Missing Biblio For Now

There have always been problems with society. Some are economic, with a nation's poor starving all but to death. Some are the result of a world of pluralism, entities of which are torn by an inclination to be a sole survivor because someone needs to be right and since everyone thinks they are, everyone who does not conform is the enemy. This juxtaposition of "enemies" is based on a common tendency to identify and then to reject anything that does not. What has proven the most successful method in settling this universally waged bout thus far? King of the hill. Everyone knows that killing is wrong. There is not a nation in which it is legal. So why do people not only do it in the name of the nation in which it is outlawed, but in some cases, the name of their god which presumably created all human beings? The reason is simple. There is a majority that feels that basic moral principals can and should be compromised and judged on the basis of attainment. Based on the Judeo-Christian and Islamic, that is, the internationally most accepted beginning of time, the Earth's population is sitting at not only its highest population, but catastrophically, the same number, or higher, that history had ever seen prior to the 19th century and rising by the second. In other words, any human that fought to live prior to 1800 is now represented by a person, or two, to your left, right, front, back or somewhere in between, assuming there is room. Given the breakthroughs in science, the conclusiveness of mathematics and the continuing decipherability of sociology, it is highly likely that there is a solution to this international malady and it is quite the opposite of war. The turmoil, in whatever form it may take, not only fails to solve the problems as history has shown, it is an extension of the problem, a higher

interest rate on the loan of disagreeability. The first step to solving any problem however, is admitting fault. In the works The Sun Flower and "American Horse" one sees two differently oppressed cultures, profiling, and most importantly, the struggle caused by institutionalism. The first work provides an amplified account of the latter, which lead to cultural assimilation, external cultural conflict and finally, the resulting internal cultural conflict.

Due to the Nazi profiling system, Simon Wiesenthal experienced twelve concentration camps, five of which were entirely designed for termination of their inmates, starting in June of 1941. The profiling system, its main purpose being genocide, consisted entirely of one thing: identifying Jews, by religion or genetic predisposition toward that religion. A last name would raise speculation, which would lead to a short verification process, checking papers compulsorily carried under martial law. Martial law further required Jews of currently and newly acquired territories to surrender at the benefit of only indefinitely postponing their execution, depending on their potential application to manual labor. In this case, the profiling and consequent oppression are blatantly unjust. There is a binary understanding of Jewish or not Jewish. The former leads to yet another simply forked decision to make: willing or evasive. And yet again, the former renders the SS soldier, for instance, with one final, vexing decision: Usefulness. To have been a Jew and anything but entirely submissive to this system of identifying was as if to not have existed at all. Without the Nazi definition of "identity" one could hardly have existed. This is the problem with profiling on a painfully obvious scale.

In Louise Erdrich's "American Horse" a similar concept is seen. While Ms. Vicki Koob is a far cry from a Hell-bound Nazi, she certainly makes herself guilty of the same pretentious profiling as the Nazis, arguably worse. While the Nazi profiling and its reasons were obviously incorrect, it was in its worst form deductive. From paragraphs twenty-six through forty-nine Ms. Koob is constantly inferring, making observations and manipulating them to this profile in which Buddy's insufficient rearing should fit.

Who were the Nazis to define "Jewish"? They were followers of Adolf Hitler. Who was Hitler to write a detailed account of racism, primarily irritated by Jewish financial and political success in his "home" country? He was a man with a vision, no less "sane" than Martin Luther King's vision of concomitance. The two visions are entirely opposite in all but one sense: That they present a cure for the resulting consequences of a "contact zone". Contact zones, defined by Mary Louise Pratt, are "...social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today" (Pratt, 2). What makes Hitler's utopian society less "sane" is not a lack of logic. Ideally, the human race would promote its own success. Intellectual persons would get intellectually challenging jobs and arrive at significant discoveries. Physically powerful people could handle the construction, heavy equipment and, when rarely necessary, police actions (Hitler, Chapter X). The insanity lies in his willingness to institutionalize a mass' thoughts, to force or even coerce them into believing that his ideas were the best ideas. And in fact he often referred to his projected fellowship as "the masses" (Hitler). To Hitler, his opinion

was the only one that mattered. The "masses" were