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Genocide—combining the Greek word "genos," meaning kind, and the Roman word "cide," meaning murder—is the deliberate, degrading, torturous, systematical murder of a race or ethnic group. The 20th century has been chock full of them. It was so bloody that the word genocide itself had to be invented to describe such atrocities. (The History Place, Genocides in the 20th Century) Whether it be out of pure hatred, political gain, or scapegoat-ism, genocide is used to get rid of humans who are deemed unworthy by a group of people. In the following order, here is an example that can be a possible way a genocide (or the steps to a small scale genocide, like mass bullying.) can occur:

"My kid is better than your kid." says Parent A.

Parent B from another family says, "I love my kid, and I know you love yours, but they're equal, really."

Parent A replies with, "No, it's because of my pedigree, my child will succeed in more than your kid. Your child is bad."

Parent B starts badmouthing to other parents about how Parent A is a liar and mean.

Parent A hears the gossip, and uses their kid to lie about Parent B's kids beating them up.

Parent B is appalled by this, and so are the other parents, but for different reasons than Parent B.

The other parents don't trust Parent B after the false accusation Parent A made, and they blame all of their problems based on Parent B and their kid. Meanwhile, Parent A is getting support and comfort from the other parents as Parent A spreads more lies about Parent B.

The parents start treating Parent B like Parent B is nothing, and the parents tell their children that it is alright for them to beat up Parent B's children.

Parent B and Kid B are both made scapegoats, are now victims of false accusations and bullying, and they are out casted. Other groups of people feel sorry for them, but most other groups have either no opinion or they hate the B's from what they have heard, which could be slanted or biased media, or media that's just making stuff up. The B's could either try to gather support or take matters into their own hands, or they could just not say anything and hope that it'll go away with time.

The first genocide of the 20th century was the one that inspired the Holocaust, and the one that helped coin the term genocide. In 1915, male Armenians living in the Ottoman empire were shot and killed, and the women and children were sent on a death march to the Syrian Desert. Approximately 1.5 Armenians died. But the question here now is why? Did the Ottoman Empire just suddenly hate the Armenians? Today, it would be difficult to ask Turkey's government, the current leaders of the state of the Ottoman Empire's new name, Turkey.

It all began in the late 1800's, when young Armenians wanted political reform, like a constitutional government, and they wanted to abolish their special taxes because they were Armenian Christians. The sultan answered their needs, but not very nicely. Sultan Abdul Hamid jailed Armenians, and soon, in 1884-86, 100,000 Armenians were massacred.

Soon, a political reform came, but it did nothing for the Armenians. It was called the Young Turk Regime, ran by the Young Turks. On April 24, 1915, the Young Turks deported Armenian leaders away from their homeland and killed them. In May, mass deportations and massacres funded and supported by the Young Turks, convinced Kurds who wanted "reward money," and anyone else who were forced to, including Armenians who were forced to kill their families soon followed. (The History Place, This Month in History April) Today, years after the genocide, Turkey's government officially denies that a genocide even occurred and if one happened it was either a genocide against the Turks or the genocide against the Armenians were very few, like, maybe only 30 people dying compared to the total estimate of 1.5 million+ victims. The Turkish government will jail people, and sometimes even assassinate people who publicly state that it was Turkey's fault so many Armenians were murdered., whether it be an Armenian or even their own race who speaks about the Armenian Genocide.

The United States currently officially denies it because they want to keep Turkey as an ally for the Middle East Conflict, and President Bush supports Turkey's want to be in the European Union, but the European Union doesn't want Turkey in because of their denial of such atrocities. Currently, there are more Armenians living outside of Armenia than citizens living in Armenia.

The second genocide of the 20th century is the one that most of us in the US have heard of, and that would be the Holocaust. It's not very hard to find someone in Europe or North America to find someone who is affected or related to someone that had anything to do with World War II or the Holocaust, like a descendant of a survivor or veteran. (The author of this essay is a descendant of both.) It began in the late 1930's when "Kristallnach" was declared by Hitler to "take revenge" on Jews for the ruins of Germany that have happened because of the previous World War, which had nothing to do with Jews being malicious enough to ruin buildings, but everything to do with battles fought on German grounds. Hitler simply hated Jews so much that he was able to rally hatred against them.

Genocide is rarely taught in schools because of the varying viewpoints in the ranks of religion and politics. But why? It happened, regardless of political belief (Liberal Left and Religious Right agree that the United States should officially recognize all genocides. Amazing!) or religious belief! The government of Turkey denies it because they don't want the blood on their hands to deter them away from being accepted into the EU. Turkey's government even advocates against their atrocities committed, and it turns out that their citizens are brainwashed into believing that this whole G-word thing is fake. There are some Turkish, however, like Hrant Dink who is a Turkish-born Armenian, who spoke out against the denial of the Armenian genocide, and someone had assassinated him earlier this year in Turkey. Bands like System of a Down, all four members of Armenian descent, refuse to play in Turkey because of the death threats they get from some citizens there for speaking out against the denial. Even though there is a huge fanbase there, someone in Turkey had convinced people there that System of a Down printed on their tickets, while touring with Slayer, that they "hated Turkey." which is proven to be untrue and them image of the tickets with the so-called print of hatred was digitally enhanced (if you can even call it "enhancing.") to make it appear that it said so.

To solve all of this hoopla and controversy, we as the human race need to recognize all the bad we have done and learn how to prevent it to become a more perfect race. Genocide being denied only hinders this effort, and makes everyone pretty mad anyways, denying it or not. No single race, religion, country, political sect, ethnic group, gender, or sexuality is better or worse off than the other. The truth about our kind needs to be known by everyone, which is silly because we are our kind, and we should already know this stuff. People consumed by evil who commit genocide know this and suppress it from what they preach to their people as humans are also easily impressible. In the end, we are all human.