A Post Driven by My Classroom Discussion of Ethnocentrism

This is one of my posts to my class today regarding ethnocentrism:

 

In 2009, there was a news story about how Congress was debating whether or not to pass a resolution telling Turkey that the Armenian genocide that took place in 1915 was, in fact, genocide and a crime against humanity. The debate centered around several things. I don't think that anyone in Congress really believed that this was NOT genocide, but to a degree that is speculation on my part. I would guess that the debate about whether or not to tell Turkey in a formal resolution that a bad thing happened there over 90 years ago is actually driven by concerns over access to Turkish air space and military staging areas for U.S. military maneuvers in the Middle East, especially in Afghanistan.

Now, to keep this relevant to the discussion of ethnocentrism, why is it so important to put it out there and state, without equivocation, that the Holocaust was genocide, that the KKK committed race-based crimes, that what happened in 1915 in Armenia was ethnocentristic genocide? The debate I mentioned above was also driven by the idea that to turn a blind eye to radical ethnocentrism is to empower it and allow it to continue in the future. I am absolutely certain that is continuing in various places in Africa and other locations worldwide, even in places that consider themselves to be civilized by some definition of their own choosing.

So why is it the business of America to say that the Armenian killings were genocide? I think it is a debate that is important for the entirety of humanity to discuss. If you have a pulse, you are qualified to discuss it, in my opinion, the same way that the Holocaust debate is not reserved just for Germans and the Jews. I think that in the rear view mirror of history, it usually becomes more clear that genocide has happened in the past... it becomes less debateable when respected scholars and historians say that it is an objective historical fact. I admit that I struggle with the idea that some people still debate whether genocides such as the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide have taken place. How much evidence does one need to understand that radical ethnocentrism never has a positive outcome? Ethnocentrism at its most fundamental happens when one group of people believes that another bunch of people does not have a right to be. It would be nice to pin down a fixed definition of ethnocentrism (though I agree that this is often subjective) so that in modern society, people do not stand by while one race wipes out another.