It's surprising to see you flagged and downvoted. I would have thought, "concentration camps are bad" plus "our prisons do incredible harm to people" would be uncontroversial takes.
I think some of your initial posts might have read as tone deaf. A sentiment similar to "look at the beauty in this tragedy" can feel like downplaying the tragedy, or it can feel like downplaying similar, other tragedies. ("This concentration camp made their space beautiful" can carry the implication that others don't, unintentionally suggesting that somehow the people in this one are better than the people in that one.)
You later clarified, but I suspect there's also a group of folks who don't want to hear that the US had concentration camps.
You're right. And I was really pleased that geephroh introduced me to
the "model minority myth". It's an area of psychology I've not
encountered before. Cheers
To be clear, we weren't "Japanese" victims. 2/3 of us were American citizens, and the remainder of the imprisoned first-generation immigrants -- many of whom had lived in the US for decades prior to the war -- were barred from naturalization because of their race. This would remain the case until the passage of the Immigration Act of 1952[1].
And while I don't wish to be overly prickly about it since you are obviously approaching this from a place of good intentions, you might want to read up on what we call the "model minority myth"[2]. The "success" of the Japanese American community in surmounting the challenges of the exclusion and incarceration experience has been used repeatedly as a cudgel in US cultural and political discourse wielded against other groups for their perceived failures in achieving the "American Dream." From what you have written here, I know that is not what you support.
> you might want to read up on what we call the "model minority myth"[2].
That's a very interesting perspective. I can see how that could happen
and how it feels for those demeaned by the comparison. Thanks for the
link (and actually just for being engaging in what feels like HN
becoming an increasingly hostile frenzy of flagging and downvoting
everything).
Absolutely! I feel like I better understand your original comment as well, and I don't think you deserved to be piled on so aggressively. So many of our potentially thoughtful conversations are turning into circular firing squads these days.
I do wonder about bias but so far there's no evidence of gas chambers at these camps. It's not hard to find descendants of these camp prisoners (I went to high school with one) in the US and they don't seem to hold much animosity towards the US govt for what was a terrible mistake.
I imagine that if these camps were actually much worse that what is reported, we'd hear it from the living nisei today.
Of the 120,000 Japanese in camps, 1862 known to have died. That was lower death rate than the US overall. Probably cause there were fewer elderly since immigrants tend to be young. I'm sure there is research if deaths were excessive but couldn't find it.
Compare to German concentration camps which would probably be called death camps if not for the extermination camps. Or to the Japanese internment camps in China.
Internment camps were bad but they are lower level of bad.
Sorry my tries to make an interesting conversation ended in a
trainwreck. I did get piled on for basically repeating what was in
the linked article, and then defending it. Probably should have just
walked away from a topic that cannot be discussed in this sort of
format. At least I hope the George Carlin sketch was worth it. Sorry.
