Culture wars
Was Slavery or the Holocaust Worse?
And why would someone want to ask?
Some people debate whether or not American Slavery is worse, or more relevant than the Holocaust, or vice versa. I’m not sure what that even means, so I will argue here that the question itself is pointless and problematic.
(And no, I’m not going to try to answer the question.)
The question pits minorities against one another
We need to first examine why someone would ask this question.
Let’s say (for the sake of argument) that slavery is somehow worse. What does that mean? Cui bono? Who would benefit or be better cared for or protected?
Whoever asks the question is trying to take something away from Blacks or Jews, instead of making common cause and seeing the larger themes that connect all bigotry and intolerance, and may benefit all peoples — even your own people, dear reader — in the future.
Why would a person ask this question and what are they up to?
There are a few reasons to consider.
The first is the misguided idea that justice and empathy are like pie. You can only have so much, and if one group has it, the other group cannot. It is based in a scarcity mindset.
Another is bigotry and an attempt to harm either Blacks or Jews overall. Some people who dislike either Blacks or Jews (or both, but have a more intense bigotry toward one) want to deprive each group of whatever history, sympathy and support they may have as a result of past suffering.
Yet another is greed. Addressing inequality is expensive. People who do not want to financially and socially support Black people will argue against the severity of slavery, and may appeal to “waddaboutism” where somehow slavery is less severe if the Holocaust was worse.
The last is the question of cultural survival, which I think is the most powerful and the one to pay attention to. More on this in a section below…
The question is nonsensical
Before addressing culture wars, let me just make the case that it really is a pretty stupid question.
Slavery and the Holocaust have some similarities, such as abusive living conditions, being worked to death, rape, torture and attacks on families. Pervasive inhumanity. Both were shockingly institutionalized, with the mechanics and modern (for the times) planning used to systematically abuse people in both cases.
But other factors are incomparable. Jews were vivisected, intentionally exterminated rather than primarily exploited for labor, and of course the point was genocide— to eliminate Jews from the world entirely. Black people were placed into multi-generational hopelessness, co-opted into a sick society, and their very culture distorted over time; enslavement lasted for over 200 years, spanning many generations.
So there is no way to quantify and compare. What is important is that they tell us different things — one warns of the evils and seductive nature of economic exploitation and racism, and the other warns of the dangers of building up national movements based on identity politics and bigotry.
Cultural Survival
So back to the motivation I want to call out here: cultural survival. I think the motivation to ask this foolish question lies in the culture and identity wars for many people.
White conservatives often think that Black people are being put ahead of them in some way. With affirmative action and the new (if unsteady) alliance between Progressive, whites and Black Americans, rural, non-knowledge-worker whites see themselves pushed “to the back of the line.”
This is documented in detail by Arlie Hochschild in “Strangers in Their Own Land” where she comes up with an overarching explanation for rural white resentment:
America is a harsh country, but it eventually offers rewards to those who are patient, disciplined and determined. In that sense, the American dream is like waiting in line: …Yet for all manner of reasons, to do with welfare, immigration, globalisation and identity politics, the rules of waiting in line no longer seem to be properly upheld … Some people are cutting in, sometimes the line seems to be moving backwards, and those overseeing the line (federal government) … feel far more sympathy for the person who can’t wait, than they do for the one who can. Worst of all, they make it obligatory for everyone else to share that sympathy (‘political correctness’).[excerpt from Springer’s review of her book]
Black people’s need for cultural survival looks different and takes many forms:
One is that Jews are pretty much (seen as) white, or even “hyper-white,” and some Black people see themselves in conflict with whites (justifiably, perhaps). James Baldwin made this argument in 1967. Clearly, anyone who is actually anti-Semitic is going to try to minimize or even justify suffering of the Jews, so the Holocaust may be trivialized by people with this viewpoint.
Another is that Louis Farrakhan tells Black people to hate the Jews. The Nation of Islam is virulently anti-Semitic, but somehow tolerated in much of mainstream society. Many prominent leaders today will say that Farrakhan is “The GOAT” and that seems to pass. To gain the self-respect and dignity that the Nation of Islam provides, people often follow Farrakhan the way a QAnon conspiracy theorist follows Trump. Using Jew-hatred to build a movement is a technique thousands of years old, and has roped in many Black Americans.
The last is Critical Race Theory and “wokeism.” Centering race is the essence of CRT, and often becomes reductive. The Democratic party’s uneasy alliance between wealthy knowledge workers and poor Black and Indigenous Americans is bound together by racial oppression narratives.
See my story about CRT and how it excludes non-racial concerns here:
In this view, if the Holocaust is comparable to slavery, it is harder to center racism, and broader notions of intolerance that also affect whites, Asians or others would also have to be considered. The Holocaust, simply by existing as a terrible injustice that is not about race, weakens the CRT narrative.
In a better world, this would not matter. “Man’s inhumanity to man” is pervasive and every instance should warn and strengthen us in our resolve to rise above our base impulses.
A positive approach
When the world decided after WWII that a genocide must “never again” occur, it was a step forward for all people, of all races and nationalities, not just Jews, and we should preserve that idea rather than try to tear it down with false comparisons.
We should see the similarities among atrocities in the world instead of comparing them. Racists, fascists, enslavers, and Nazis are all exploitative at best and profoundly evil at worst. Injustice is pervasive and all the more important to understand as a universal threat.
When we look at how slavery was institutionalized in the 1600s and 1700s in the United States, we could easily dismiss it as a one off or relic of a world still stumbling out of a time when slavery was still widespread. But when we also see the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s we can see that slavery was not an outlier and the danger is ever-present.
Today, we see new Fascists around the world rising on nativist, anti-minority and anti-immigrant platforms. Both slavery and the Holocaust inform us, strengthen us, and help us avoid going down that terrible path again.
