The only reason the Japanese Americans were singled out, imo, was that they were identifiable.
And also there's the element of being... well, other. That would be the evolutionary psychology (xenophobia) component of what happened....
I think there were a few (very few) Germans and Italian Americans also interned.
In some places, like Hawaii, nobody interned the Japanese-Americans because they were needed. Bizarre. Really, what happened could be looked on as, in its stupid detail, almost comical, in a noir sort of way.
My family was German, had a clearly German name, my grandparents were born in Germany, and they had no problems, not even cracks, no discomfiture, nothing.
I have great concerns about what may happen to our rights because of 9/11.
The trick will be to negotiate a reasonable accommodation between being sitting ducks because we're such an open society and having the government exploit the opportunities provided by fear and genuine threat to get away with curtailing our freedoms in ways irrelevant to it.
I'm not all that optimistic about the whole situation. |
