6 Phrases with Racist Origins

This is good for a quick overview (I wanted more details on the origins, history, and current implications) and there was one that I didn't know - hip hip hooray. I'll be crossing that one off my list. I learn something knew about the history of racism every day!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/6-words-and-phrases-you-didnt-know-were-rooted-in-racism_5617faa4e4b0e66ad4c7b8f8?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063

 

Priya Parmer & Shirley Steinberg - Locating Yourself for Your Students

Sometimes the most obvious thing goes unnoticed.  Often the most obvious and unspoken is gender and first language, as well as dis/ability, but also race. In this article, the students were quoted as saying, "they knew at every moment of their lives that they were not White, but they felt White people did not know they were White."

"When an educator's whiteness is unnamed, it remains in a dominant position, reinforcing that it is the non-color color by which all other colors are measured." 

Not only name the race of people of color, but also name the race of the white author, inventor, etc., to normalize the language and not point out just the people of color or women as the "other" or add-ons to the [white] curriculum.

Unusual Words

and their meanings around the world…
http://www.visualnews.com/2015/08/13/14-untranslatable-words-and-their-meanings-beautifully-illustrated/?utm_source=VisualNews&utm_campaign=02647b805e-RSS_EMAIL&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1756fd36de-02647b805e-281927425

What’s in a word? Well… a lot, and especially in these highly unusual examples from around the world. While the English language has something like 1.25 million words, there are plenty from other languages for which we simply don’t have a match. The Portuguese word “Cafuné” is one example: it means “the act of tenderly running fingers through someone’s hair.” See… these are words we need.

Taking out the Trash

For the past couple of years, we have been doing this activity in our school where we "take out the trash."

Bristal, P. et al, “Treating Thoughts as material Objects Can Increase or Decrease Their Impact on Evaluations” Psychological Science

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/11/21/0956797612449176.abstract

In Western dualistic culture, it is assumed that thoughts cannot be treated as material objects; however, language is replete with metaphorical analogies suggesting otherwise. In the research reported here, we examined whether objectifying thoughts can influence whether the thoughts are used in subsequent evaluations. In Experiment 1, participants wrote about what they either liked or disliked about their bodies. Then, the paper on which they wrote their thoughts was either ripped up and tossed in the trash or kept and checked for errors. When participants physically discarded a representation of their thoughts, they mentally discarded them as well, using them less in forming judgments than did participants who retained a representation of their thoughts. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and also showed that people relied on their thoughts more when they physically kept them in a safe place—putting their thoughts in their pockets—than when they discarded them. A final study revealed that these effects were stronger when the action was performed physically rather than merely imagined.

What is Anti-Semitism?

http://www.thebedfordcitizen.org/2014/04/05/reflections-on-anti-semitism-ask-a-high-school-student/

What is a Jew? I don’t suppose I can eat that either…
A Jew is a member of a group that traces their ancestry back to Biblical Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the book of Genesis. It is both an ethnic group and a religious group. It is possible to be Jewish and not be religious, and it is possible to be religiously Jewish and not ethnically Jewish. There are 13.4 million Jews alive today. The Jewish ethnicity has been traced genetically to those people living in Canaan (modern-day Israel) 5,000 years ago.

Jews do not speak Jewish. The religious language of the Jews is Hebrew (a Semitic language), which became extinct but was revived by the Zionists in the 20^th century as Modern Hebrew. Ancient Jews also spoke Aramaic (a Semitic language). Yiddish is a dialectical language formed similarly to Creole spoken by Jews who migrated to Central Europe. Ladino is another dialectical language spoken by Jews who migrated to Spain. These are the most common Jews dialects. There are many more.

The point being that Jews are a varied people and that this concept of monolithic anti-Semitism is fallacious. It is just as subtle and varied. Hatred is a slippery thing.

Why is anti-Semitism receiving all of this attention now?
There have been countless unreported incidents of anti-Semitism towards Jewish students at Bedford Public Schools for years; however recently there have been many reported incidents in rapid succession at more than one school, including swastikas drawn on the walls of the high school, a group of students texting swastikas to each other, and a game “Jail the Jews” proposed by two students at the elementary school level during a creativity exercise. Concerned parents are concerned; and they should be.

Rachel Dolezal

Perspectives:
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/6/17/watch_four_perspectives_on_race_and

Why Rachel Dolezal's story is one of deception, and trans folks, coming out as trans is about truth.
http://www.upworthy.com/a-black-trans-woman-explains-changing-gender-vs-changing-race?c=ufb1

When the story of Rachel Dolezal (the white NAACP chapter president who has been masquerading as a black woman) went viral, the Internet exploded with countless memes and even more think pieces.

Rachel Dolezal and the surprisingly common practice of ‘racial shifting’
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/06/15/what-rachel-dolezal-has-in-common-with-half-a-million-americans/  (watch both videos in succession)

In fact, between 2000 and 2010 (the nation’s two most recent Census counts) the share of people who identified themselves as part Native American grew by a whopping 39 percent in a single decade, nearly four times faster than the nation's population as a whole. That’s nearly 650,000 people who were multi-racial in 2012 who did not consider themselves thus in 2000. Racial shifting is real.

And just to be clear, we aren't talking about a Native American baby boom or surge in people who identified as being of multiracial heritage because of changes made to Census forms. The latter happened for the first time in 2000, not 2010.

The vast majority of this change – according to U.S. Census staff and population experts around the country – happened as a result of shifting racial identification among adults. We're talking about 644,986 people who, for the most part, described themselves as white on the 2000 Census and then described themselves as white and Native American in 2010.

Rachel Dolezal a lesson in how racism works
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/06/13/rachel-dolezal-story-lesson-how-racism-works/J8R27qgq2YfDRUuOVhpYGI/story.html?event=event25

But that’s not how racial identity and racism work. The racial categories inherent to institutional racism are the product of law and social custom, but they are not randomly generated or freely chosen. They are informed by and inscribed in our legislative history, and they are violently policed by civilians and stewards of the state such that white people benefit at nonwhites’ expense.

These benefits are manifold. White households have far more wealth than black and Hispanic households, as economic class privilege has been generated, passed down, and protected through slavery, Jim Crow, and continued discrimination in housing, banking, and the labor market. Whites are presumed innocent and nonthreatening, and are allowed to assemble freely and move through all sorts of public spaces without being labeled deviants or “thugs.” Racial identity is always linked to privilege.

So the problem is not simply that Dolezal lied. Her choice to give up whiteness was a privilege enabled by a racial logic that allows for the possibility of a light-skinned black person, as centuries of racist legislation mandated that “one drop” of nonwhite blood resulted in racial categorization in the lower status group. This same enduring racial logic categorically denies the possibility of a brown-skinned white person, and it does so in order to restrict and protect whiteness as exclusive, “pure,” and the basis for full citizenship and respect.

About Rachel Dolezal the Undercover Sista and Performing Blackness 
http://www.awesomelyluvvie.com/2015/06/about-rachel-dolezal-blackness.html

I was more amused than anything until I kept finding out about all the lies that Rachel has piled up over the years to make this fantasy work. She’s told people her father is a Black man, even taking Fake Black Daddy to some event. She’s reported that she’s been a victim of several hate crimes, even going as far as placing this in her bio. She says she has a Black son but he is actually her adopted brother from her real WHITE parents. At best, she’s a pathological liar and at worst, she might be suffering from delusions of grandeur, which means she might need to be on meds because isn’t that one of many symptoms of schizophrenia? Except she actually isn’t because her brother Ezra said she told him not to blow her cover. Rachel ain’t curling all the way over, like many of her weaves.

What's Wrong with Cultural Appropriation?
http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/06/cultural-appropriation-wrong/

In short: Cultural appropriation is when somebody adopts aspects of a culture that’s not their own.

But that’s only the most basic definition.

A deeper understanding of cultural appropriation also refers to a particular power dynamic in which members of a dominant culture take elements from a culture of people who have been systematically oppressed by that dominant group.

That’s why cultural appropriation is not the same as cultural exchange, when people share mutually with each other – because cultural exchange lacks that systemic power dynamic.

It’s also not the same as assimilation, when marginalized people adopt elements of the dominant culture in order to survive conditions that make life more of a struggle if they don’t.

Some say, for instance, that non-Western people who wear jeans and Indigenous people who speak English are taking from dominant cultures, too.

But marginalized groups don’t have the power to decide if they’d prefer to stick with their customs or try on the dominant culture’s traditions just for fun. 

When the last living survivors of massacred Indigenous tribes are fighting to save their language before it dies when they do, and Native students are suspended for speaking in their own Indigenous languages, mirroring the abusive US boarding schools that tried to wipe out Native American cultures up until the 1980s, it’s clear that not every person who speaks English does so by choice.

In other words, context matters.

Which means it’s not about saying that you, as an individual, are a bad person if you appropriate someone else’s culture.

It’s a complicated issue that includes our histories, our current state of affairs, and our future, as we act to eliminate oppression, instead of perpetuating it.

So if you’re still baffled about why people would get upset about this issue, consider the following contexts.

1. It Trivializes Violent Historical Oppression
2. It Lets People Show Love for the Culture, But Remain Prejudiced Against Its People
3. It Makes Things ‘Cool’ for White People – But ‘Too Ethnic’ for People of Color
4. It Lets Privileged People Profit from Oppressed People’s Labor
5. It Lets Some People Get Rewarded for Things the Creators Never Got Credit For
6. It Spreads Mass Lies About Marginalized Cultures
7. It Perpetuates Racist Stereotypes
8. White People Can Freely Do What People of Color Were Actively Punished for Doing
9. It Prioritizes the Feelings of Privileged People Over Justice for Marginalized People

The Truth About Rachel Dolezal That You Won't See on T.V.
http://mic.com/articles/120784/rachel-dolezal-interview-matt-lauer

While Dolezal said her story raises the question of what it means to be "human," her philosophical statement misses the point that not all human beings are treated equally in a society that privileges some because of the color of their skin. Dolezal is fighting to humanize her journey so that the public can better understand her move from whiteness to aspirational blackness, but her notion of what it means to strive towards a shared humanity just obscures the particularities of black peoples' lived experiences in this country as they continue to fight to be seen as worthy of being alive in the first place.  

For all of the discourse on race and "transracialism" seemingly spurred by Dolezal, there is comparatively little focus on the material effects of racism in actual black people's lives right now. Dolezal might receive attention because she is a white woman identifying as a black woman fighting for black issues, but that won't prevent black people from being twice as likely as white people to be killed by police when unarmed, disproportionately imprisoned, overwhelmingly impacted by income equality, affected by health disparities and beset by unemployment.

Cultural Appropriation vs. Cultural Exchange

 

More examples of cultural appropriation:

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/07/cultural-appropriating-outfits/?utm_content=bufferdd75c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Don't Believe in White Privilege?

White privilege is an important understanding needed for the race/racism conversation.  Here are some updated resources.

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Ben Affleck was “embarrassed” to discover that he had slave-owning ancestors. “The very thought left a bad taste in (his) mouth.”
http://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog/2015/04/25/dear-ben/

So welcome to the club, Ben.
Now pull up a chair and let’s talk about what we do about this.
Because what we don’t do … what we can never do … is deny the reality of the past.
Because when we try to deny the reality of the past, we are in effect writing out of our history the lives of those who were enslaved.
And they deserve better.

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Tell me: Are you a white person who's felt uncomfortable with the term "white privilege"? Does a more nuanced approach help you see your own privilege more clearly?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gina-crosleycorcoran/explaining-white-privilege-to-a-broke-white-person_b_5269255.html 

So when that feminist told me I had "white privilege," I told her that my white skin didn't do shit to prevent me from experiencing poverty. Then, like any good, educated feminist would, she directed me to Peggy McIntosh's now-famous 1988 piece "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack."
Citizenship: Simply being born in this country affords you certain privileges that non-citizens will never access.
Class: Being born into a financially stable family can help guarantee your health, happiness, safety, education, intelligence, and future opportunities.
Sexual orientation: If you were born straight, every state in this country affords you privileges that non-straight folks have to fight the Supreme Court for.
Sex: If you were born male, you can assume that you can walk through a parking garage without worrying that you'll be raped and then have to deal with a defense attorney blaming it on what you were wearing.
Ability: If you were born able-bodied, you probably don't have to plan your life around handicap access, braille, or other special needs.
Gender identity: If you were born cisgender (that is, your gender identity matches the sex you were assigned at birth), you don't have to worry that using the restroom or locker room will invoke public outrage.

As you can see, belonging to one or more category of privilege, especially being a straight, white, middle-class, able-bodied male, can be like winning a lottery you didn't even know you were playing. But this is not to imply that any form of privilege is exactly the same as another, or that people lacking in one area of privilege understand what it's like to be lacking in other areas. Race discrimination is not equal to sex discrimination and so forth.

And listen: Recognizing privilege doesn't mean suffering guilt or shame for your lot in life. Nobody's saying that straight, white, middle-class, able-bodied males are all a bunch of assholes who don't work hard for what they have. Recognizing privilege simply means being aware that some people have to work much harder just to experience the things you take for granted (if they ever can experience them at all).

I know now that I am privileged in many ways. I am privileged as a natural-born white citizen. I am privileged as a cisgender woman. I am privileged as an able-bodied person. I am privileged that my first language is also our national language, and that I was born with an intellect and ambition that pulled me out of the poverty that I was otherwise destined for. I was privileged to be able to marry my way "up" by partnering with a privileged, middle-class, educated male who fully expected me to earn a college degree.

There are a million ways I experience privilege, and some that I certainly don't. But thankfully, intersectionality allows us to examine these varying dimensions and degrees of discrimination while raising awareness of the results of multiple systems of oppression at work.

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“This is not new,” Obama said. “It’s been going on for decades. And without making any excuses for criminal activities that take place in these communities, what we also know is that if you have impoverished communities that have been stripped away of opportunity, where children are born into abject poverty; they’ve got parents, often, because of substance abuse problems or incarceration or lack of education themselves, who can’t do right by their kids.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/28/the-most-honest-15-minutes-of-obama-s-presidency.html?source=DailyBeast&utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=55403c1204d301408c000001&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook&via=FB_Page

Self-Efficacy Resources

Multicultural Pavilion Equity Awareness Quiz

http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/quiz/quiz1.htm

Marva Collins

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4qqnBazyeA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmW_Qu3yhjA

Einstein Quote: Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Self Affirming Books

• Incredible You!: 10 Ways to Let Your Greatness Shine Through - Dr. Wayne Dyer
• It's Not What You've Got - Dr. Wayne Dyer
• On My Way to a Happy Life - Deepak Chopra
• Unstoppable Me!: 10 Ways to Soar Through Life - Dr. Wayne Dyer
• The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon – Ten Rules to Fuel Your Life, Work and Team with positive Energy

 Books Supporting Self-Efficacy

• I Believe in Me: A Book of Affirmations - Connie Bowen
• I Think, I Am: Teaching Kids the Power of Affirmations - Louise Hay
• Super Dog: The Heart of a Hero by Caralyn Buehner
• Work Hard-Never Give Up by Cecil Mosensen
• The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
• Thank you, Mr. Falker by Patricia Polocco
• The Power of Our Words, Teacher Language that Helps Children Learn by Paula Denton
• Manifest Your Magnificence (64 Affirmation Cards for Kids 6-12 Years Old) by Susan Howson and Mike Polito (2002)

Articles on the Brain –This might be helpful for those of you wanting to teach students explicitly about the brain

Brain Friendly Learning

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational_leadership/summer09/vol66/num09/Brain-Friendly_Learning_for_Teachers.aspx

What You Should Know About Your Brain

http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el200912_willis.pdf

12 Things to Know About Your Brain

http://theweek.com/article/index/248669/12-things-we-know-about-how-the-brain-works

Growth Mindset Resources

Test your Mindset

http://mindsetonline.com/testyourmindset/step1.php

Video Clips

The Power of Belief – Mindset and Success: Eduardo Briceno

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN34FNbOKXc

The Learning Brain

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgLYkV689s4

Embrace the Near Win

http://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_lewis_embrace_the_near_win

 

Grit - Angela Duckworth

What's in a Name?

The Lime
http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/07/03/lime-racist?cmpid=tp-ptnr-upworthy
Not only are we dealing with racist overtones—the slur is xenophobic too. So maybe it's time for Thai-takeout-loving America to embrace the makrut lime.

The Moko Returns: More Than A Tattoo

http://www.opb.org/artsandlife/article/the-moko-returns-more-than-a-tattoo/
Martin is a descendant of the Takelma tribe, now one of the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz. And the markings on her face have a long history in Takelma culture.

“It’s not a tattoo,” Martin quickly explains. “It’s a moko.” Members of the Māori tribe call it tā moko (rhymes with “cocoa”). The cultural markings were common among the Pacific Rim tribes until the late 1800s when treaties forced the tribes out of their homelands.

Transforming Curriculum Philosophy

We must transform our minds before we can transform our curriculum.  My coaching is about helping teachers become more familiar with multicultural concepts, the language we use without even knowing it, and some specific vocabulary needed in order to have conversations around racism and privilege, in order to look at one's own work with new eyes.

~ Claudia A. Fox Tree

We are charged with educating for the next seven generations.  Infusing an anti-bias orientation into thinking - one that effectively nurtures a curiosity about, and a respect for, differences - is critical.

The “sandwich” approach to planning lessons is essential.  Planning should have 3 parts (not necessarily in this order, but certainly present in some way, with "good stuff" surrounding the "oppressive stuff") as much as possible.

Part 1

• Understanding the concepts (vocabulary) in order to have informed conversations, such as: Stereotypes, Prejudice, Discrimination.
• Raising awareness of the contributions of under-represented (marginalized) groups, particularly BEFORE they were oppressed (civilizations, inventions, "discoveries," achievements, etc.)

Part 2

• Problems/Issues/Oppression - What is "lingering" to modern times?
• Raising awareness of the issues faced by under-represented (marginalized) groups throughout history. - How did groups resist and fight against their oppression?

Part 3

• Role Models/Action plans/Proactive Activity. - We still exist in the contemporary world!
• Understanding and practicing ally behavior (i.e.: active bystander, advocate, etc.). 
• Power/Privilege (Institutionalized Stereotypes, and Prejudice, Discrimination), and Ally.  - How can you use the areas where you have advantage and control to help others?

Play It Foward (Start a Ripple Today): Changing Our Language

VIDEO Duke's 'You Don't Say' Campaign Reminds You Which Words Shouldn't Be Used As Slang
www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/23/duke-you-dont-say-campaign-photos_n_5199334.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063
There's no reason you should ever refer to something as "gay," and a campaign called "You Don't Say" at Duke University is reminding students with a photo campaign.

The importance of kindness

World War II Perspectives Lesson

TOUR OF WWII * focusing on multiple perspectives

KEYPOINTS:

• We need to consider all the possible multiple perspectives and actively seek them out.  Then we need to make choices and think about why we want to include or exclude particular perspectives and what that means to the topic and to our students.
• When books don’t exist, it is our job as activists to find additional resources (internet) in order to present “missing voices” until a suitable book exists.
  
• Teacher-created summaries can meet the need of a more inclusive story AND also make the topic accessible to children with language limits – e.g., teachers can adjust language, print size, and readability level, computers can read text to students.
• See the summary samples below.

BOOK EXAMPLES:

The Unbreakable Code – Sara Hoagland Hunter

Passage to Freedom:  The Sugihara Story – Ken Mochizuki

I Am An American – Jerry Stanley

So Far From the Sea – Eve Bunting

The Bracelet – Yoshiko Uchida & Joanna Yardley

Those Incredible Women of World War II – Karen Zeinert

The Invisible Thread: The Powerful Memoir of a Girl Consigned to a Concentration Camp by The U.S. Gov’t – Yoshiko Ushida

Aleutian Sparrow – Karen Hesse

The Tuskegee Airmen – Jaqueline Harris

Baseball Saved Us – Ken Mochizuki

Number the Stars – Lois Lowry

Anne Frank:  The Diary of a Young Girl  – Anne Frank

The True Story of the Three Little Pigs – Jon Scieszka (example of multiple perspectives)

WWII - Native Americans

Carl Gorman died in February, 1998, he was 90 and the oldest of the 400 Navajo code talkers.  He was the father of artist R.C. Gorman from Taos, N.M.  He spent much of WWII in the Pacific on his belly at the front lines, a radio rather than a rifle in his hands, just as other Navajo volunteers did, making sure that the Japanese code crackers, who broke the Army, Navy, and Air Corps. codes, would never learn anything from intercepted Marine radio messages. 

Navajo is a language without an alphabet and with such a complex, irregular syntax that in 1942 it was estimated that outside of the 50,000 Navajos, no more than 30 other people in the world had any knowledge of it, none of them Japanese.  It was a wonder that Mr. Gorman or any other Navajos still spoke Navajo at all in the face of a long and concerted Federal campaign to suppress Indian languages.  He had once been chained to an iron pipe for a week because he insisted on speaking his native tongue. 

When the Japanese figured out that Marine radio operators were speaking Navajo and tried to torture a captured Navajo soldier, unfamiliar with the code, into translating messages, he was as much in the unknown as his Japanese captors.  He could tell them that cay-da-gahi meant turtle, but he had no idea that turtle meant tank.  The Navajo code, which was never broken, was considered so valuable that code talkers were not allowed to talk about it until 1969.

Source:  The New York Times, Obituary 2/1/1998

 

WWII - African Americans - Tuskegee

Adhering to its own policies of racial segregation, the U.S. Army Air Force had only one facility for Basic and Advanced Flight Training for Black pilots and that was at the Tuskegee Army Air Field, near Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, which existed only as a result of a lawsuit brought by an African American who was refused for pilot training because of his race.

The “Tuskegee Experiment” was expected to “prove” racial deficiencies in intelligence and concentration, yet the Tuskegee Institute graduated 926 African-American pilots.  The 332nd Fighter Group was comprised of the 99th, 100th, 301st, and 302nd Fighter Squadrons of the U.S. Army Air Corps.  The Red Tail Angels of the 332nd would end the war as the only fighter group in over 1,578 missions throughout Europe and North Africa to NEVER lose a bomber while escorting over 200 bombing missions.

American pilots were not expected to fly more than 50 missions or so before returning home, yet the Black American pilots - due of “lack of replacements” flew closer to 100 missions. They retuned home, the finest pilots in the U.S. and found themselves back in “Colored Only” lines.  In one case, more than a hundred Tuskegee Airmen Officers were arrested and court martialled for refusing to leave the segregated Officer’s Club at Freeman Field in Indiana.  Three years later (1948), President Truman officially desegregated the Armed Forces.

Sources:  http://www.grunts.net/afamerican/332ndfdg.html

http://www.world-wide-net.com/tuskegeeairmen/

WWII - Japanese Americans - Camps

As a result of the war with Japan, many people in he U.S. did not trust people of Japanese ancestry.  Even Japanese-Americans who were born in this country were mistakenly thought to be loyal to Japan.  On February 19, 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the forcible removal of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps.  More than two-thirds of those relocated under this order were citizens of the United States, and none had ever shown any disloyalty.  In the entire course of the war, 10 people were convicted of spying for Japan, all of whom were White.

The definition of concentration camp is a place of confinement for political prisoners, which is what happened during WWII to Japanese Americans. To not use this language maintains the mythology that the U.S. has never had these types of prisons (and maintains the ideology that the U.S. is better than many other countries).  In addition, the term concentration camp is the one that was used by U.S. officials, including FDR, at the time.  The government quickly changed its *public* language in order to make the camps more acceptable. Roger Daniels (in his book "Japanese Americans: From relocation to redress") states, "internment is a well defined legal process by which enemy nationals are placed in confinement in times of war."  As he notes, the incarceration of Japanese immigrants and non-U.S. citizens immediately after Pearl Harbor was internment.  The imprisonment of almost 100,000 U.S. citizens because of how they looked and a more powerful group’s desire for economic gain does not fit the definition of internment. (Information in this paragraph from: Karen L. Suyemoto, Ph.D., University of Massachusetts - Boston)

On August 10, 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 that provided a Presidential apology and symbolic payment of $20,000 to the internees, evacuees, and persons of Japanese ancestry who lost liberty or property because of discriminatory action by the Federal government during WWII. 

Sources:

http://www.lib.Utah.edu/spc/photo/9066/9066.htm

http://www.usdoj.gov/kidspage/crt/redress.htm

WWII - Japanese Americans - Soldiers

The 100th Infantry battalion of Nisei (2nd generation Japanese-Americans) volunteers was formed in May, 1942.  By September, 1943, they were sent to Italy where they saw fierce combat and came to be known as the “Purple Heart Battalion” because of their high casualty rate.

Due to the stunning success of Nisei in combat, the draft was reinstated in January, 1944 for Nisei in the detention camps to bolster the ranks of the segregated 442nd Regimental Combat Team.  The 100/442nd became the most decorated unit in U.S. military history for its size and length of service.  There were over 18,000 individual decorations for bravery, 9,500 Purple Hearts, and seven Presidential Distinguished Unit Citations.

It was the 100/442nd that liberated the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

Source:  www.nikkeiheritage.org/research/442html

WWII - African Americans - Overseas

Like other Allied forces that landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, they faced the German enemy on the beach in front of them. Their role on D-Day isn't well-known. One black face appears briefly in the movie "The Longest Day"; none is seen in "Saving Private Ryan." Most histories of the climactic assault on Normandy also fail to notice that black soldiers were there.

In fact, blacks were among the assault troops that June 6, and one unit was responsible for maintaining barrage balloons over the beachhead that protected troops landing.

The Stars and Stripes newspaper in 1944 reported that the unit suffered casualties setting up the balloons, which were floated across the English Channel on invasion day. Army photographers recorded black troops in operations liberating French villages around the beaches, and stories of the time cited black troops who were awarded medals for bravery and meritorious duty.

The exact number of blacks involved in the D-Day landings is unknown, as is the number of casualties. He estimates that from 1,500 to 2,000 of the 57,000 troops involved were black. The Army didn't record racial or ethnic differences when counting the dead.

Sources: 

startribune.com

Remembering Role of Black GIs on June 6, 1944 by Lance Gay

Scripps Howard News Service, Published May 30, 2004

  

WWII - Mexican Americans - Bracero

On August 4, 1942, the U.S. and the Mexican governments instituted the Bracero program.  Thousands of impoverished Mexican farm workers abandoned their rural communities and headed north to the southwestern part of the U.S. to work the fields once harvested by Americans who were off to war.  The Bracero could return to their native lands in case of an emergency, only with written permission from their boss.  When their contract expired, the Bracero were required to turn in their permits and return to Mexico.   The Bracero suffered harassment and oppression from extremist groups and racist authorities.

The Bracero were a very experienced farm labor who became the foundation for the development of North American agriculture.  The program under which more than three million Mexicans entered the U.S. to labor in the agricultural fields ended in 1964.

Source:  http://www.farmworker.org/bracerop.html

WWII - American Women - Soldiers & Nurses

An average female clerical salary was only $850 per year, few could afford the $750 required for obtaining a pilot’s license, unless they had family backing. Over 25,000 women applied to be WASPs (Women Airforce Service Pilot), yet only 1,839 of that number were accepted and only 1,074 received their silver wings.  Although all of those applying had some previous flight training and many were already licensed pilots, few survived the rigorous screening and training standard set up for the WASP.

WASPs flew U.S. military aircraft during WWII in a special program designed to free male pilots for overseas duty.  Female pilots utilized their skills to transport new war birds from the factories to needed airfields.  With the enormous losses of male aviators, there were now more planes available than pilots to fly them, especially for ferrying duties.  These women often transported top secret documents, including parts for assembling the world’s first atomic bomb.  They offered both basic and instrument instruction to men and even flew highly classified experimental aircraft such as the first jets. 

Many female pilots were mistaken for mail carriers, flight attendants, boat captains, doormen, and even as members of another country's military because uniformed women soldiers were so rare.

Women were also military nurses.  With a nudge from Eleanor Roosevelt, the Navy began authorizing a Women’s Naval Reserve and the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve.  These women were WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services).  The WAAC (Women’s Army auxiliary Corps) was changed to the WAC establishing it as part of the Army and not an auxiliary by a second bill in July of 1943, signed by President Roosevelt. 

In July of 1944, WACs landed on the beach at Normandy.  There were over one hundred thousand women in uniform at this point in time.

Sources: 

http://www.womenofcourage.com/guide.htm

http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/femvets5.html

WWII - Mexican Americans - Soldiers

On March 14, 1944, President Roosevelt agreed to accept the participation of one or two Mexican air squadrons.  This event marked the first time the Mexican troops were trained for combat.  

Although only in the Philippines for six months, the squadron actively participated in 59 combat missions totaling over 1,290 hours of flight.  They successfully participated in the Allied effort to bomb Luzon and Formosa in an attempt to push the Japanese out of the islands.  Assigned to the 58th Fighter group of the U.S. 5th Air Force, the “Aztec Eagles” were also used as ground support after the aerial threat from Japan weakened.

Source:  http://www.utexas.edu/projects/latinoarchives/narratives/vol1no2/ESCUADRON_201/ESCUADRON_201.HTML

WWII - American Women - “Production Soldiers”

In July 1941, the American Red Cross called upon “every woman and girl in Huntsville and Madison County, Alabama who knits, crochets, or sews“ to cooperate in meeting the deadline for completing the area’s assigned quota of sewing.  In addition to sewing and winding bandages, the female inhabitants were active participants in the civilian defense effort.

In April 1942, the University of Alabama offered a course in chemical laboratory techniques for-women-only; those who desired to qualify for jobs in defense laboratories.  While many male factory workers went to war, at the Huntsville Arsenal, black and white men did the heavy work, while white females were employed for production work.  No demand was made for large numbers of black females until the local labor market was exhausted of white females.

Pay was not equal.  For examples, men who worked in mustard gas production were paid $5.76 daily, while women were paid $4.40.  The principle of “equal pay for equal work,” adopted by the War Labor Board in 1942 was subsequently implemented at arsenals as part of the basic War Department philosophy of wage administration.  Even lingering doubts about the suitability of hiring black women for defense work were soon overridden by the pressing need to meet production demand.

The movement toward all female work crews was a gradual one, particularly in those areas where women had never been assigned duty.  But by 1943, a women supervisor and her “all female crew of 15” had acquired the reputation for being “one of the most efficient crews at the arsenal.”  By May 1944, Huntsville peaked in employing 6,707 men and women, 63% male (11% were black, 52% white) and 37% female (11% were black, 26% white)

Redstone Arsenal implemented its first reduction in force in June 1945, when about 200 employees were terminated, mostly black women.  By October, the number of female production employees was reduced to zero.  Huntsville Arsenal placed 500 operations employees, almost all women, on a 90 day furlough in August 1945, then continued a layoff through September. The reason given for this decision was based on the belief that women were “not suited for transfer to the heavy work.”

Source:  http://www.redstone.army.mil/history/women/welcome.html

WWII - Jewish Experience in Germany

The beginning of the Second World War brought millions of non-German Jews under German rule, mostly in Poland. But still no clear concept existed about what to do with them. In Poland the SS often forced Jews to live in ghettos, most prominently in Warsaw and Kracow, and resettled them in big cities or along railroad lines. The official policy was still expulsion and exclusion from the rest of society, not extermination, but shootings occurred, and living conditions in the ghettos were so terrible as to produce a high mortality.

But in the fall of 1941 the SS constructed death factories with gas chambers. A Europe-wide extermination program started. In the following three years the remaining Jews from Germany and all occupied countries were rounded up, put into freight trains, and driven across Europe to the death camps in Poland, most notably Auschwitz, Maidanek, and Treblinka. There the survivors of the transports were led to a ramp on which Nazi doctors separated the most fit and sent them to the work camps right next to the extermination camps. The others were led into windowless chambers. After they had undressed (presumably to take a shower), gas dropped in from the ceiling and killed them within minutes. Most of those who had to work did not survive either.

Besides Jews, the "death factories" also killed opponents of the regime (German and non-German), Gypsies, Russian prisoners of war, and many other innocent people. The gruesome mass murder intensified toward the end of the war, as Hitler believed that the extermination of the Jews would be his lasting "achievement" in history and that future generations would be grateful. The Holocaust claimed roughly six million Jewish victims. Around five million other people were killed as well, including between two and three million Soviet prisoners of war, many gypsies, German resisters, communists, homosexuals, and other groups. The death machinery worked as long as German troops held Poland. When the Russians advanced in late 1944, the SS destroyed the death camps and the relating documents (making the task of historians to establish exact numbers and procedures more difficult).

Sources: 

http://www.colby.edu/personal/r/rmscheck/GermanyE4.html

http://members.aol.com/TeacherNet/Holocaust.html

WWII - Aleut Internment

In response to Japanese aggression in the Aleutians, U.S. authorities evacuated 881 Aleuts from nine villages. They were herded from their homes onto cramped transport ships, most allowed only a single suitcase. Heartbroken, Atka villagers watched as U.S. servicemen set their homes and church afire so they would not fall into Japanese hands. 

The Aleuts were transported to Southeast Alaska and there crowded into "duration villages": abandoned canneries, a herring saltery, and gold mine camp-rotting facilities with no plumbing, electricity or toilets. The Aleuts lacked warm winter clothes, and camp food was poor, the water tainted. For two years they would remain in these dark places, struggling to survive. Illness of one form or another struck all the evacuees, but medical care was often nonexistent, and the authorities were dismissive of the Aleuts' complaints. Pneumonia and tuberculosis took the very young and the old. With the death of the elders so, too, passed their knowledge of traditional Aleut ways.

Despite their poor treatment at the hands of the U.S. government, twenty-five Aleut men joined the Armed Forces. Three took part in the U.S. invasion of Attu Island, and all were awarded the Bronze Star.

The Attuans suffered severe deprivation during the war. For three years, they were imprisoned in the city of Otaru on Hokkaido Island, subsisting almost soley on rice. What the war had not done, a stroke of the pen had accomplished – four communities had met with extinction. Those villagers allowed to reoccupy their homes found them ravaged by the weather and vandalized by U.S. servicemen, the windows smashed, doors and furniture gone. Worse still was the theft of religious icons and subsistence equipment – boats and rifles. Some Aleut worked until their hands bled to repair the damage that had been done, but it would take years to recover, to fashion new communities and a new order for themselves. Politicized by their stay in the camps, the Aleut began the long battle for restitution. The evacuation had taken place for humanitarian reasons, but racism too had played a role in their abrupt evacuation and poor treatment in the camps.

It would be forty years until restitution would be made, but on August 10, 1988 Public Law 100-383 was signed calling for financial compensation and apology from Congress and the President in behalf of the American people.

Source:  http://www.nps.gov/aleu/ForKids.htm

WWII - Gay/Lesbian Experience

The history of the pink triangle begins before WWII, during Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Paragraph 175, a clause in German law prohibiting homosexual relations, was revised by Hitler in 1935 to include kissing, embracing, and gay fantasies as well as sexual acts. Convicted offenders -- an estimated 25000 just from 1937 to 1939 -- were sent to prison and then later to concentration camps. Their sentence was to be sterilized, and this was most often accomplished by castration. In 1942 Hitler's punishment for homosexuality was extended to death.

Each prisoner in the concentration camps wore a colored inverted triangle to designate their reason for incarceration, and hence the designation also served to form a sort of social hierarchy among the prisoners. A green triangle marked its wearer as a regular criminal; a red triangle denoted a political prisoner. Two yellow triangles overlapped to form a Star of David designated a Jewish prisoner. The pink triangle was for homosexuals. A yellow Star of David under a superimposed pink triangle marked the lowest of all prisoners -- a gay Jew.

Although homosexual prisoners reportedly were not shipped en masse to the death camps at Auschwitz, a great number of gay men were among the non-Jews who were killed there. Estimates of the number of gay men killed during the Nazi regime range from 50,000 to twice that figure. When the war was finally over, countless many homosexuals remained prisoners in the camps, because Paragraph 175 remained law in West Germany until its repeal in 1969.

In the 1970's, gay liberation groups resurrected the pink triangle as a popular symbol for the gay rights movement. In the 1980's, ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power) began using the pink triangle for their cause. They inverted the symbol, making it point up, to signify an active fight back rather than a passive resignation to fate.

One additional note:  Alan Turing was a gay mathematician and THE founding father of computer science who was instrumental in the British war effort during World War II. After the war, he was convicted of having homosexual sex and forced to undergo drug and hormone treatments.

Source:  http://www.wright-counseling.com/Safezone/safezonesymbols.htm