“We already did this.” U.S. history is repeating itself. And previous victims of racist hate policy are speaking up for the newest targets.
On February 18, 1942, a little more than 82 years ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, an order that paved the way for the military to evacuate and detain 120,000+ Japanese Americans in internment camps for the duration of World War II. FDR’s order used the concept of “national security” to justify the unjust incarceration of our fellow humans.
Just like the soldiers who put them behind barbed wire, the majority of these people were U.S. citizens. The problem was they were not white citizens.
It’s always been acceptable to hate on people who look different from us. The current trending favorite among people to hate? The black asylum seekers who’ve come to New York from Haiti, Darfur, Senegal, Mauritania, all over Africa. They’ve come to the U.S. to escape long-lingering droughts, violent wars, crushing poverty, brutal governments. The U.S. is welcoming them with inhumane treatment.
This year, as in the past several years, Japanese-American demonstrators marked the Day of Remembrance (held on the date FDR’s executive order mandated forcible evacuation of their families) with peaceful and powerful protests of ICE migrant detention centers. These Americans — scarred by their own incarceration as innocent children or that of their parents and grandparents — see the government’s treatment of migrants and asylum seekers as an immoral and brutal example of history repeating itself.
Let’s continue to point out what we share with these newcomers — the hope and humor, the love of family and friends, the desire for meaningful work and a safe place to live — rather than our surface differences.
There’s been enough barbed wire and hatred already to sink this ship of ours.
This is the third and final of a three-part series.