In your opinion is cultural genocide as serious as physical genocide?

[FuSoYa]

i'd like to get initial thoughts before i post more.

 

[avi]

what would be an example of cultural genocide? I'm not sure if I know what you're talking about.

 

[lizard]

an example of cultural genocide might be along the lines of the enslavement of africans in this country; what we essentially did was take people of disparate languages, tribal customs, etc and in effect created a new tribe of africans. your average black guy knows absolutely nothing about africa or what his people were like or are still like. he can prance about in a dashiki but that's just playing dress-up.

 

[FuSoYa]

Basically a certain party acts in such a way as to eliminate certain defining aspects of another party's culture. An example? Some country outlaws hats or any form of headwear, affecting all of that nation's hasidic jews and muslims and whomever else.

 

[Steve]

i think cultural genocide is against religions or regional groups, where physical is against an appearance, such as asians, black people, white people, etc.

 

[FuSoYa]

yeah lizard that's a better example than mine.

 

[Steve]

Basically a certain party acts in such a way as to eliminate certain defining aspects of another party's culture. An example? Some country outlaws hats or any form of headwear, affecting all of that nation's hasidic jews and muslims and whomever else.

wouldn't that be just discrimination?
the "-cide" would mean killing, right?

 

[lizard]

 

[Steve]

*reps*

 

[lizard]

I mean, you could say physical genocide is worse because of course then you're dead; if you are culturally genocided (?) you may lose some self-identity but you're still breathing.

 

[avi]

there is a chance of recovery of cultural, not physical

 

[minxnim]

i guess it depends on a definition of violence and how we can compartmentalize the effects of different types of violence. that's like saying 'being shot is worse than being stabbed' or 'being tortured physically is worse than being tortured mentally'. i think maybe it's a matter of opinion and whatnot.

 

[Steve]

Question:

By "cultural genocide" do you mean trying to eliminate a culture but not murder people, while physical genocide is the general trying to kill off all people of a certain race, or do you mean cultural genocide and physical genocide are only different in how you select people to slaughter (i.e. a certain religion for cultural, and a certain physically defined race for physical)

 

[minxnim]

the first one.

 

[lizard]

'manda! what happened!

 

[FuSoYa]

lizard it's not 4 yet foo

 

[minxnim]

dude i already posted what happened like 5 minutes ago

 

[FuSoYa]

It seems like if you ever wanted to exercise a level of activism about a cultural genocide, you'd get slammed for even daring to compare it to a physical one (specifically, with use of the word 'genocide'). But I think it *is* as serious.

 

[minxnim]

fusoya, i think it's as serious also. i mean, some cultures don't even value death very much (say, zen buddhists or tibetan buddhists) but they highly value their ability to reach certain levels of religious freedoms and to have the ability to practice cultures that allow them to reach enlightenment and nirvana to save all of humanity. so for them, the genocide of that cultural ability to practice that way is ten times worse than death, because to them, death means nothing at all.

 

[lizard]

I remain chastened! though unchaste