Race alone justified the imprisonment of more than 100,000 Japanese Americans.
Evidence
Who is considered a criminal in our society is much more subjective than we like to believe. Innocent Italians, convicted of no wrongdoing, were arrested and lynched, while the white Americans who lynched them were never brought to justice. What happened to Japanese Americans not very long ago is one of the most glaring examples of a people being imprisoned solely because of their race. Simply being of Japanese ancestry was grounds enough for the arrest and imprisonment of more than 100,000 people during World War II, including the Masuda family. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 162
Categorization
Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims
- XREF: Ties to chapter’s broader claim that whom society labels criminal is raced — the policing-of-whiteness theme from The Whiteness of Wealth perspective.
Related
- US citizens were imprisoned without hearing solely because of their race. (similarity 0.82)
- No ethnic Japanese ever posed a security threat justifying mass imprisonment (similarity 0.78)
- Only Japanese Americans faced mass incarceration without individual review (similarity 0.78)