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This is a manifestation of the US institutionalized xenophobia. Good manners and taste should keep me from using this submission as another soapbox against how
by dictum 13y ago
This is a manifestation of the US institutionalized xenophobia.
Good manners and taste should keep me from using this submission as another soapbox against how the US views foreigners, but when you see foreigners as enemies, a citizen who looks or acts vaguely "foreign"— I can't offer a precise definition of what "looking foreign" entails, but it's a combination of being a part of a small demographic group, and being a part of an ethnicity that is regularly caricatured in the media and in public discourse—will be treated with the same respect and care dispensed to a real foreigner.
- ck2 13y agoIt echos of rounding up everyone who is Japanese and throwing them into concentration camps. It's amazing how many people don't know we had concentration camps in the USA in recent history. We are just a hop skip and jump away from that again, all it would take is another major nightmare.
- lukeqsee 13y agoLink: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment I had never heard of this.
- JackFr 13y agoAre you an American? I'm curious, because in my experience the American interment of Japanese is fairly well known among Americans and Japanese, and not well known by everyone else.
- lukeqsee 13y agoI am. Most likely I learned about it in passing in a history course and have since forgotten because it didn't make an impact at the time. I doubt I'll forget again.
- ck2 13y agoInternment is a revisionist word to make it sound less harsh. They were concentration camps.
- pc86 13y agoPlease point me to the source showing that we used them to manufacture munitions, or to the one showing me that we gassed and burned them.
- pc86 13y agoIs there a reason I'm being downvoted? There are almost no parallels (beyond the most literal) between a concentration camp and an internment camp.
- jlgreco 13y agoHe is using the term "concentration camp" in the original sense of the term to mean "prison camp". What we call "Nazi Concentration Camps" were often "death camps" and/or "labor camps", but those are not what he means by "concentration camp". "Internment Camp" is a euphemism for "concentration camp", which is itself a euphemism for "prison camp". "Concentration camp" has also come to be a euphemism for "extermination camp". So: Is a: | Can be called a [...] Camp -------------------------------------------------------------------- Prison camp | Internment, Concentration Prison camp with labor | Internment, Concentration, Labor Extermination camp | Concentration, Extermination, Death He is talking about the first line, you are talking about the third. In modern English, the term "concentration camp" is most strongly associated with the third. (Actually, IIRC some Japanese prison camps were in fact labor camps, though I think the work they did was almost entirely agricultural. No bomb-assembly to my knowledge.) @dragonwriter suggests avoiding the terms "concentration" and "internment" entirely and only using "prison" and "extermination" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6260756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6260756). I think this is a reasonable suggestion.
- mason240 13y agoConcentration is a revisionist word to make it sound more harsh. They were internment camps. Concentration camps are where you send people to die.
- GFischer 13y agoIt's been linked to several times in Hacker News, here is where I read it first (I'm from Uruguay, South America). Over here, the U.S. are reviled due to their part in the local dictatorships (they trained torturers, among other things).
- waffle_ss 13y agoThe Canadians did as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Canadian_internment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_Canadian_internment
- canistr 13y agoIt should be noted that other Asian people of non-Japanese descent were also wrongly forced into the same Japanese concentration camps. This occurred both in the United States and Canada.
- duggieawesome 13y agoYeah, it's a part of American history that schools skip quite often.
- kevinnk 13y agoReally? I just asked 5 people around me. None of them have ever had an American history class that covered WW2 and not cover the internment camps.
- gwright 13y agoI think you mean 'internment' or 'relocation' camps. The rational for the camps was to relocate people of Japanese heritage away from the coasts or other military 'exclusion zones'. There are plenty of reasons to criticize this policy but calling the camps 'concentration camps' is factually wrong and only serves to obfuscate the rationale (right or wrong) for the camps.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- superuser2 13y ago> It's amazing how many people don't know we had concentration camps in the USA in recent history. When you say "concentration camp" people think of gas chambers, crematoria, and genocide, which were not components of Japanese internment. The term is still technically correct, but that may be why people are confused and surprised. Maybe my school was odd... Japanese internment was at least mentioned every year in US History between 7th and 11th grade.
- bmmayer1 13y agoIt's actually a manifestation of the US security state. Foreigners or foreign-looking people are just the first victims. Rest assured, before long everyone in the country will be suspect.