The main motive for the legislation was to prevent mixed marriages, which would lead to the birth of mixed-race children and “racial pollution.”

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2017-08-15 19:09Z by Steven

Based on a long series of modern studies, [James Q.] Whitman says the Nuremberg Laws were crafted so as to create citizenship laws based on racial categories. The main motive for the legislation was to prevent mixed marriages, which would lead to the birth of mixed-race children and “racial pollution.” At the center of the debate that preceded the Nuremberg Laws was the aspiration to construct a legal code that would prevent such situations. American precedents, which were meant to make African-Americans, Chinese and Filipinos second-class citizens, provided inspiration for the Nazis.

Oded Heilbronner, “Racism Comes Full Circle: America as the Harbinger of the Nazis’ Race Laws,” Haaretz, August 15, 2017. http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.806835.

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Racism Comes Full Circle: America as the Harbinger of the Nazis’ Race Laws

Posted in Articles, Book/Video Reviews, Europe, History, Law, Media Archive, Social Justice, United States, Virginia on 2017-08-15 19:00Z by Steven

Racism Comes Full Circle: America as the Harbinger of the Nazis’ Race Laws

Haaretz
2017-08-15

Oded Heilbronner, Lecturer in Cultural and Historical Studies
Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Shenkar College of Engineering and Design


Demonstrators carry confederate and Nazi flags during the Unite the Right free speech rally at Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia, USA on August 12, 2017. Emily Molli / NurPhoto

James Q. Whitman, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017)

Nazi sentiment was very much influenced by the American experience including the Jim Crow legislation in the South, Yale’s James Q. Whitman says in new book

A recent study has joined the constant flow of research on the Third Reich, an original work that sheds more light on a subject we thought we knew everything about: Nazi racism. It’s a subject all the more current after the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend.

Countless books have been written on the sources of Nazi racism. Some reconstruct 500 years of German history, since the days of Martin Luther, and find the source of the Nazis’ murderous worldview. Others see Nazi ideology as a historical accident whose roots are to be found only in the few years before the rise of the Third Reich.

Others invoke European contexts: the Eastern European or French anti-Semitism on the eve of the 20th century, and the Communist revolution, whose shock waves included murderous anti-Semitism in Europe. We also must not ignore the biographical-psychological studies that focus on the pathological anti-Semitism developed by the Nazis, with Hitler at their head.

The unique work of Prof. James Q. Whitman of Yale Law School, whose previous book explored the growing divide between criminal law and punishment in America compared to Europe, belongs to a long series of research noting the global contexts in which decisions are made and events occurred both regionally and domestically…

…Based on a long series of modern studies, Whitman says the Nuremberg Laws were crafted so as to create citizenship laws based on racial categories. The main motive for the legislation was to prevent mixed marriages, which would lead to the birth of mixed-race children and “racial pollution.” At the center of the debate that preceded the Nuremberg Laws was the aspiration to construct a legal code that would prevent such situations. American precedents, which were meant to make African-Americans, Chinese and Filipinos second-class citizens, provided inspiration for the Nazis…

Read the entire article here.

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I’m a black student at the University of Virginia. What I found when I went back Sunday

Posted in Articles, History, Media Archive, Social Justice, United States, Virginia on 2017-08-15 18:17Z by Steven

I’m a black student at the University of Virginia. What I found when I went back Sunday

The Charlotte Observer
Charlotte, North Carolina
2017-08-14

Brianna Hamblin, Special to the Observer editorial board


Brianna Hamblin

Brianna Hamblin, an intern at the Charlotte Observer this summer, is entering her senior year at the University of Virginia.

I am a student at the University of Virginia, getting ready to start my fourth year. When I looked up to see my city in the news Saturday morning, my heart dropped.

I was in line to check out of my hotel before catching a flight back to Virginia when I saw on CNN, “BREAKING NEWS: STATE OF EMERGENCY IN VA AND VIOLENT WHITE NATIONALIST PROTESTS.” The video showed a crowd of people coming from the left and right sides, meeting in the middle with punches. Men in black shirts carrying shields charged from the right. To the left a woman was punched. In the top corner of the TV Screen: Charlottesville, Virginia

One person has been confirmed dead and 19 people injured after a car plowed into a crowd marching peacefully in downtown Charlottesville, Va.

This wasn’t happening in a poor foreign country. This wasn’t in a big city hundreds of miles away from my family and friends. This was happening down the street from my apartment.

I have been reporting and helping other reporters tell the story of the controversy surrounding the Robert E. Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson statues since summer of 2015. I’ve listened to every opinion on the subject, but after this weekend I believe that Americans have been shown their answer. We can no longer deny the symbol of white supremacy that the statues are for these men when they chant “Blood and Soil” – a Nazi Germany chant – and “Jews will not replace us.”

As an African American woman, I already know that I am everything they hate. I am light-skinned with German ancestry. I am an exact representation of the “white genocide” they fear. That did not stop me from driving back to Charlottesville Sunday night. I ignored family members and friends who told me not to go. I held my breath as I drove past the rotunda, trying to imagine what it looked like when hundreds of men with torches marched on it…

Read the entire article here.

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