THERE IS A simple way of looking at social problems that leads to a very simple solution. This simple perspective is that certain people are the problem. If those people are the problem, then the solution is simple: get rid of them.
Adolph Hitler came to power with a simple assessment of Germany’s economic and social problems. It was the Jews. His final and simple solution was the gas chambers. Decades before that, during World War I, the Ottoman Empire began a programme of eliminating the problem of Armenian residents by deportation or murder. Around that same time R.W. Shufeldt, a prominent American scientist wrote a book called America’s Greatest Problem: The Negro in which he recommended the passing of a law, that all negros and negro descendants must leave the country within ten years of the law’s passing.
Of course the strategy of getting rid of the people who are considered the problem is not a recent invention. Britain began exporting criminals to the colony of Australia in the 17th century. The formerly problematic Britons-turned-new-Australians, in turn got rid of many of the indigenous people they found occupying the land. America which was a dumping ground for British criminals even before Australia, dealt with the problem of a recently freed black population by creating the segregationist Jim Crow laws, which lasted until the civil rights era of the 1960s. While the nation built on slave labour could not get rid of blacks it kept them contained for a very long time.
Least we make the mistake of thinking that this kind of thinking is extinct, we should recall the attempted genocide in Rwanda, of one ethnic group, the Tutsis, by another, the Hutus, in 1994. For many Donald Trump supporters the problem in America today is largely two groups of people: Mexicans and Muslims. True to form, Trump has suggested simple solutions for simple problems: A wall for Mexicans and a ban on Muslims. Many Europeans also feel that it is the immigrants who are the source of Europe’s recent economic turmoil.
It is convenient to make people the problem. Not the system they exist in, not environmental factors, not historical imbalances, nor any combination of such, but the people themselves. To unpack all of that would take work. It is easier to conclude that those people are lazy, greedy, selfish, stupid, savage, or some other combination of negative traits and are a problem in themselves.
The logical next step from this type of thinking is to somehow get rid of them.
It makes sense why Albert Einstein would say, “If I had one hour to solve a problem I would spend 50 minutes studying the problem and ten minutes figuring out a solution.” Here was a man used to putting in mental work on complex problems. Social problems can be as complex as Quantum Physics.
Wanting a solution to a problem is not the same as wanting the problem to go away. You have to work to find a solution. You wish to wave a wand, in order to make a problem to go away. The difference is the amount of effort you are willing to put into finding the solution. When you really want a solution you will really study the problem. The simplistic way will not do.
When you just want the problem to go away you can skip all that work and jump to the simple solution like Hitler or Shufeldt. You can simply make people the problem and then make them disappear. But you first have to disassociate. If you are connected to those people, if they are part of you, you would feel a way if they are gone.
If a drug addict was continually breaking into your house, you might ordinarily have no problem with the police making him disappear by throwing him in jail and losing the key. You might feel differently if the addict was your son. In the first instance the person is the problem. In the second the addiction becomes the problem.
People who you do not consider your people, can be made to disappear and you may continue as normal. Thinking of Africans, Armenians, Jews, Irish, Tutsis or any other vulnerable group from history, as different, lesser humans, made it easier to treat them as the problem and try to make them disappear.
In her book “The New Jim Crow” civil-rights lawyer Michelle Alexander argues that America has reintroduced elements of the oppression of the pre-civil rights era using policing and the justice system. There is a new way to get rid of the people considered The Problem. A system of mass incarceration is being used to make large numbers of people who are seen as The Problem disappear. These are people who are economically, racially and culturally the vulnerable “other.” This is a simpler solution than addressing social and historical imbalances.
What do you do though, if the problem cannot so easily be categorised as “those people”? When the people we want to call the problem, are a part of us? The simplistic solution then amounts to self-destruction.
Adrian Green is a creative communications Specialist. Email: Adriangreen14@gmail.com
