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Nasty American Exceptionalism
Free (But Useless) Speech
Ronald Reagan did one good thing: he ratified the genocide convention. In 1988, the US became a signatory of the genocide convention and formally recognized genocide. Amazing. We as a nation are one of the last of the tables, although an American lawyer helped prosecute the Nuremberg trials.
We don’t lead by example but tell everyone we are exceptional. If I hear one more American politician say it, I will scream at them on the screen. And they are going to say it. They are all trained to. Every single US President must say it. It’s such ridiculous nonsense, but they all say it.
Was this delay not coming first in ratifying it due to “exceptionalism”? Or was it because of a fear of Black people? Did America not want to be prosecuted in front of the world for its genocide? Black genocide was proposed to be charged in 1951 by black Americans. Although this is an essential part of critical history, it seems to have been completely erased.
Until recently, I knew nothing about this Black American charge of genocide against the American government. Despite my ongoing five-year journey into Black American history, this period during and after WWII, up until 1953, had clearly been a significant gap in retrospect. I refer to it as a gap because I had read many accounts of brutal, white-instigated…