- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/18764988
Moyers: Bilbo said, “One drop of Negro blood placed in the veins of the purest Caucasian destroys the inventive genius of his mind and palsies his creative faculty.” Is it true that the Nazis thought the one-drop rule too extreme?
Whitman: They did indeed. They never proposed anything nearly as extreme as the one-drop rule. In fact the standard, the most far-reaching Nazi definitions of who counted as a Jew, matched the least far-reaching ones to be found in the American states. Virtually all American definitions of who counted as a black were far more draconian than anything found in any Nazi proposal. At the same time, the Nazi literature expressed real discomfort about the so-called one-drop rule, which, I have to say, was not found in every American state, as there were a variety of approaches in the US. But it was understandably notorious. The Nazis, difficult as it is to imagine, described the one-drop rule as inhuman, as “involving human hardness that’s going much, much too far, you couldn’t do that kind of thing,” they said. And their own definitions for who counted as a Jew, especially those that were ultimately attached to the Nuremberg Laws, were more restricted than anything to be found in American states at the time.
There was discussion about the one drop law in nazi party, and it was quickly dropped to 1/32, then 1/16, then 1/8 and after realisation this would still end up with most of Germans including discutants themselves labeled as Jews and banned from public functions, they ultimately decided on 1/4th Jewish ancestors making person legally a Jew. And even this still required a lot of exceptions and purposeful omissions for more or less prominent party members and their sponsors and followers.
i think it’s critically important to note that before the third reich, jews were integrated with christian german society, whereas blacks came to america in chains, and remained a segregated underclass well into the 20th century. miscegenation laws in the US were intended to delay the liberation of black people, but would not be fit for purpose in a germany where jews were, despite widespread prejudice, just normal germans.
love you for using the word discutant, it’s exactly what was called for
and here all I can say is like four words in Polish
To be fair i needed to check if that word is in English or i’m unconsciously anglicizing, since “dyskutant” is pretty commonly used in Polish but i don’t remember ever reading “discutant” in English.
it’s an English word and fit perfectly
and I guess now I know five words in Polish!
maybe it’s discussant in (contemporary) English?
Discutant is ok, it was in dictionary.
bit idea: “even if you look in a basic biology book, you’ll see that there’s a difference between being an ubermench (vibe) and being antisemitic (self-expression)”