"Racism and bigotry is okay if it saves lives"

[Rocknrule]

This is just an observation of people I've seen with this attitude.

I am half-Japanese and many of my relatives were interned during WWII, despite fighting bravely for this country. A little less than 9 years ago today, my high school U.S. history class did an exercise where people who felt one way about a subject went to one side of the room, while others went to the other side. The topic was whether the internment of Japanese-Americans was a good idea, something that in this day and age shouldn't even be a question. To my dismay, a little more than half my class was on the approving side (and yes, I did go to a predominantly white school in a largely Republican suburb). I took it VERY personally and walked out of the class, after calling the "pro"-side of the room a bunch of racist bigots to their faces.

Recently, with the Koran burning and the GZ mosque in the news, I've seen plenty of people on Topix and Yahoo call for internment camps, sometimes even death camps, for Muslim Americans. I realized that like my classmates 9 years ago, these people are okay with it because as white Christians, they know they as a whole will never be judged and condemned like that in this country because they're the majority. Because of that, it's easy for them to say "racism and bigotry is okay if it saves lives."

[Angry Dragon]

1. Good post............

[Mz Pip]

2. I would suspect that racism and bigotry

are responsible for far more deaths than it is for saving lives. I'd be hard pressed to find an example where bigotry and racism have saved any lives.

Mz Pip

[drm604]

3. Half the class

That's frightening. I'm always hearing people say that young people today are so much less close minded. Your story would seem to fly in the face of that claim.

I'm curious about the reaction to the incident. Were you disciplined at all for walking out of class? Were you later shunned or mistreated by other students?

[tblue37]

4. The damned fools are NOT the majority in some parts of the country, and

they are definitely going to be the minority in the country in general, and that quite soon. They are fools if they keep trying to pass laws that doom minorities to second-class citizen status, since they are certainly going to be in the minority in this country.

[pinboy3niner]

5. K&R

Good post, Rocknrule. Surprising that a majority of your class would side with internment (and makes me wonder if your history text didn't do a very poor job in treating the subject if so many could come away with such a view).

[jmondine]

6. That's like saying, "Bacon chili cheese dogs are okay if they unclog your arteries".

[indepat]

7. Rocknrule, my wife's most vivid memory a college lecture occurred in 1954 when her

constitutional law professor, with tears streaming down his face, openly wept as he conveyed what he considered the grave injustice handed down by the Supreme Court in Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944) in a 6-3 decision. Justice Black wrote the majority opinion, but Justices Murphy and Jackson kicked ass in their impassioned dissents. Most Americans imo are oblivious to what our Constitution is all about. That Justice Murphy spoke so compellingly about the wrongs of racism is rather remarkable imo, when considering racism was then institutionalized in both government and the private sector, that his ringing dissent came three years before the great white fathers even allowed Jackie Robinson to play baseball in the "big leagues." ;)


Edited for context