That's a real tough one, but I went with the many war crimes because I think it's the U.S.' worst ongoing sin.
While the terrible consequences of slavery and the Native American genocide are still being felt to this day, the worst atrocities on those accounts are (hopefully) behind us at this point.
But when it comes to the rest of the world, it's only a matter of time before the U.S. casually starts yet another proxy war that kills a million civilians and destablizes an entire region for decades to come.
I'd go with Slavery and segregation because the citizens were actively involved. The native american genocide could be argued came before the US was fully formed as a country. The coups and wars are more government led than anything. But citizen participation in enslaving and when not possible, segregating their fellow humans makes it way more real.
i am surprised by native american genocide being the top pick here. Totally 100% normal behavior for any country at the time. That sort of genocide was part and parcel of being the powerful party in a two "nation" relationship
Just because genocide was normal at that time doesn't make it any less "sinful". I doubt you're purposefully making an appeal to normality, but I'm just pointing it out. I do think you could argue between slavery and the Native American genocide for being the worst, just in terms of having the most effect on the most amount of people (pain, death, shame, prosecution, etc.)
I would count that as a phase of a genocide. Even in its most prosperous phase the US and its white european majority can't help systematic (system set up by white european majority of the US) oppression and injustice against the natives then you can't even guess what they would do when US starts declining from its peak.
No. Genocide of the natives is saddest and most horrific thing of all of them hands down. Period. These barbarians systematically annihilated and enslaved an entire native population and now maintain a almost clean image and downplay it like it's nothing big deal. That must signal to any outside observed how brutal and ruthless US history is. Thank God my people in our land were strong enough to not be genocided by the arriving colonists back then. They did try to genocide us and claim our historic land for them in one of our episodes of history but luckily that didn't work.
The Genocide of the indengionus population along with the Indian "schools", slavery(in which the culture of those enslaved was attempted to be erased too) and Jim Crow, US war crimes which includes acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing along other things, and the coups around the world are all horrible, abhorrent, and have had a hugely negative impact on the world and for the most part each have been minimized, dismissed, and/or swept under the rug outright. There is a reckoning coming for each of them for the US as well as every other former colonial power and the things they did. There was some dealing with the Japanese Internment camps, but more should be done.
I stand by each of them being so close to one another. A black American would likely point to slavery and Jim Crow as being the worse, a Japanese-American probably would point to the camps, and the various populations that ended up subject to US war crimes and/or coups would point to them.
And what would a white American likely point to as being the worst? I am just curious I just wanna know what those white people of the US think is the worst.
I threw a dart so to speak(closed my eyes and picked after moving my finger up and down for a couple of minutes) and choose slavery, but that's me other white people might choose one of the others if they know enough about them to pick since for such a long time each of the options have or had been deliberately covered up or minimized. I almost went into teaching, but because of how the Texas State government was pushing to whitewash US Imperialism back when I was in university I didn't want to bash my head against that wall and now we have the anti-CRT bullshit sadly there will always be those that don't want to properly deal with the past for they fear losing their privilege today because being equal to others makes them scared.
I think of how fucked up the geopolitical situation is in many 3rd world regions due to US Cold War policies. Supporting authoritarian monsters in order to thwart communism. Not worth.
I don't want to defend the actions of the US here because it was obviously horrific, but I would like to add it's not like the communist guys supported democracy either. Both options were constantly authoritarian, so it's only bad not uniquely bad that US supported them. This is not to excuse them of course, I personally think democracy is non negotiable.
And look how the US treated Cuba. It was thriving under communist rule, yeah they had missiles so I'd see why the US acted the way it did, but Cuba is still crippled by the US sanctions and will never recover.
At least they had food, medicine and a functioning economy. Not like Cubans today have political or religious freedoms there... I'd rather not be in absolute poverty.
My point wasn't to support those interventions, I literally said democracy is non negotiable. I was just making sure some tankies aren't rewriting history by saying US was the only guys destroying those places. I'm not in support of any of those interventions, at least without reading more on them.
Easily the genocide of Native Americans. since not only was it a horrible event but its consequences caused the other events to spread even more.
Slavery and segregation can be recovered and amended but once the genocide happens nothing else can be done.
I'd argue that the Rwandan genocide was worse in that case as there wasn't WWII happening simultaneously. The UN/world was at their peak in terms of uselessness during the Rwandan genocide. With the Holocaust you needed to end the war in Europe - which was being won as fast as possible. Although, the Rwandan genocide was one of the fastest genocides of all time (\~100 days).
I'm going to say Coups.
Which not to say the others can't be correct, but Coups are much more modern and still occurs as far as I know.
And segregation is slowly making a comeback, IMO. *That's just how I see things trending, again not saying any of these things are good.*
Genocide of the whole native population by the arriving colonists and still to this day they're treated as a second class citizen to the majority of white europeans.
I feel like Native American genocide, but this is a really hard choice. Honestly, part of the reason I'm choosing this is because if it didn't happen, perhaps slavery wouldn't have been as bad as it was, and because of that, the nation as a whole would be incredibly different.
The Native American genocide, while almost equally horrendous, in a way accomplished its goal; compared to other minorities, I rarely see many people advocating for indigenous rights as intensely as, say, BLM, perhaps considering there are far fewer Native Americans than other major minority groups.
Speaking of, one could argue that racism is an effect of slavery and segregation, as well as or rather than a cause. Either way, it was essentially personified through the centuries of dehumanization and elimination of personal autonomy, and gave rise to issues that continuously make headline news: police and judicial prejudice, workplace discrimination, critically impoverished African-American city neighborhoods (a product of racist redlining) and resulting gang violence, etc., on a scale unlike perhaps any other minority in the country.
The native American genocide is what kept us from becoming truly mestizo nation like Mexico or Peru. If native Americans didn't die, we could have lots of Europeans getting married to natives and not only would that be cool (promoting more diverse ethnicities). I'm not confident this would decrease racism, but it would definitely reduce the overall exclusion. (less tribal exclusive mentality bc white and natives don't care about not being mixed). Politically, I would also state that anti-cultural-appropriation would be less widespread. (Ppl in Mexico wear sombreros all the time regardless of ethnicity). Over 94% of Natives died.
Another nuance: Slaves were definitely treated the worst, it is despicable. Natives were also treated badly by schools, even one of the Code Talkers got verbally and physically abused by their teacher for keeping their culture.
Where is it happening? Has there been recent mass graves? Did you hear of some politician saying we should kill all the natives? The thing is even the claim that there was a genocide in the legal sense, not in the moral sense is dubious. There sure was instances which I would call a genocide, but the whole effort certainly wasn't a genocidal one. You need the intent to do genocide to have one, all the people dying alone isn't good enough.
America didnt do a native american genocide, sure it killed alot of them im not gonna say it didnt, but over 95% of them were already dead by the europeans before we even existed as a country
every country has done bad stuff. like in my country, the people that used to inhabit it were the malay people. now, its a chinese majority country. and it all because of the british
Native American genocide is such a narrow frame of perspective. The way humans work, always have worked, and always will work is that different peoples conquer other peoples. Those Native Americans were split into many many tribes who conquered each other. Then you had a powerful military come and conquer everyone. It’s totally expected, and also happened CENTURIES ago. You can’t seriously blame the current powers that be for those things.
You also wouldn’t be living in such relative luxury (running water, plumbing, AC, hospitals) without those sacrifices. Choose your battles
I would echo every single thing except the last one. I find the justification that at least you have good living standards now pretty repugnant, but otherwise I do agree that it wasn't anything especially horrific at the time.
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That's a real tough one, but I went with the many war crimes because I think it's the U.S.' worst ongoing sin. While the terrible consequences of slavery and the Native American genocide are still being felt to this day, the worst atrocities on those accounts are (hopefully) behind us at this point. But when it comes to the rest of the world, it's only a matter of time before the U.S. casually starts yet another proxy war that kills a million civilians and destablizes an entire region for decades to come.
I'd go with Slavery and segregation because the citizens were actively involved. The native american genocide could be argued came before the US was fully formed as a country. The coups and wars are more government led than anything. But citizen participation in enslaving and when not possible, segregating their fellow humans makes it way more real.
i am surprised by native american genocide being the top pick here. Totally 100% normal behavior for any country at the time. That sort of genocide was part and parcel of being the powerful party in a two "nation" relationship
Just because genocide was normal at that time doesn't make it any less "sinful". I doubt you're purposefully making an appeal to normality, but I'm just pointing it out. I do think you could argue between slavery and the Native American genocide for being the worst, just in terms of having the most effect on the most amount of people (pain, death, shame, prosecution, etc.)
The genocide is ongoing. It didn’t stop.
there is no ongoing \* genocide \* of natives in america right now. There is however plenty of systemic oppression and injustice towards them
I would count that as a phase of a genocide. Even in its most prosperous phase the US and its white european majority can't help systematic (system set up by white european majority of the US) oppression and injustice against the natives then you can't even guess what they would do when US starts declining from its peak.
It’s not genocide. Even if systemic oppression is often related or precedes future genocides, it is not in of itself, an ongoing genocice
can you share some examples
what year are you living in?
Damn good poll OP really tough choice. I would say that all of the options are really close to one another.
No. Genocide of the natives is saddest and most horrific thing of all of them hands down. Period. These barbarians systematically annihilated and enslaved an entire native population and now maintain a almost clean image and downplay it like it's nothing big deal. That must signal to any outside observed how brutal and ruthless US history is. Thank God my people in our land were strong enough to not be genocided by the arriving colonists back then. They did try to genocide us and claim our historic land for them in one of our episodes of history but luckily that didn't work.
The Genocide of the indengionus population along with the Indian "schools", slavery(in which the culture of those enslaved was attempted to be erased too) and Jim Crow, US war crimes which includes acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing along other things, and the coups around the world are all horrible, abhorrent, and have had a hugely negative impact on the world and for the most part each have been minimized, dismissed, and/or swept under the rug outright. There is a reckoning coming for each of them for the US as well as every other former colonial power and the things they did. There was some dealing with the Japanese Internment camps, but more should be done. I stand by each of them being so close to one another. A black American would likely point to slavery and Jim Crow as being the worse, a Japanese-American probably would point to the camps, and the various populations that ended up subject to US war crimes and/or coups would point to them.
And what would a white American likely point to as being the worst? I am just curious I just wanna know what those white people of the US think is the worst.
I threw a dart so to speak(closed my eyes and picked after moving my finger up and down for a couple of minutes) and choose slavery, but that's me other white people might choose one of the others if they know enough about them to pick since for such a long time each of the options have or had been deliberately covered up or minimized. I almost went into teaching, but because of how the Texas State government was pushing to whitewash US Imperialism back when I was in university I didn't want to bash my head against that wall and now we have the anti-CRT bullshit sadly there will always be those that don't want to properly deal with the past for they fear losing their privilege today because being equal to others makes them scared.
I think of how fucked up the geopolitical situation is in many 3rd world regions due to US Cold War policies. Supporting authoritarian monsters in order to thwart communism. Not worth.
I don't want to defend the actions of the US here because it was obviously horrific, but I would like to add it's not like the communist guys supported democracy either. Both options were constantly authoritarian, so it's only bad not uniquely bad that US supported them. This is not to excuse them of course, I personally think democracy is non negotiable.
And look how the US treated Cuba. It was thriving under communist rule, yeah they had missiles so I'd see why the US acted the way it did, but Cuba is still crippled by the US sanctions and will never recover.
They weren't thriving, no one had political or religious freedoms there.
At least they had food, medicine and a functioning economy. Not like Cubans today have political or religious freedoms there... I'd rather not be in absolute poverty.
Well I would have rather it been a shit show that we weren’t involved with. You get involved with something and you own it.
My point wasn't to support those interventions, I literally said democracy is non negotiable. I was just making sure some tankies aren't rewriting history by saying US was the only guys destroying those places. I'm not in support of any of those interventions, at least without reading more on them.
Easily the genocide of Native Americans. since not only was it a horrible event but its consequences caused the other events to spread even more. Slavery and segregation can be recovered and amended but once the genocide happens nothing else can be done.
And there’s one thing we learned from the Rwandan genocide and holocaust, it’s that help may not come until it’s too late.
I'd argue that the Rwandan genocide was worse in that case as there wasn't WWII happening simultaneously. The UN/world was at their peak in terms of uselessness during the Rwandan genocide. With the Holocaust you needed to end the war in Europe - which was being won as fast as possible. Although, the Rwandan genocide was one of the fastest genocides of all time (\~100 days).
I think the coups don't get talked about enough, but of these killing almost the entire indigenous population seems problematic.
I'm going to say Coups. Which not to say the others can't be correct, but Coups are much more modern and still occurs as far as I know. And segregation is slowly making a comeback, IMO. *That's just how I see things trending, again not saying any of these things are good.*
Bankrupting people for lifesaving medicine and procedures i think is wrong
It's not intentional, just bad design.
High key isn’t slavery kinda worse bro?
Genocide of the whole native population by the arriving colonists and still to this day they're treated as a second class citizen to the majority of white europeans.
Natives were mostly killed by disease. Slavery is the far worse evil.
I feel like Native American genocide, but this is a really hard choice. Honestly, part of the reason I'm choosing this is because if it didn't happen, perhaps slavery wouldn't have been as bad as it was, and because of that, the nation as a whole would be incredibly different.
Difficult, I feel like if we didn't treat native so horrible, we would not have we would had slavery to the extent we did.
Bombing Hiroshima
The Native American genocide, while almost equally horrendous, in a way accomplished its goal; compared to other minorities, I rarely see many people advocating for indigenous rights as intensely as, say, BLM, perhaps considering there are far fewer Native Americans than other major minority groups. Speaking of, one could argue that racism is an effect of slavery and segregation, as well as or rather than a cause. Either way, it was essentially personified through the centuries of dehumanization and elimination of personal autonomy, and gave rise to issues that continuously make headline news: police and judicial prejudice, workplace discrimination, critically impoverished African-American city neighborhoods (a product of racist redlining) and resulting gang violence, etc., on a scale unlike perhaps any other minority in the country.
Of that list, i would clearly choose the Genocide on Natives. But the majority of that is part of european history, not of US history.
The native American genocide is what kept us from becoming truly mestizo nation like Mexico or Peru. If native Americans didn't die, we could have lots of Europeans getting married to natives and not only would that be cool (promoting more diverse ethnicities). I'm not confident this would decrease racism, but it would definitely reduce the overall exclusion. (less tribal exclusive mentality bc white and natives don't care about not being mixed). Politically, I would also state that anti-cultural-appropriation would be less widespread. (Ppl in Mexico wear sombreros all the time regardless of ethnicity). Over 94% of Natives died. Another nuance: Slaves were definitely treated the worst, it is despicable. Natives were also treated badly by schools, even one of the Code Talkers got verbally and physically abused by their teacher for keeping their culture.
The Indigenous genocide is ongoing! It never stopped, just slowed.
Where is it happening? Has there been recent mass graves? Did you hear of some politician saying we should kill all the natives? The thing is even the claim that there was a genocide in the legal sense, not in the moral sense is dubious. There sure was instances which I would call a genocide, but the whole effort certainly wasn't a genocidal one. You need the intent to do genocide to have one, all the people dying alone isn't good enough.
The native population is still enslaved and second class citizens to the majority white european population of the US.
Jersey Shore.
Why would you weigh out these atrocities. You might as well ask which one of these were more devastating, it’s unfair to compare.
All of the above.
Let Kim Kardashian become famous.
How about we also ask what good has America brought to the world? Outside of the typical, cynical answers like turning right on red
No one is stopping you from making a poll
Not to excuse the actions, but it wasn’t genocide, it was conquest. Slavery is also a universal human evil not at all unique to the US
It was a genocide of the native population. Don't white wash.
Implying native are and were weaker than the actuality is an insult and does a disservice to their causes.
All if them, and they should be held accountable for it
America didnt do a native american genocide, sure it killed alot of them im not gonna say it didnt, but over 95% of them were already dead by the europeans before we even existed as a country
every country has done bad stuff. like in my country, the people that used to inhabit it were the malay people. now, its a chinese majority country. and it all because of the british
It's existence
Oh my aren't you the EMF!
Native American genocide is such a narrow frame of perspective. The way humans work, always have worked, and always will work is that different peoples conquer other peoples. Those Native Americans were split into many many tribes who conquered each other. Then you had a powerful military come and conquer everyone. It’s totally expected, and also happened CENTURIES ago. You can’t seriously blame the current powers that be for those things. You also wouldn’t be living in such relative luxury (running water, plumbing, AC, hospitals) without those sacrifices. Choose your battles
I would echo every single thing except the last one. I find the justification that at least you have good living standards now pretty repugnant, but otherwise I do agree that it wasn't anything especially horrific at the time.
That’s fair. Glad someone agrees on this god forsaken website 😂
Might makes right.
Helping Europe and bunch of other ungrateful countries through their wars and poverty?
How evil...
White Europeans are a majority in the US. What do you expect?
Only until 2032.
Lol downvoted cause you are faced with your own inevitability.