Sunday, November 26, 2017
Against a Common Enemy, the Effects on Intrinsic Values Caused by WWII
During times of peace we tend to get antsy. We start disliking each other, try to solver small problems, or problems that don't exist. In essence, humans always try to find problems that need to be solved. This is apparent during all times of history, but for the purposes of discussion, I will be talking about WWII. Before the war, Americans were getting sick of each other. Farmers hated city dwellers, black people were leaving for Africa, the KKK was entrenched in southern America, it was a mess. Then, eventually, with the dawn of the second war, many of these angers float away in favor of hating a much darker and larger threat, that of course being the axis powers. while these American problems still existed and preyed heavily during the war, it cannot be refuted that as a country, we began to like each other a lot more once the Nazis were raging through Europe. This of course could be contributed to the idea that everyone could work due to the massive increase of jobs cased by the war. With no one having to fight for jobs, everyone can focus on their own families, and because of this a possible change in attitude could occur.
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This post is interesting, but I am not sure I agree. During World War II, there was a great deal of racism. For example. the Detroit Riot of 1943 was a race riot that lasted only a day but was extremely destructive. A housing shortage caused black homing to be built in traditionally white neighborhoods, and caused tension. The violence started with a brawl between a black and white man, but quickly became out of hand. Black and white people alike were engaging in violence, and burning/looting. It took 6,000 federal troops to come and suppress the riot.
ReplyDeletehttp://theconversation.com/african-americans-fighting-fascism-and-racism-from-wwii-to-charlottesville-82551
http://www.blackpast.org/aah/detroit-race-riot-1943
Aaron, I have to say that I think there is more truth to what Christian is saying than you might believe. For starters, it is undeniable that a common threat causes people to band together. During this time, the Axis powers were that common enemy that people could work towards defeating. Further, the prosperity that was brought with mobilizing our economy for the war, as Christian started to get at, would have surely decreased tensions to an extent. It is a lot easier to get along when everyone is prospering. Hate usually comes about because one group thinks another has done them harm. It is a lot harder to think like that when you yourself are prospering. Of course there will always be racism and xenophobia, but prosperity and a common goal definitely reduce it.
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