Coronavirus: We Still Charge Genocide
The racist disparities in coronavirus cases and deaths are genocidal
After the Nuremberg trials, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Genocide Convention on December 9, 1948.
At least one part of the definition of genocide applies to the racist disparities in coronavirus cases and deaths:
“Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
In 1951, the Civil Rights Congress presented to the United Nations the petition, “We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People.”
The petition named a motive for America’s genocide against Black people—profit. And today, the motive hasn’t changed, but it has increased. While coronavirus spreads, Pope Francis said putting the economy before people could lead to a “viral genocide.” We’re there.
America has always put the economy before people.
And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is right: “COVID relief should be drafted with the lens of reparations.”
Black people should deliberately and liberally get more of everything. White America deliberately inflicts on Black people the conditions of life calculated to bring physical destruction—which is genocide.
That the coronavirus fatalities among Black people come from racism is an explanation. That the coronavirus fatalities among Black people amount to genocide is an exclamation. White America hates Black people.
For those weary from lamentations because they long for practical talk, there it is—this is practically genocide. Let all responses start from there. Match the charge.
Each year, between April and July, people solemnly remember the Rwanda genocide of 1994.
And America shouldn’t get a pass on remembering its genocides, especially because they haven’t ended.
In his book, “Why We Can’t Wait,” Dr. King wrote, “Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race.”
Then Dr. King later said this in his speech “The Other America”:
“In the final analysis, racism is evil because its ultimate logic is genocide. Hitler was a sick and tragic man who carried racism to its logical conclusion. And he ended up leading a nation to the point of killing about six million Jews. This is the tragedy of racism because its ultimate logic is genocide.
If one says that I am not good enough to live next door to him, if one says that I am not good enough to eat at a lunch counter, or to have a good, decent job, or to go to school with him merely because of my race, he is saying consciously or unconsciously that I do not deserve to exist.”
White racism and whiteness are genocidal.
The hashtags on Twitter #TrumpGenocide and #GOPGenocide seem appropriate, but white racism and whiteness are genocidal. If the first word owns the genocide, if the first word started the genocide, if the first word sustains the genocide, if the first word is complicit in the genocide—this is white genocide. This is more of the real white genocide.
Whites, to include white millennials, repeatedly say they’re against reparations, they say they’re terrified of a more diverse America, and they blame Black people for racist disparities.
Those are genocidal thoughts. Those are genocidal thoughts showing up in public opinion polls. And white America’s genocide against Black people won’t stop because whites finally agree it should. With the masses of whites, polling and persuasion are pointless.
We can’t wait. This requires force—the force of the law, and the law enforced. Most whites don’t want to change racism’s ultimate logic, and they never will.
They’ve had chances. They shouldn’t get choices.
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