
The U.S. Census Bureau Gave Up Names of Japanese-Americans in WWII (2007) - goblin89
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-the-us-census-b/
======
marchenko
The Obama White House has proposed adding a new racial category for Middle
Easterners to the census. It is a poor plan for many reasons; now we have
another.

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/09/30/white...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/09/30/white-
house-wants-add-new-racial-category-middle-eastern-people/91322064/)

~~~
enraged_camel
"Middle Eastern" is not a race though. I'm Turkish and we are very Caucasian.
:)

~~~
fallingfrog
Well, of course there's really no such thing as race to begin with, it's a big
bag of various cultural and historical prejudices with all kinds of different
people thrown together into arbitrary "races". Racism had to be invented to
justify slavery and colonialism.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I'm with you on the prejudice part. But pedantically, its not so easy to
dismiss 'race'. We see strong genetic pooling around the world. We can make up
a new word for that, or use the one we have. Unfortunately the current word
has been muddied by history.

~~~
mikeash
There certainly are genetic differences around the world, but they line up
only vaguely with race. If race were about genetics, then there would be a ton
of different races in Africa, and we'd probably lump all other people under
one "non-African" race.

My favorite way to illustrate the arbitrary nature of race is to ask what the
race is of our current (alas, soon to be former) president. Typically the
answer is "black." Yet his mother was "white." If it were genetic, we'd say he
was mixed, but we're still operating under the influence of old arbitrary
rules where having just a small amount of black ancestry makes you "black."

~~~
omonra
The answer to your question is 'black' because of political correctness. This
is a great example of why it's pernicious - as it robs us of ability to
describe the world.

There is actually a more appropriate term - 'mulatto' which was specifically
created to describe people born to black / white parents. Today it's
considered 'dated and offensive', so we don't have a 'polite' and 'correct'
way to describe the ethnicity of our (current) President.

Would you deny the existence of dog breeds because there exist labradoodles or
any other mixes?

~~~
greglindahl
Even before mulatto fell out of use, most white people called anyone with "a
single drop of black blood" black. I grew up an a racist part of the southern
US, and I assure you that my neighbors would have considered "mulatto" to be a
kind of black person.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Strangely, we still do that. Imagine if a 'single drop of white blood'
(whatever that means) meant you were white. Then America would be 99% white?

------
thesehands
"I'm sad to learn it," he says of the new discovery. "It would be sadder yet
to continue to deny that it happened, if, as now seems clear, it did happen.
You cannot learn from and correct past mistakes unless you know about them." I
wonder if this will ever be said about Snowden in the NSA

~~~
at-fates-hands
>> You cannot learn from and correct past mistakes unless you know about them.

I must getting older, because I see this statement a lot and when you look
back, its clear we never do learn from our past mistakes.

~~~
ythn
> I must getting older, because I see this statement a lot and when you look
> back, its clear we never do learn from our past mistakes.

Hence the current JavaScript development stack(s)

------
hackuser
If this bothers you, what are you doing about it?

Is your company retaining data that can be used against your customers? Is it
implementing tech (end-to-end encryption, data minimization, anonymization,
decentralization, etc.) to reduce their exposure? Don't wait until someone
shows up with a NSL, claiming all Muslims are terrorists and therefore spying
on everyone who believes in Islam or is suspected of being a friend of a
Muslim person is a national security issue. Then it will be too late. Start
now. We are all responsible for what happens next.

Are you calling your elected representatives? Let them know now that you abhor
civil rights violations, especially in the name of security, and will hold
them accountable - now before they are caught up in sensationalized threats
and secret briefings.

~~~
Grishnakh
Throw a wrench into the works if this happens: report a bunch of your
conservative Christian customers as Muslims. It'll suck for them but it serves
them right anyway.

(Make sure to leave the country before the authorities figure out what
happened.)

~~~
hackuser
I would absolutely oppose this; everyone is due the same freedoms and rights.
However, I think you are joking ...

------
Lordarminius
Excerpts from the article:

1."What it suggests is that the statistical information was used at the
microlevel for surveillance of civilian populations, ...

(appears suspiciously similar to what is occurring now)

2\. "At the time, available evidence (and Bureau lore) held that there had
been no … release of microdata,"

(Hahaha)

3\. The Census Bureau has improved its confidentiality practices considerably
in the last six decades, former director Prewitt says.

(How could this be? The government requested and the govenment got the
information. It happened then, it could happen now.)

The more things change the more they remain the same.

To be fair anyway, the picture is not black and white. The government had a
real and valid fear (proven wrong by events) that the japanese population
could be used to foment trouble in the states during the war. However the
action still does leave a bad impression

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alistproducer2
Why is anyone surprised? If we should've learned anything from the last couple
of weeks, it should be that it turns out that despite recent progress, America
hasn't strayed far from its roots.

The powers of government have long been used as a weapon against various
groups over our history. All that's happened recently is the removing of the
mask.

~~~
beachstartup
um, well, if you're going to take it in that direction... FDR was a democrat.

~~~
burkaman
Why do so many people think this is a useful point? Who cares what party
someone is in?

~~~
beachstartup
that's exactly my point! neither party has some kind of monopoly on intolerant
ideas.

~~~
burkaman
Then why bring it up?

~~~
beachstartup
i don't think there's any reason to engage with you because you're just
willfully ignoring the implication of the text i responded to. see ya.

------
mikeash
A sad chapter in our history. What's terrifying to me is that many prominent
people _still defend it today_. And not just people associated with the winner
of the recent presidential election.

~~~
colmvp
Interesting fact: _Korematsu v. United States_ , the Supreme Court decision
upholding the internment of Japanese Americans, was never explicitly overruled
by the Supreme Court because there has not been a similar controversy before
the court.

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rmc
France doesn't ask for or record race/ethnicity on its censuses for exactly
this reason. If you don't store it, you can't be made to give it up.

~~~
venomsnake
Nowadays you can do it with drone, camera and facial recognition software. If
president Le Pen needs the info she could get in 2 days.

~~~
madamelic
That would take the complicity of hundreds, if not thousands, of people.

I doubt it would exactly be a secret or entirely quick, implementing racial
recognition on a national scale.

Releasing information, especially today, takes only a few (Let's ignore
bureaucracy and assume it takes only a few sign-offs to give away massive data
dump legally)

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jellicle
The US government can contact one of the many consumer data brokers and obtain
a list of every Muslim in America in about five minutes. They have no need to
use the Census or anything else.

"Experian’s Ethnic InsightSM is a comprehensive predictive name analysis
process that identifies the ethnic origin, probable religion and language
preferences of individuals."

------
sybhn
This is a great precedent to why folks don't want to register their firearms.

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SixSigma
[http://ibmandtheholocaust.com/](http://ibmandtheholocaust.com/)

IBM was contracted to collect census data for many of the European govts. with
their wonderful new Hollerith machines in the 1930s.

This was then passed on / sold to the Third Reich and used to filter who went
where.

You didn't think it was all done with pencil and paper did you ?

~~~
hackuser
Allegedly, IBM also was the subcontractor who ran the internment camps (or
some part of them) for American citizens of Japanese ancestry.

------
nacs
I wonder if they'll do the same for Muslim Americans for the upcoming
presidential term.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
I'm certain the federal government as a whole already does. Various TLAs hand
over data to the FBI easily, 'cuz terrorists. The census dept. is no longer
important, compared to others, such as NSA, NRO, etc.

------
rmc
Looks like the EU decision that people shouldn't have to transfer data to the
USA is a good move.

------
tomjen3
And nobody goes to prison for it. Nobodies legacy is tarnished.

Why are we even talking about this?

------
jayess
Wait, what? Government can't be trusted?!?!?

------
coldcode
And they will again. More kinds of people.

------
tdkl
Well there are no records of any Japanese running around with katanas chopping
heads from that time.

On the other hand in blindly immigrant accepting Europe though... We learned
our lesson since last year.

~~~
pavlov
Are you joking? The Japanese military committed many atrocities in invaded
countries:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre)

~~~
venomsnake
I think the GP meant civilian Americans chopping other Americans heads with
katanas.

Also isn't the katana mostly stabbing weapon? Slicing someone in two requires
too much effort IMO.

~~~
greenshackle2
From the little kendo I did, it's both, but mostly slashing. You wouldn't so
much slice them in two as open them up from shoulder to hip, if you can. If
you're going for the neck though, the basic technique is throat-stabbing, not
slicing the head off. If the enemy has good armor, I guess you'd have to go
stabby, I can't imagine a katana can slice through good steel plates (or mail,
really).

But 1) the spear is the stabby weapon of choice when not in close quarters.
From horseback you'd only use the katana to slice. Certainly, you wouldn't try
stabbing someone with a katana from horseback.

And 2) the Japanese mostly didn't have excellent armor. They had shitty iron,
so making good steel was very expensive for them. They couldn't have mass-
produced steel plate armor.

The amazing thing about katanas is not that they're better than european
swords (they're not), it's that they were able to make good weapons at all out
of shit-tier iron.

~~~
Grishnakh
>The amazing thing about katanas is not that they're better than european
swords (they're not), it's that they were able to make good weapons at all out
of shit-tier iron.

How are they not better? I'm pretty sure European swords never had that neat
feature of higher hardness at the blade than at the back side, giving the
sword better strength while still staying sharp on the cutting edge.

Katanas are really different swords from medieval European swords, designed
for an entirely different type of fighting. European swords are a product of
the type of warfare they waged, which involved a lot of metal armor with
knights. A katana wouldn't work too well here, so European swords are designed
to crush armor and to be good at stabbing straight through the armor. Katanas
were designed to use against unarmored or lightly-armored foes (I think
Japanese samurai armor was basically leather), and are designed to be used in
slashing motions more. I'd say that for their purpose and their style of
fighting, katanas are definitely better. But against heavily armored
opponents, they're just not the right weapon.

~~~
foobarrio
Some European swords do show a degree of differential tempering and
differential hardening. I don't know what technique they used though. IIRC
correctly if you polish some of the swords the same way you do a JP blade, you
get hamon-esque patterns:

[http://www.archaeologie-
online.de/magazin/fundpunkt/forschun...](http://www.archaeologie-
online.de/magazin/fundpunkt/forschung/2006/scotts-talisman-damastsalat-und-
nanodraht/seite-3/)

Also remember that JP swords are a few hundred years more modern than what we
typically think of when we think EU swords. However the Vikings had some
knowledge of carbon/crucible steel making as early as 9th-10th century:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulfberht_swords](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulfberht_swords)

Masamune was like 14th century with the famous Maramasa and Kotestu being 16th
century onward.

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neves
How do we know that they won't give muslin citizen's data to Trump?

------
pessimizer
It would be far more difficult for President Pence to round up all of the
homosexuals as he promised, but luckily for him, now we have Facebook and
Google. Also, if Obama and Clinton hadn't protected and enabled the NSA, and
completely ignored the mass data collection of private companies, it wouldn't
be far too late for people afraid of being targeted to delete their accounts
now.

Why shouldn't people want to share their real names online? If you have
nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, Muslim.

