Friday, July 12, 2013

Racism For the Cause

Images of anti-Japanese racism in America, specifically circa WWII, are unfortunately familiar to me from the cartoons of my youth.  Even so, it's easy to allow ourselves to forget just how virulent and overt the problem actually was.

We know about internment camps, but I suspect we like to focus on the word camp in something more approximating summer-camp, or perhaps even just Hogan's Heroes' POW camp, than to believe that America ever (never mind so hideously recently) had anything like a concentration camp.  But we did concentrate a certain population and our purpose was not moral.

ONLY YOU ... can fight racism.  Fascinating, but incredibly ugly, images of jingoistic fire prevention messages from the forties - and, thank heavens, some of the ways we have evolved.  I find the image of Smokey giving people bear hugs questionable, but at least it isn't outright offensive.

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