I apologize for using the phrase “ethnic cleansing” in my last post. Thinking about it now, I object to that phrase which makes it seem like something positive is being achieved. Cleansing is usually a positive word (unless you are obsessive/compulsive about cleaning). This does not fit with the definition of ethnic cleansing, that is getting rid of an ethnic group in a particular area be it by genocide or expulsion.
This phrase was used over and over again in the newspapers to explain what was happening in Bosnia in the 1990’s. The phrase was the norm.
That’s the decade where I picked up the offending phrase. Because of all the resentment about political correctness at the time, I assumed that everything the official media used had been vetted by some sensitive people. That obviously was not the case. In fact, let me now push for more political correctness.
The phrase I used for the title, ethnic diminishing, is to my ear more neutral than ethnic cleansing. Similarly ethnicity lessening could also be used.
But still, I think that what was done in the nineties in Bosnia needs to have a more negative ring. How about ‘ethnicity crimes’? But this doesn’t fully make the perpetrators own up to their deeds. How about ‘full spectrum of ethnic crimes’?
In Bosnia they used genocide and the threat of genocide to make people leave. They also raped and assaulted you if you happened to be of the wrong ethnicity. And of course, when you left you couldn’t take everything with you so theft and other property crimes resulted. I stand by the ‘full spectrum of ethnic crimes’ tag.
Or how about the tag ‘total loss of humanity’ to refer to the Bosnian crisis of the nineties? That’s more like what really happened.
Hopefully I’ve managed to tip the description naming rights away from the perpetrators and more toward the victims. And that is how it should be.
