 at 11:44 PM, Kristin Hutchinson wrote:
Kristin Hutchinson has left a new comment on your post "Lemkin's Moral Duty":
Hi Joya. First and foremost, thank you for your class presentation on Tuesday! I really enjoyed hearing about your project and love that you have integrated it with this informative blog.
Extending from your blog comments on Lemkin and your presentation, my comment is in reference to Lemkin and his stance on lynchings as evidence of genocide. I managed to come across a quote of his from an article I uncovered in the NYPL archives today (Reel 5). In this article, titled 'The UN Genocide Convention', Lemkin discusses the definition of genocide as defined by the convention. Lemkin writes,
"The above analysis shows that every act of genocide must be interpreted in light of a specific intent to destroy a nation, a race, or a religious group as such. Where such specific intent is lacking there is no genocide. Lynchings obviously are not within the scope of genocide because of lack of specific intent to destroy the respective group."
Now I have not read 'We Charge Genocide', but after your presentation in class, I know that this statement of his is a direct rebuttal to your argument. Given the severity of the murders and torturing of African Americans, I hope you will use this quote to enhance your paper's central argument and prove Lemkin wrong. I find it interesting that Lemkin wrote 'obviously' in his statement...it presents an interesting tone for his argument. As a class, I feel we've grazed the surface of Lemkin as a 'public relations strategist', so to speak. I'd love to hear you comment about his quote in your paper. Also, I can email you a copy of the article if you don't have it yet and would like to use it with your research.
Posted by Kristin Hutchinson to We Charge Genocide at April 7, 2011 8:44 PM