Systems
Tell you what, we can say that was genocide and you can say that was and is systemic racism.
Joe Biden has become the first US president to issue a statement formally describing the 1915 massacre of Armenians as a genocide.
The killings took place in the waning days of the Ottoman Empire, the forerunner of modern-day Turkey.
But the issue is highly sensitive, with Turkey acknowledging atrocities but rejecting the term “genocide”.
Just as many people in the US reject the term “systemic racism.” But the racism wasn’t and isn’t random or accidental, and the Turkish atrocities happened to a particular set of people, a geno.
Armenia says 1.5 million people were killed in 1915-16 in an effort to wipe out the ethnic group. They regard it as genocide, and many historians and governments agree the killings were orchestrated.
Turkey accepts that atrocities were committed, estimating that 300,000 died. But it argues there was no systematic attempt to destroy the Christian Armenian people and says many innocent Muslim Turks also died in the turmoil of war.
Armenians, however, are not convinced.
So, Christian Armenians weren’t innocent then? What were they “guilty” of? The “turmoil of war” is doing a lot of work here. Ant Turk, dying anywhere, from anything, at any time during the war, gets added to this number, right? It’s really hard to keep track of all those innocent Turks, what with all the turmoil, and war going on. Really, who’s counting. Remember? Turmoil? War? World War I? It was the first one, so they didn’t really have it properly sorted; still working out the bugs. Who’s got the time to look for all those non-innocent, non-Mulim, non-Turk Armenians too? Having a few hundred thousand or so get misplaced, or fall down under the sofa cushions is bound to happen, right? A million is just a rounding error. Could happen to anyone.
In other words, they’re like the TRAs.
My problem with the term systemic racism is that it’s the wrong word.
There’s the right word. When people talk about examples of systemic racism, what they’re usually describing is systematic racism.
I don’t think so.
Systemic simply means relating to the system; so systemic racism suggests the system itself, not just the parts, is racist. I think we have good evidence to suggest that is the case.
One of our neighbours is Armenian (also our doctor until he retired). His father arrived in France at the age of 9 and alone. Somehow he survived and prospered. There are lots of Armenians in Marseilles.
3/4/5
I think “systemic” is (often) the right word.
Systemic racism is racism that’s built into a system, either explicitly or implicitly, deliberately or as a consequence of the institutions and/or actors having racist attitudes.
Systematic racism is racism that’s performed according to some system.
Quite so.
I think the point of calling it systemic racism (in the US at least) is as a corrective to the naive “I don’t see color” view that one’s personal feeeelings (one’s claimed personal feelings, which may not be wholly understood, or admitted) are the issue. I think the point is to clarify that it’s woven into the system in a myriad of ways and that it can’t be pulled out just by saying “I’m not a racist!” It’s woven into housing and education and investment and (hello?!) the prison system and the justice system and one or two other tiny items like that.
Not to mention the scores of thousands of Greeks killed in the same period, AND after war. The post-empire Turkish ‘progressives’ wanted a smaller, ethnically homogenous ‘Pan Turanian’ state in Anatolia. This required killing or expelling non Turkish minorities.
I’m remembering from: A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility’, by Taner Akçam. The Turkish edition came out in 1999, English translation in 2006.