Compare the patterns of Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur. What insights have you gained from reading about these atrocities?

I grew up in a rather culturally mixed neighborhood. In my neighborhood lived Islanders from different parts of the Caribbean, Latin Americans from Central/South America, African Americans, White or Caucasian Americans, and even Asian Americans. My classroom was one filled with students whose parents were from all over the world. There was always an even gradient of ethnic skin color, not one more powerful than the other, a balance of sorts. I enjoyed living in my neighborhood and attending the school there. I enjoyed the company of most of my classmates regardless where their parents were from. It was a culturally rich environment to grow up in and to learn from. When I read about genocide and ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur I was faced with another question “how?” How can anyone let this happen? I couldn’t imagine an act of violence befalling my neighborhood in that manner, being separated from my friends, and possibly from my own family, being discriminated against with such detest. In hopes of some type of feasible answer I turned to my professor and friends alike and posed them this question: How could this happen? Where do people find this drive? This dark, hatred filled, obsession to annihilate a group of people different from their own. How could anyone see this as right and be able to execute a systematic death sentence? I had so many questions about human nature and moral development that my head was spinning just after reading a few articles. The one term that kept coming up was dehumanization. Most of those killings were possible thanks to the dehumanization frame of mind. The groups committing these acts of crimes against humanity don’t see that who they are hurting is indeed someone like themselves, a person. Someone with family and friends, someone who feels and can feel for, someone who laughs and cries just as they do, just as we all do. They don’t see the human they’re torturing, or the pain they’re causing another living being. They just see the differences between them, and that makes the ones being oppressed no better than the dog that gets kicked in the street, or the grass that gets trampled on, an inanimate object to be removed, if not through relocation then through extermination. I grappled with this idea for several days and even held heated discussions with friends on the meaning of it all. What I gained from reading this material and then discussing it with friends is a better insight to myself and what it truly means to be human. My own perspectives have changed drastically from when I was a child. I have come to a more appreciative view of humanity. I know we are not perfect, but life isn’t about perfection. Humans were never meant to live a life based on that concept. Haven’t you ever heard the saying, “Nothing is perfect. Life is messy. Relationships are complex. Outcomes are uncertain. People are irrational,” by Hugh Mackay? In a world where people are irrational, or at the very least not as logical as they may portray to be, how could we ever consider living a perfect life? There is no comparing the atrocities that have taken place in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur. They are equally all horrid events, events that with some time and patience were planned out and executed on a group of unsuspecting victims all because of the differences that defined them. It doesn’t take a creative mind to oppress a group of people, just a methodical one.