Throughout time, humans have shown their strength by killing other humans because they feel superior. The term ‘genocide’ means the mass killing of a race, gender, ethnicity, or religion. One of the first major genocides was when the Spaniards committed atrocities against the Caribbean Indians and killed them, which lasted from 1429 until 1600. Genocide closer to home is that of the White Americans killing the Native Americans because they wanted land that the Indians had. Some humans believe that their religion or race gives them dominion over other humans ND that Justifies killing the people they believe to be inferior.
Many people assumed that Christopher Columbus was a hero for discovering the New World, though he was quite the opposite. Anyone familiar with Columbus treatment of Indians should see he is not a hero. When he arrived in the Caribbean, he bilked the Indians. He believed that because he was an educated rich white man from Spain, he has superiority over the Indians. He thought of the Indians of animals as Howard Zion states by saying, “… Then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships” (2). Columbus refers to the Indians as ‘specimens,’ therefore implying that they are not human, but something else.
Columbus suggests that his religion gives him the ability to kill the Indians because he writes, as stated in the Zion article, “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold” (2) A few hundred years later, President Andrew Johnson felt that Native Americans “… Neither [have] the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement… ” (Diamond 308) So the American people felt that Native Americans ere savages and the verdict was that they have to go.
So began the long process of driving Native Americans from their homelands and either placing them on reservations or forcing them to assimilate into American Society. When assimilation didn’t work, the American claim the Indians were Just being obdurate, so the president sent in the army to kill them outright. One of the most well-known genocides in history is the Holocaust. Anti-Semitism is the hatred of or the discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish religion or heritage, ND it was a common feeling through much of Germany until WI ended in 1945.
Doll Hitler and the Nazis ransacked their own country and any country under their control looking for Jews. Hitler believed that Jews were a problem to society and needed to be extinguished. Author Robert Historic acknowledges that Hitler believed Jews were a problem by saying: “At the heart of this seeming mystery lay a millenarian hallucinogens (worldview) which proclaimed that the Jews’ were the source of all evils – especially internationalism, pacifism, democracy, and Marxism… ” (4). Since he felt this way, Hitler stripped all the Jews rights and disenfranchised them.
Genocide because of religion has been going on for many millennia; it was even going on when the Roman Empire was flourishing. Most historians will agree that being a Christian in the Roman Empire was not an easy task. The rule was that “Christianity was punishable by death during this era, yet Genocide Throughout History By Northman sacrifice to the emperor or Roman gods” (National Geographic). Either way Christians would die for their beliefs. Genocide is not specific too certain race, it has occurred wrought many different races all around the world.
