Enough Is Enough: Genocide Ideology and the Bereavement Process in Baltimore and Rwanda

Abstract

This project is a work of collaborative scholarship based in both Rwanda and Baltimore. Through their grief narratives, survivors of homicide victims in Baltimore and survivors of the Rwandan genocide express the ways that their grief processes have been disenfranchised by public and private reactions to violent death. Based on the wisdom of lived experience, Rwandese genocide survivors and survivors of homicide victims in Baltimore discuss the realities that permit and provoke what is revealed to be genocide ideology in Urban, Black America; a stark reminder of the slow but severe escalation of violence that preceded the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. This project does not claim that there is a genocide in Baltimore, nor does it provide simple comparisons between Baltimore and Rwanda. It explores the human experiences of grief as a result of both homicide and genocide, and, using the power of witnessing, confront the genocide ideology that shrouds Baltimore communities in knotted webs of violence.