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.
No comments:
Post a Comment