american-holocaust

ON RACISM AND GENOCIDE 281brought by Soviet and Eastern bloc delegates, it does not include politicalgroups as potential victims) or too broad (because "causing serious bodilyor mental harm to members of the group" can be made applicable to casesthat clearly are not genocidal), among other criticisms. However, the Convention'sdefinition remains the most widely used definition of genocidethroughout the world-and, indeed, in all the world there probably is noother word, in any language, whose definition has been more carefullydiscussed or more universally accepted. In light of the U.N. languageevenputting aside some of its looser constructions-it is impossible toknow what transpired in the Americas during the sixteenth, seventeenth,eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries and not conclude that it was genocide.