If It’s Not Genocide, What Word Should We Use? By Dorothy Zellner on Jewish Currents

Some of your readers may know that the Black community has had a long and tormented relationship with this word, “genocide.” In 1946, a year after the end of World War II, the National Negro Congress petitioned the United Nations for help in dealing with systemic racial discrimination in the U.S.  The NAACP followed suit in 1947, with its “Appeal to the World,” similarly urging redress, written by Dr. W. E. B. DuBois and two other Black scholars and lawyers. The UN did not respond.

… In 1951, Paul Robeson and William L. Patterson, head of the Civil Rights Congress, presented the 100-page, flawlessly documented petition, “We Charge Genocide,” to the UN, seeking justice for African Americans using the convention it had so recently approved (as pictured at the top of this article)…

… It should come as no surprise that the Movement for Black Lives would choose to apply this particular word, since it has lived in the DNA of the Black community for nearly sixty-six years… Now to the merits of the case. Can the word be used by Black people to describe themselves?  Can the word be used by Black people to describe others? Is the word accurate?

… To sum up: Echoing Dr. James, if the situation of the Palestinians under Israeli control is not genocide, what is it? We have to begin having some serious conversations, everybody.