Luke+B's+OpEd+Article

media type="file" key="lukeb-muckraker-2011.mp3"

Education in Latter Half of Sophomore Year History:

Alright… first let me make this as clear as I can. I am not a neo- nazi. I am not advocating that the holocaust didn’t happen. I am not anti-Semitic. I am not saying that we shouldn’t learn about the holocaust. I am simply saying that we should learn about the other genocides as well.

Throughout history there have been mass killings of race. These lead to a long list of perpetrators and victims. I will list the ones I can think of that were not covered in its entirety in history:

-The Chinese to the Manchu -The Egyptians to the Jews -The Chinese to Mongolians -The multiple Crusades into the Middle East -The Spanish inquisition -The Europeans to the Native Americans -The Ottomans to the Armenians -The Ottomans to the Greeks -The Ottomans to the Assyrians -The Ottomans to the Kurds -The Argentineans to the Aborigine -The Australian settlers to the Tasmanian Aborigine -The French to French (of non-catholic) -The Americans to the Pilipino -The Germans to the South Africans -The Russians to the Muslims -The Bolsheviks to the Cossacks -The Soviets to the Ukrainian -The Soviets to the Kazakhstan people -The Soviets to the Polish -The Soviets to the Afghanis -The Nazis to the Serbs -The Nazis to the Romanians -The Nazis to the Jehovah witnesses -The Nazis to the Communists/socialists -The Nazis to the Homosexuals -The Japanese to the Chinese -The Japanese to the Vietnamese -The Japanese to the Koreans -The Chetniks to the Bosnians -The Dominican Republic to the Haitians -The Chinese to the Tibetans -The Australians to the Tasmanian Aborigine (again) -The South Africans to the Arabs -The Guatemalans to the Maya Indians -The Pakistani to the Bangladesh -The Hutu and Tutsi on each other -The RPF to the Ugandans -The Guineans to the Bubi -The Guineans to the Bioko -The Cambodians to the Vietnamese -The Cambodians to the Chinese -The Cambodians to the Thais -The Cambodians to the Buddhists -The Lebanese Christens to the Palestinians (was given permission to proceed by Israeli military, therefore Israeli government is technically not responsible, even thought they supplied the weapons, ammo, transport, military barricades, and flare launches) -The Entire Bosnian – Herzegovina mess -The Iraqis to the Iraqi Kurds -The Indian people to the Sikhs -The Democratic Republic of Congo to the Pygmies -The Indonesians to the Papuans -The Somaliland people to the Jubba -The Somaliland people to the Bantu

I don’t expect schools to cover all of these in great depth with their couple of years of history. I do expect schools to at least try to cover more than one of them. Let me repeat. I am advocating that we learn more about genocides and not just the holocaust. I do believe that the holocaust is a good thing to teach in schools. I do belive that the holocaust was a heinous crime. I am just advocating a little more liberal education on the history of genocides and not just learn of one.

-Luke Barnett