FDR put Japanese Americans in camps

[edhopper]

Teddy Roosevelt fought in an unjustified war.
Clinton supported the death penalty.
Obama opposed Gay marriage.

No statues for anyone. Tear them all down.

[winetourdriver01]

1. He did

If he hadn't done so, the local "bubbas" would have decorating tree limbs with them.

[bobbieinok]

19. And whites grabbed the homes and businesses they were dragged out of!!

[hardluck]

22. So he did it for their benefit?

How noble of him.

[treestar]

29. He did it out of

The usual xenophobia that intensifies in time of war.

At least I presume so. Not a scholar on FDR.

and times have moved on. We don’t make camps for Muslims. But they were targets of law and policy at the time of the latest war.

[Thomas Hurt]

2. American exceptionalism is myth, our history is as ugly as it noble.

There is no moral calculus to determine if a statue comes down.

Many of them are political statements that have nothing to do with noble causes.

I think you correct it is time to tear them all down and not try to rehabilitate something that we can't.

[Mariana]

3. FDR did NOT put Japanese in camps.

FDR put Americans in camps.

[edhopper]

5. you are right

Corrected.

[yuiyoshida]

13. Of course you are correct...

WE are ASIAN-AMERICANS.

[FreeState]

14. +1000 n/t

[Igel]

21. Some were, some weren't.

My landlord delegated authority to an older couple in the building I lived in.

They were Japanese-Americans. They had been in the camp.

Their parents weren't Japanese-Americans. They were merely Japanese. They, too, were in the camps.


FDR also rounded up Germans and put them in internment camps. For the same stated reasons. These were different from the German POWs held on US soil.





(In WWI the Canadians rounded up some Ukrainians for internment camps.)

[Demsrule86]

39. My Fathers family were of German descent on his Mother's side...had come over recently.,..they were

not put into campts.

[Glorfindel]

4. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson,

W.H. Harrison, Tyler, Van Buren, Polk, Taylor, Andrew Johnson, U.S. Grant ALL owned slaves.
Lots of statues need to be toppled, lots of names need to be changed. Now that T. Roosevelt and A. Lincoln have been exposed as racist, might as well dynamite Mount Rushmore, decorated as it is with the faces of four monsters.

[Ex Lurker]

6. Someone was saying that unsarcastically

On DU the other day

[edhopper]

7. I know

Some one said it on this thread.

[treestar]

30. Wilmington Delaware took down

The Caesar Rodney statue. Because he owned slaves.

On that standard, Mount Vernon and Monticello have to be torn down.

[StarfishSaver]

8. The difference is that those actions did not define them or their legacy

No one expects leaders to be perfect. And we don't expect these men to be. They are revered and honored DESPITE their imperfections. And those blots are not what defined them nor did they make up a significant portion of who they were as leaders.

The Confederate heroes are honored BECAUSE they were Confederate leaders, i.e., they betrayed the Union to fight to maintain slavery. They're not being honored because they were great generals. They got their butts kicked big time. They're not being honored because they grew and changed and became good men who improved the world. The only thing they're being honored for is the worst aspect of who they were.

Not the same.

[Glorfindel]

11. You're absolutely right, StarfishSaver.

Thank you for stating it so succinctly! If any of us or all of us were remembered or honored by the worst things we ever did, I shudder to think of the outcome.

[Music Man]

15. Bingo.

Starfish, you put that as well as anyone I've ever read.

Many figures in American history have problematic characteristics, but that was not necessarily the totality of their legacy. Fighting to form a new country that would preserve slavery is the central part of the Confederate meaning. It is a subtle difference that intelligent minds will understand. I hope we can practice good history in our activism.

[yuiyoshida]

17. And the statues were symbols of hatred for fellow Americans ...

with a slightly different pigmentation.

[StarfishSaver]

18. Exactly -

Like the "Confederate" flag, they didn't turn up before, during or right after the war. They appeared in the mid 20th Century as part of the massive resistance movement against desegregation.

[Renew Deal]

24. Doesn't that logic mean that the Columbus statues should stay up?

"No one expects leaders to be perfect."

[StarfishSaver]

25. No, it doesn't

Re-read my post.

[Renew Deal]

28. I read it

It's flawed logic.

[StarfishSaver]

34. Your failure to understand what I said is not a failure of my logic

But let me spell it out to you in simpler terms ...

Like the Confederate generals, Christopher Colombus is being honored for the very thing that makes him despicable. And, on top of that, he didn't even do the supposedly good thing people are praising him for - he didn't "discover" diddly squat. He wandered into the west after he got lost and stumbled upon land and people that had been there for centuries and had already been "discovered" by explorers before him - and then he subjugated, brutalized, and robbed them

That is different than people who did tremendous good for the country and the world but were not perfect and have things in their record that are problematic.

it's not complicated.

[Caliman73]

38. Agreed

I would also add that Columbus was not particularly famous or revered, especially in America, until it was decided that Italian-Americans who were transitioning into the "White" category, needed a "hero" to tie them to the founding of the country. Since Columbus was one of the first Italian sailors to be in the Americas, they went with him without understanding the legacy.

There is a complicated history of the Americas. Spain, Portugal, France, England, and others came to exploit the resources and they destroyed lives of people already living here.

I understand the desire to destroy statues honoring those who perpetrated that exploitation. It should definitely be a conversation that we have and steps taken to listen to and understand the views of those who want them taken down. There should not be a knee jerk reaction to take them all down because they were people of their time. George Washington was the first president under our Constitution. He owned slaves. He can be commemorated for being one of the founding members of the country we are today AND his ownership of slaves can be critiqued as part of the contradictions of the systems of the time.

It is kind of complicated, but we can manage it. However, it requires non-binary thinking and considering history as a process not a static subject.

[StarfishSaver]

40. Interesting

I didn't know that history of how he became an icon.

Great post. Thanks.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

26. Well said

[msongs]

9. should we tear down statues to all the adulterers nt

[JonLP24]

10. I think Truman was better

He was for civil rights before it was popular. Came up with the Fair Deal to fix the New Deal.

Not a big fan of Bill Clinton.

I acknowledge the good things but I certainly don't overlook the bad. I think it is good to learn from history especially the bad.

Personally I'm more worried about other things like people dying in police custody than statues.

[StarfishSaver]

16. Truman fought for civil rights. He also used the n-word regularly throughout his life

But he desegregated the armed forces and did a lot of other good. His bigotry was part of who he was and should be condemned, but it did not define him.

He'd not in the same category as Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis.

[elleng]

12. No one is perfect,

a lesson every adult should know.

[Jake Stern]

20. It's all funny

Until November 4th and the pundits are trying to figure out how Trump got re-elected.

[treestar]

32. I know

Some people have zero sense of proportion. It’s all one way or the other. Liberals can be just as unreasonable as right wingers in intensity of stubbornness if not in kind. I’ve really been disabused lately of the notion that liberals are inherently smarter or kinder than conservatives.

[jmg257]

23. Red-lining also started during his admin.

Ah well.

[PTWB]

27. History books allow us to convey nuanxe

Statues do not.

Put yourself in the shoes of a young person of color who has to live in the shadow of a monument or statue of a person who enslaved and raped your ancestors, but contributed to important events in our country’s history.

We shouldn’t have monuments or statues. We should not idolize and immortalize. We should TEACH.

[maxsolomon]

31. Ben Franklin was cool, though. Right?

Everyone loved Ben Franklin.

[treestar]

35. He can come through unscathed.

Although he refused to use the pen in Pennsylvania.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

33. Honestly, it's not a bad idea to talk about why we put up statues, who puts them up, what stories

we tell with statues, what messages people get from them, and whether we really should or not.

[maxsolomon]

36. Are we having those conversations?

Here in Seattle, we got rid of a statue of Columbus years ago and replaced it with Indigenous People's Day.

But Chief Seattle himself was the leader of the massacre of the Chimakum tribe in 1847. All the men were killed (except those who were away from the village at the time), and the surviving women and children were enslaved.

His statue stands unmolested in Pioneer Square.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

37. I don't know, are you?

[maxsolomon]

41. I have an angry Millenial Stepdaughter at home.

So yes. More conversations than I'd like, wherein I'm held responsible for all the ills of Boomers, White Men, and the larger Kyriarchy.

At this point, I'm ready to melt them all down and erase both of Borglum's mountains with dynamite.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

42. Bring the day.