> There have been comments in a couple of threads recently to the effect
> that
> the Rwandan mass killings was not "racist". I don't really understand
> how
> such statements can be justified. The only reason I can perceive for
> such
> comments would be that both the Tutsis and Hutus were black Africans.
> But
> racism _rarely_ relies on something as overt as difference in skin
> colour.
> They were and are different ethnic groups and that is all it takes for
> racist ideology and for violence to occur. Perhaps I'm missing
> something?
The concept of "race" being a completely invented one in the first place, it includes skin color to some people and doesn't for others. Look at what the Nazis did with it: non-whites were of course non-Aryan (except for the Japanese, etc.), but Jews who looked more "Nordic" than the "Nordics" were exterminated. Europeans who might have "looked Jewish," but were fortunate enough not to have "Jewish blood" in too many of their ancestors veins -- no problem. Slavs were a category of their own, but who exactly belonged to it?
As you suggest, the important thing is people dividing human beings up into groups and exercising violence on other groups than their own. What ridiculous categories they make up to "justify" the violence is a completely arbitrary matter.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A gentleman haranguing on the perfection of our law, and that it was equally open to the poor and the rich, was answered by another, 'So is the London Tavern.' -- "Tom Paine's Jests..." (1794); also attr. to John Horne Tooke (1736-1812) by Hazlitt