In the United States, the term means you would have been kept out of white-only clubs. The average idiot in America might have forgotten that this has happened

In the United States, the term means you would have been kept out of white-only clubs. The average idiot in America might have forgotten that this has happened in living memory. So when someone uses it to refer to Japanese-Americans they might be signaling that they recognize a white-only rule existed in living memory.