In a recent article in The Atlantic Magazine, anne apple balm There is a mention of the terrible winter of 1932-33 in Ukraine, when Stalin ordered peasants’ homes to look for food. Seeds, bread, cattle and wheat were confiscated and a great famine broke out in the region. Years later, members of the brigade involved, such as Viktor Kravchenko, described the tragic episode, showing how political jargon helped hide what they actually did.
According to him, the “kulaks” were a matter of danger, in order to avoid giving it to the poor Ukrainian peasants, from whom they stole food, humanity, in order to hide what they were doing themselves. Even the great Russian writer of the time, Vasily Grossman, put words into the mouth of a character who expressed his late regret for taking humanity away from the kulaks and frozen his heart.
As I read the text, I was reminded of instances in which the same process of dehumanizing or demonizing others takes place here. After all, it is easier to destroy the adversary if we do not have to argue, listen to their theories and explain the reasons for the disagreement. In times of political polarization and anticipation of election campaigns, disqualifying an opponent, adjectives him, eliminates the effort of thinking.
In the same way, stigmatizing a social or ethnic group also facilitates the practice of exclusion, through euphemisms used to hide what we are doing to ourselves. Worse yet, Silvio Almeida epitomizes society and provides arguments for what is accurately described as structural racism. your book of the same titleCrystallizing rules that naturalize and facilitate a lack of access for entire ethnic groups.
Again, the idea appears here that the person who is perceived as another does not share the same human condition as the “chosen one”. In this sense, there would be no need to explain why they were being singled out. They don’t have enough “qualification”.
In the same issue of The Atlantic, Caitlin Dickerson reports the saga of Ukrainian refugees in Poland and records the not always subtle racial discrimination among asylum seekers there, including a Nigerian who lived most of his life in Ukraine, where he went to complete his studies. Some volunteers had to fight with guards on either side of the border to be allowed entry into the neighboring country.
The disqualification of another, after all, takes many forms. But, here too, education can help, enabling citizens to live in diversity, to see humanity in another, and to debate differing views deeply.
Link Current: Did you like this lesson? Subscriber may issue up to five free accesses to any link per day. Just click on the blue F at the bottom.
