Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It certainly sounds like that to me. If we are so bad why do so many people try to get in and so few try to get out? For some reason I hear all those things about the penning up of the Japanese but very few of those who are really worried were around on December 7, 1941. Those of us who were small children at that time were afraid of Japanese after that attack at Pearl Harbor.
I wasn't around then (I wouldn't be born for another 7 years)....but as a child I did know a couple of families who had spent time in relocation camps. The case of the internment of Japanese-Americans is certainly a black mark on history, but as you say, it didn't happen in a vacuum.
Japanese-Americans were a racial minority, of course; but it wasn't as simple as that. The attack on Pearl Harbor was particularly vicious and sudden. It was looked at as 'cowardly', not an honorable act of war. We were NOT at war with Japan when it happened. The Japanese military used 'suicide' as a tool (kamikaze pilots), and Americans believed that the Japanese people saw their emperor as a 'God'. Japan was a particularly terrifying enemy; and Americans were not altogether sure where the 'loyalties' of Japanese-Americans lay. These folks were 'removed' from the West Coast, which fully expected to be invaded. (On two occasions, Japanese incendiary bombs actually landed in California and Oregon). Big West Coast cities had mandatory 'blackouts' at night.
Today, we may see this all as hysterical 'overkill'. Japanese-Americans served honorably in the war, and little or no disloyalty was ever seen in the community. We had evacuated American citizens in a time of national crisis. (An interesting side-note is that thousands of Japanese-Peruvians were ALSO evacuated, by Peru, many ending up in camps in the US).
Crusty California Senator S I Hayakawa (Canadian-born of Japanese ancestry) once remarked that the relocation was a "good thing", forcing the JA community out of its segregation and into the American mainstream, decades earlier than might otherwise have happened. Of course, Hayakawa caught lots of 'flack' for that (he LOVED flack), and few of is would agree that it was a 'good' move.
This, however, ties in with my above notes about our society having a 'conscience'. There are LOTS of parallels with what happened with Japan on Dec 7, 1941, and what happened with fundamentalist Islam on Sept 11, 2001. And it's precisely our capacity for shame, and our revulsion for what "we" did to Japanese-Americans in 1941, that prevents us from even openly DISCUSSING Islamic terrorism today. From condemning an entire COMMUNITY unfairly in an earlier time, we've now reached a point that our concern for ANOTHER community prevents us from being able to even DISCUSS some pretty disturbing stuff going on right now. (Remember the Fort Hood massacre? Nobody "knows" what the guys' reasons were? Really?).
So there we have it...from the hysterical overkill in the past, our national 'conscience' has bothered us, and today we have hysterical 'underkill'. The pendulum swings.
We may not be the smartest society on earth, but I defy anyone to say we are a society who's not conscious of the 'wrongs' we've committed.
I can only wonder what your agenda might be by listing the United States as your #1 offender.
Exactly! The list is from 1800 to present so why only go back to 1800 if it's an historical list of the worst offenders......either make it a current list or make it an historical list but, don't limit it to no earlier than 1800. As many have already mentioned, there are plenty of other countries that could be on that list that still fall within the OP's criteria but, IMO it was an attempt to demonize America by choosing 1800 as the cut off date....it allowed the U.S. (because of the role slavery played in it's past) to be included on a list with four others countries that are either current or in comparison relatively recent, civil/human rights violators.
From 1800 to present, which countries would you say have/had the worse record for civil/human rights abuses against its own citizens?
My top 5:
1. United States: Civil Rights/Jim Crow Slavery against Black citizens
2. South Africa: Apartheid
3. Israel: Suppression of civil/human rights against Palestinian People
4. Australia: Civil Rights abuses against Indigenous Aboriginal People
5. China
I am not sure why we should be ashamed of anything considering we are now the world's most admired nation.
Are you saying that we shouldn't teach Civil Rights in school?
Sadly, slaves WERE considered a commodity; animals if you will. And I saw nothing in roysoldboy's post that even remotely suggested that we shouldn't teach civil rights in school. The civil rights movement most definitely should be taught in school to remind us of the great people who stood up and said "no more!" as well as to remind us of the error of our ways.
From 1800 to present, which countries would you say have/had the worse record for civil/human rights abuses against its own citizens?
My top 5:
1. United States: Civil Rights/Jim Crow Slavery against Black citizens
2. South Africa: Apartheid
3. Israel: Suppression of civil/human rights against Palestinian People
4. Australia: Civil Rights abuses against Indigenous Aboriginal People
5. China
Considering you have three liberal democracies and one nation that had a pretty horrible period (but not even the worst in region), this makes me think that you have an agenda.
Let's take a look at your list:
1) United States: Granted slavery and Jim Crow were nothing to be proud of and there is the less than stellar record with the Native peoples as well. But it should be noted that for most of its history, the US was arguably the nation with the most progressive human rights record. Most of Europe had far more extensive eugenics programs than the US ever implemented, slavery was far more widespread and had far worse conditions in places like Cuba, Colombia, and Brazil, and Canada's treatment of its Native peoples could be considered worse than America's. I'll also add the United States was the first modern country to actually include a human rights charter in its constitution.
2) South Africa: This one is not unreasonable and there is a very good case for it having a prominent spot. You had a type of segregation that was even more extreme than Mississippi circa 1950, you had the population forcibly stuffed into reservations (better known as "townships") that had horrible conditions, and even the white population was subject to censorship, detention without trial, and other human rights abuses. However, in spite of these tragedies, South Africa did actually have some of the highest standards of living for blacks in Africa (this is more a statement on the other countries than any praise for Apartheid era South Africa), it was semi-democratic and support of the system was by no means universal among the white population (remember that Apartheid ended because the majority of whites eventually became unhappy with the status quo and voluntarily removed it), and although it was racist and oppressive, at least it wasn't murderous; the irony is that being black in South Africa was less likely to get you killed than being black in Idi Amin's Uganda or Bokassa's Central African Empire or Mengistu's Ethiopia. Plus Apartheid only existed for about forty years, forty years too many, but hardly enough to earn it in the Top 5 of 1800-Present.
3) Israel: Israel is the only nation with a halfway decent human rights record in the Middle East and it actually has a really good human rights record if you only consider Israel proper. Let's see, it is is a liberal democracy, woman are equal under the law, Arabs are considered citizens (although since they are not subject to mandatory conscription, they generally do not get many of the same benefits that Israeli veterans receive, but they are still able to join the IDF), minorities like the Druze and Circassians and subject to the same set of laws as Jews, and so on. Can any country in the Middle East claim any of that? What about Jordan's record with the Palestinians (who were treated far worse in a shorter period of time) or Morocco's record in Western Sahara or Turkey's very similar record with the Kurds, and so on. Israel isn't the worst in the Middle East; it is the best.
4) Australia: I currently live in Australia (although I am not Australian) and I can tell you that Australia isn't bad in this regard. While I certainly disagree with much about this country and even despise a number of its laws, there is no secret police, there is no state sponsored racism, there are no death squads, people who mock politicians don't disappear, and there is hardly a public execution in sight. The treatment of the Aboriginals was horrific until roughly the 1900s when it just become disgusting. However, that doesn't even place it in the Top 20.
5) China: This one would be correct, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.
How about a few of these nations?
The USSR and any Eastern Bloc nation, Nazi Germany, North Korea, Democratic Kampuchea, Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan. That (sadly) is just a few off the top of my head.
Last edited by Frank_Carbonni; 01-01-2010 at 08:24 AM..
From 1800 to present, which countries would you say have/had the worse record for civil/human rights abuses against its own citizens?
My top 5:
1. United States: Civil Rights/Jim Crow Slavery against Black citizens
2. South Africa: Apartheid
3. Israel: Suppression of civil/human rights against Palestinian People
4. Australia: Civil Rights abuses against Indigenous Aboriginal People
5. China
That's your 5? Wow... just... wow...
You forgot:
USSR: Stalin killed millions of his own people
Germany: Umm... Jewish death camps?
Cambodia: See "The Killing Fields"
Afghanistan: See "Women's rights in Afghanistan"
China: From 1959-1963, around 30 million Chinese perished from man-made famine during "The Great Leap Forward"
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
