I wasn't sure what you meant with the term death march, so I looked it up on Wikipedia. I am still not sure what you mean exactly, but I am sure it is not a fitting metaphor.
That explains it. Maybe I am overly sensitive to this, because I am German, but I still think it is not appropriate to compare your own suffering of working hard for a couple of weeks, to that of those who were forced to march into their death during the Holocaust (or other times). That it is a common term does not excuse anything.
That's the way language works. I don't think the term trivializes real death marches any more than saying "I was sent to the gulag" when one means being sent off to do office drudgery diminishes the seriousness of real gulags, or saying "open-plan offices should die" diminishes the seriousness of murder or death, or using a term such as "viral video" diminishes the seriousness of the prevalence of viral infection such as HIV or the problems of cholera in the 3rd world.
You are right. I don't really feel offended anymore. It's just, that this type of thing goes against my upbringing. To give you an idea, if you used this metaphor in Germany it would be way worse than saying "We had to work like niggers".
It's interesting to me to compare those, and claim that "if you used this metaphor [of a 'death march'] in Germany it would be way worse than saying 'We had to work like niggers' [in America]".
(Note: I am neither American nor German, and all my problems are definitely of the first-world variety. I hope to be thoughtful, but I am sure to be ignorant.)
In the one case, millions of people (say 5% of the country?) were terrorized, then kidnapped from their homes, then treated astonishingly badly, and then many of them were murdered. And it happened during a brief period of 5 years or so, 60 years ago. Short duration, but pretty recent.
In the other case, first of all, consider only the so-called Middle Passage. The total number of people involved is roughly comparable (over 10M), and mortality rate was perhaps a little lower, but roughly comparable (millions died). There then followed generations of maltreatment; appalling as the physical treatment is, the long-term cultural impact of generations of forced ignorance is arguably worse. (I think we can all agree that the oppressed people of Germany are doing much better now [65 years after 1945] than were, say, the Americans of African descent in 1930 [that's 65 years after 1865].) The only thing that seems less horrifying about the era of slavery is that it's a little more distant, at least the really brain-wreckingly horrifying parts.
So, in conclusion, it's not at all clear to this outsider why references to "death marches" are "way worse" than references to "niggers". Seems to me like they're pretty comparable.
What I meant was: "If you used this metaphor [of a 'death march'] in Germany it would be way worse than saying 'We had to work like niggers' [in Germany]." The latter would still be very offensive in Germany as well. I honest don't know if it would be "way worse" than saying it in the US, maybe it's about the same category.
I don't really think there is a point in putting up a comparison whose crimes were worse. It's more an emotional response when people get offended than a rational one, anyway. Maybe it's only worth pointing out that genocide is seen a more grave category of crime than other forms of homicide in international law.
A death march project takes months or even years, ruins the health of the workers and takes years off their lives, destroys their marriages and causes them to lose their children, leaves them believing they failed personally rather than being victims of poor leadership, and so forth. Outright literal death is uncommon but not unheard of.
I am not sure if I should respond to this, given that the submission is already long gone from the homepage and this discussion did already go out of hand, but ...
Like OP's title I used a hyperbole to make a point and that should be clear from the context in my opinion. I apologize in case you have fallen a victim to this phenomenon, I did not mean to trivialize this problem either. However, if what you are suggesting is that what you have been though is comparable to the victims of the Holocaust, you should get a reality check.
