![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Food For Thought
Mar. 4th, 2011 10:42 amen.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_internment
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_American_internment
While it's true that the numbers are nowhere near those of the Japanese internment, I think it's high time people realized that internment of German- and Italian-Americans during WWII (/WWI) DID exist.
I was prompted to look this up because I am (was?) part of a weekly informal discussion group that meets to talk about Asian-American experiences, but I'm having more and more reservations about staying--mostly because as time has gone on, the rest of the group is treating Asian-American issues in a more and more politicized way.
What particularly ticks me off is the way some members of the group propagandize history. As a history major, I've hypothesized that history becomes dangerous when it's isolated from context. I was starting to get tired of the way the other people focused on American outrages against Asian immigrants, so I tried to bring a more balanced view of the big picture by reminding them that pretty much every immigrant group not from Northern/Western Europe got discriminated against, including Catholics, Slavs/Eastern Europeans, Italians and other Southern Europeans, Jews...you name it.
And then people replied by saying, "Yeah, but ONLY Chinese Americans were excluded from immigrating completely and weren't even allowed to become citizens!! That's SO MUCH WORSE than how other immigrants were treated!!1!"
I really didn't feel like arguing anymore at that point, but later I thought I should have said something along the lines of, If we're going to be arguing about which ethnic group got treated worst, we shouldn't be focusing on Asian-Americans, but on African-Americans and Native Americans, people. I'm not saying that racism against Asian-Americans didn't exist. I'm saying that it's frankly rather ignorant to single Asian-Americans out as being "uniquely" "oppressed" by American society.
At first I thought that I was insulated in a bubble because I didn't care much about Asian-American issues, but now I think others are in a bubble because they ONLY see Asian-American issues and not the overarching tensions and conflicts in society.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_American_internment
While it's true that the numbers are nowhere near those of the Japanese internment, I think it's high time people realized that internment of German- and Italian-Americans during WWII (/WWI) DID exist.
I was prompted to look this up because I am (was?) part of a weekly informal discussion group that meets to talk about Asian-American experiences, but I'm having more and more reservations about staying--mostly because as time has gone on, the rest of the group is treating Asian-American issues in a more and more politicized way.
What particularly ticks me off is the way some members of the group propagandize history. As a history major, I've hypothesized that history becomes dangerous when it's isolated from context. I was starting to get tired of the way the other people focused on American outrages against Asian immigrants, so I tried to bring a more balanced view of the big picture by reminding them that pretty much every immigrant group not from Northern/Western Europe got discriminated against, including Catholics, Slavs/Eastern Europeans, Italians and other Southern Europeans, Jews...you name it.
And then people replied by saying, "Yeah, but ONLY Chinese Americans were excluded from immigrating completely and weren't even allowed to become citizens!! That's SO MUCH WORSE than how other immigrants were treated!!1!"
I really didn't feel like arguing anymore at that point, but later I thought I should have said something along the lines of, If we're going to be arguing about which ethnic group got treated worst, we shouldn't be focusing on Asian-Americans, but on African-Americans and Native Americans, people. I'm not saying that racism against Asian-Americans didn't exist. I'm saying that it's frankly rather ignorant to single Asian-Americans out as being "uniquely" "oppressed" by American society.
At first I thought that I was insulated in a bubble because I didn't care much about Asian-American issues, but now I think others are in a bubble because they ONLY see Asian-American issues and not the overarching tensions and conflicts in society.
