Can we rebuild the U.S. like Germany after WWII?

I know changing laws, voting, and eradicating loopholes in police union contracts are on the top of our to-do list. As it should be. But who’s going to de-brainwash the racists?

At first, I thought we could wait them out since that generation who lived and still yearn for Jim Crow is older and eventually will die out. I was wrong. That generation has passed down their beliefs to the next generation.

These homegrown terrorists are not only white but young. Like teenager-young. A whole new generation of racists is growing as I write this.

So how does de-brainwashing work?

Did some Nazis ever see the error of their ways? Did they one day wake up remorseful?

Germany’s awakening

No. Nazis didn’t suddenly become remorseful and repented for their sins. Once Allied forces defeated Germany, the country went through a period of silence. In “Other Nations Could Learn From Germany’s Efforts to Reconcile After WWII,” Joanna Neborsky wrote that after the initial shock, the country went through a period of silence as it dealt with the collective trauma by suppressing its feelings of guilt.

The Frankfurt Auschwitz trials started the change in Germany. But even then, most Germans blamed the Third Reich instead of themselves. It will be like Americans blaming a particular party or administration and not our collective actions and inactions for our American Holocaust.

According to Deborah E. Lipstadt’s book Slavery and the Holocaust: How Americans and Germans Cope With Past Evils, it was, in fact, the young generation of “children and grandchildren of Nazis [that] struggle with their families’ crimes” when they watched it on TV. They pressured the German government for an honest dialogue of the events.

The trials brought a bit of closure and justice to those affected. Financial reparations to Israel worked to bring the two countries together diplomatically and ease the burden of Holocaust victims. But it was the pressure from this younger generation that became the push Germany needed to change.

Still, in Germany, some politicians and citizens opposed these reconciliations and reparations for various reasons. But the current German administration forged with the movement since it saw in it something that could bring the country back from its morally corrupt past. Now we know that this plan — once thought of as overly progressive — worked. Germany ranks fourth globally in nominal GDP.

While WWII was seventy-five years ago, abolition history has slavery ending in late 1865, one hundred and fifty-five years ago. The United States is much further ahead from its moral shortcomings than Germany, and much further from admitting to them. This stubbornness to not confront the truth is clear in the one hundred and fifty-five years of revisionist history and downright denial of racism.

This modification of history has hindered progress because without acknowledging the problem, the United States cannot solve it.

The roots of racism run deep

According to Dr. Kappeler in the article “A Brief History of Slavery and the Origins of American Policing,” it states we can trace American police to “two of the more formidable historic features of American society.” These two features are Slave Patrols and Night Watches, which were initially designed to control Black People’s and Native Americans’ behavior.

We can see traces of this history in the police departments in current times. In October 2006, the FBI released an intelligent assessment titled “White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement,” which noted that white supremacists have support in these entities and actively encourage their followers to gain employment there.

On June 14, 2019, Will Carless and Michael Corey wrote in “To Protect and Slur,” that “hundreds of active-duty and retired law enforcement officers from across the United States are Confederate members. anti-Islam, misogynistic, or anti-government militia groups on Facebook.”

Racism is deeply rooted in the processes, laws, and culture of the United States. To mimic Germany, we would need to follow their blueprint loosely and hold people accountable. But if those people still have leadership roles and those ideals are still exulted in monuments, statues, and plaques, how can we?

Pain is the match that lights revolutions

The outrage from the children and grandchildren of Nazi soldiers turned the wheels of progress in Germany after the holocaust. In the United States, the outrage from Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi over the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer started #blacklivesmatter movement.

The United States has not taken ownership of the systemic racism they built with institutionalized slavery. Still, this movement and many others that sprung from #BLM are fighting to amplify the disenfranchised voices.

While it feels like we are so far, we are getting close. Unfortunately, nearness to the goal of human equity comes at the minority’s expense. Unjust deaths and injustices spark revolutions, and the United States has had so many.

The Trail of Tears killed many Native Americans as settlers pushed them out to take their lands. Slavery had African men and women in chains, shipped in boats, stripped of their human rights, and forced to work for free and build the United States into what it is today. Police brutality against black and brown people has killed and recently paralyzed innocent people at the hands of cops. While demonized, criminalized, and forced out once their backs break, migrant workers continue to be the invisible hand that feeds America in a pandemic. Immigrants from various countries, even without a criminal record, are hunted down like targets by ICE under the zero-tolerance rule. Those who crossed the Mexican border with children had their children taken away and put into a cage-like detention. Till today, there are children separated from their parents and temporarily detained in undisclosed hotels with ICE agents who have mistreated people in their care.

We won’t need to de-brainwash any Nazi. There won’t be a place for their views here once we are done. But don’t forget this moment. Because it will be through the cries, deaths, pain, and tears of the disenfranchised ‘others’ that this country will one day live up to: “… and justice for all.”