Extermination of Races

"M. Blancheland was in favor of the complete, absolute extermination of the slaves, as well as of the free Negroes and mulattoes. Anyone with African blood in his veins, quadroon, octoroon, sacatra, griffe––whatever the degree––should be put to death." (Alejo Carpentier, The Kingdom of This World, 72)

Over the years, there have been people that believe that certain races are inferior to others or cause some type of threat to society. As a result, many people from these races have been brutally murdered. In the book, The Kingdom of This World, M. Blancheland was in favor of exterminating the slaves or anyone with African blood in them. He felt this way because of an uprising of the slaves and because he thought that their voodoo and secret religion posed a threat. After reading about how M. Blancheland wanted to exterminate anyone with African blood, it immediately made me think of Adolf Hitler and how he wanted to obliterate the Jewish race.

Adolf Hitler's ideology of the Aryan race was one of the things that led him to believe that the Jewish people, as well as other groups of people, needed to be eliminated. These people needed to be exterminated in order for Lebensraum (living space) to be provided for the Aryan race. In Hitler's opinion, the Jewish people were the great enemy of the German people. In comparison, in The Kingdom of This World, M. Blancheland believed that the slaves, as well as anyone with African blood, needed to be eliminated in order for peace to be restored. It is so sickening to imagine a person who thinks that the only way to have peace for their people is through the extermination of another people. Both Adolf Hitler and M. Blancheland had very radical ideas of what was needed to restore order in their respective communities. I also believe that these men had such crazy ideas because they had too much power. It seems that when a person is given too much power, more often than not, they become corrupt and end up doing unthinkable things. These two men were responsible for horrific things as a result of their crazy ideas.

I think it is extremely unfortunate that people such as Hitler and Blancheland thought of exterminating a  group of people. It is so selfish to think that the only way to make yourself and your group of people happy is through the killing of others. People have done unthinkable things throughout history as a result of the desire for what they think is the perfect world.