Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity | Ethnicity

The term ethnicity was coined by American sociologists in the 1920s to describe the phenomena and the politicization of the basic concept of an ethnic group. It derives from the Greek word ethnos, meaning "peoples." The problem is that ethnic groups are almost always seen as minorities, not as peoples.

Ethnicity has been the dominant motif in most modern genocides and acts of mass violence in the twentieth century, particularly in the deadliest "genocides-in-whole" (according to the UN Convention of 1948), which were all committed by perpetrators from ruling national majorities against members of ethnic and religious minority groups. Examples are the large-scale genocides committed by the regime of the Young Turks against the Armenians (AGHET), Pontian Greeks, and Assyrians in the 1920s; the Holocaust committed by the German Nazis and their allies and vassal regimes between 1939 and 1945 throughout most of Europe...