Friday, October 4, 2013

Modern Day Nazis








       Reading Naimark’s Fires of Hatred: Nazi Attack on the Jews, reminded me of several things from police today and their jurisdiction, minorities and discrimination, and people with guns in Chicago. These topics led me to the title “Modern Day Nazis.” Naimark explained how basically after the Nazis came into power, they could do whatever they wanted to the Jews and they did. This brings me to my first kind of modern day Nazis, which are the police. One issue in America today is whether or not “stop and frisk,’ is constitutional or not. In New York, 90% of men who are stopped and frisked were black and Latino, although they only comprise roughly 28% of the city’s population. Growing up in my neighborhood on the south side of Chicago, I have seen a fair amount of stop and frisk among black men simply because they are walking down the street which is a normal day activity. I believe that police officers can be viewed as modern day Nazis, because just as the Nazis felt the Jews were a threat, police feel that minorities are a threat, and every chance they get, they will stop and frisk you whether deemed unconstitutional or not.
       As far as minorities and discrimination go, Naimark talked about the “Nazi Ideology.” According to this ideology, the Jews posed a threat to the well-being of European nations and German men, women, and children. As a solution, Hitler wanted policies that would force the Jews out of Germany and Europe. Hitler wanted the Jews somewhere isolated, economically unstable, and lacking natural resources. This reminded me of a reading in Rethinking the Color Line called Residential Segregation and Neighborhood Conditions in U.S. Metropolitan Areas by Douglas Massey. Here Massey discussed hypersegregation and how it is problematic because it isolates a group from opportunities and resources. Another reading that ties into this is Environmental Justice in the 21st Century: Race Still Matters, by Robert Bullard.
       Bullard talked about how the dominant society (the government) made decisions to put people of color at risk by surrounding their communities with hazardous landfills, resulting in their neighborhoods becoming sites to other unwanted businesses, causing property value to decrease and increase disinvestments to these neighborhoods. The government can be seen as modern day Nazis, because just like the Nazis wanted to make sure the Jews had the lowest quality of life, the government made it hard for minorities to be able to advance in society. Last on the list, people in Chicago with guns. They do not necessarily have the same power as the Nazis, but they have the same killing tendencies as the Nazis. During the last stage, and I quote from Naimark, “The Jews were brought in groups of 500, separated by at least 1.2 miles, to the place of execution.” Although everybody who gets shot in Chicago does not die too many shootings are happening. It has been proven that more people have been shot and killed in Chicago than in the war in Iraq and the number rises as things like 13 people get shot in a park or over 50 people get shot in a weekend. Needless to say, we are all surrounded by different aspects of modern day Nazis.



http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/chicago-murders-top-afghanistan-death-toll/

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