Europeans and Racism

[Neptune]

The long, ugly history of anti-Asian racism and violence in the U.S.

Cpl. George Bushy, left, holds the youngest child of Shigeho Kitamoto, center, as she and her children are forced to leave Bainbridge Island, Wash., in 1942. They were sent to an internment camp.

People of Asian descent have been living in the United States for more than 160 years, and have long been the target of bigotry. Here is a look at the violence and racism that Asian immigrants and Asian Americans have faced since before the Civil War.

People v. Hall
Chinese immigrants began coming to the United States in significant numbers in the 1850s, largely to California and other Western states, to work in mining and railroad construction. There was high demand for these dangerous, low-wage jobs, and Chinese immigrants were willing to fill them. Almost immediately, the racist trope of “Asians coming to steal White jobs” was born. And in 1854, the California Supreme Court reinforced racism against Asian immigrants in People v. Hall, ruling that people of Asian descent could not testify against a White person in court, virtually guaranteeing that Whites could escape punishment for anti-Asian violence. In this case, it was murder: George Hall shot and killed Chinese immigrant Ling Sing, and the testimony of witnesses was rejected because they were also Asian.

Chinese massacre of 1871
On Oct. 24, 1871, following the murder of a White man caught in the crossfire between rival Chinese groups, more than 500 White and Hispanic rioters surrounded and attacked Los Angeles’ small Chinese community, centered in a red-light district known as Negro Alley. At least 17 Chinese men and boys were lynched, including a prominent local doctor. They were hanged across several downtown sites, anywhere the rioters could find a beam to string a noose. Eight of the rioters were eventually convicted of manslaughter, but their convictions were overturned. No one else was ever punished.

Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
In the 1870s spawned another spike in anti-Asian racism and scapegoating. In 1882, Congress overwhelmingly passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned Chinese immigration for 20 years. President Chester A. Arthur vetoed it, but then signed another version with a 10-year ban. The first law placing a restriction on immigration to the United States, it was extended for more than 60 years before it was repealed in 1943.

An 1885 print depicts Chinese immigrant miners working for the Union Pacific Coal Company fleeing from armed White miners who blamed the Chinese miners for taking their jobs.

Rock Springs massacre, 1885
In Rock Springs, Wyoming Territory, long-standing aggression against Chinese miners exploded in September 1885, when 100 to 150 vigilantes surrounded and attacked Chinese mineworkers, killing 28 people and burning 79 homes. Hundreds fled to a nearby town, then were tricked into boarding a train they were told would take them to safety in San Francisco. Instead, it took them back to Rock Springs, where they were forced back into the mine. Federal troops stayed for 13 years to impose order.

San Francisco plague outbreak
In 1900, an outbreak of bubonic plague struck San Francisco. It is likely that the outbreak began with a ship from Australia, but since the first stateside victim was a Chinese immigrant, the whole community was blamed for it. Overnight, the city’s Chinatown was surrounded by police, preventing anyone but White residents from going in or out. Chinese residents were also subjected to home searches and property destruction by force. The episode was a prelude to the racism that has been aimed at Asian Americans during the coronavirus pandemic, which former President Donald Trump frequently called “the China virus," “the Wuhan virus,” and the “Kung Flu.


The 1943 film "Japanese Relocation" tried to justify the government's decision to move people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast to internment camps.

After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and the United States entered World War II, the U.S. government forced all of them into internment camps for the duration of the war over suspicions they might aid the enemy. Conditions in the camps were extreme, blazing hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. No spies were ever found. When they were freed, many returned to find their homes and businesses vandalized or confiscated.

Vietnamese shrimpers and the KKK
At the close of the Vietnam War, the United States resettled many Vietnamese fleeing the communists. In Texas, many of those immigrants took up shrimping. “We like the weather, we like the shrimping, we like a chance to start our own businesses,” Nguyen Van Nam told The Washington Post in 1984. As they worked hard and began to dominate the industry, the trope of Asians coming to take White jobs returned, and this time it was wearing a white hood. Ku Klux Klan leader Louis Beam trained his members in commando-style attacks; they patrolled the waters in their regalia and set boats owned by Vietnamese people on fire.

Lily Chin holds a photograph of her son Vincent, 27, who was beaten to death in June 1982.

The murder of Vincent Chin
Vincent Chin was out on the town. On June 19, 1982, the 27-year-old Chinese American was about to marry and was celebrating with friends in Detroit. Then two White men picked a bar fight, blaming Chin for “the Japanese” taking their auto-industry jobs. Outside the bar, the men beat Chin with a baseball bat. He died several days later. His assailants took a manslaughter plea bargain, which carried a possible sentence of 15 years. Instead, the judge gave the men probation and a $3,000 fine. The lenient sentence outraged and galvanized the Asian American community, helping to unite them across ethnic lines and work for civil rights.

The L.A. riots
Tensions had been building between the Black and Korean American communities in Los Angeles for years. Then came the April 29, 1992, acquittal of the police officers caught on camera beating Rodney King. As the city erupted in riots, Korean American businesses became targets; thousands were damaged during the unrest.
‘Burn, baby, burn’: What I saw as a black journalist covering the L.A. riots 25 years ago


9/11-inspired hatred
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, hate crimes spiked against Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim, including people of South Asian descent. Only four days after the attacks, aircraft mechanic Frank Silva Roque murdered Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh American gas station owner originally from India, whom Roque mistook for Muslim. The post-9/11 period led to greater awareness and advocacy between the South and East Asian communities.

______________________
Why is racism still such a problem for the most powerful (weaponised) country on earth?

You'd think a Civil War might have been the last word on the issue. The slave holding states of the Old South did battle with the northern states in 1861, fighting for the right to extend slavery into the vast lands of the West as America grew. The South lost and President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves.

But the South was never admonished for having slaves in the first place. History quickly rewrote the Civil War as a "quarrel between brothers".

For the North, what was vital was re-admitting the old Confederacy back into the bosom of the family. Racist views and bigotry - no problem, just don't disturb the Union.

There was no attempt to change the hearts of Southern racists. In fact, as long as the Union remained intact, racists could act as they pleased. They could lynch, and loot and burn. They could murder and rape. They could threaten and intimidate. They could bully.

Hence the rise of segregation, the intimidation of black voters, indeed the denial of the right to vote for black people. And through it all, the mindset was left untroubled - the notion that white might is right, and black people should be treated as second-class citizens.

Of course, that mindset was embedded deep in many of the nation's police forces, which grew out of groups set up to catch runaway blacks slaves as well as maintain law and order.

It's the mindset that led President Woodrow Wilson, in office from 1913 to 1921, to oversee the re-segregation of multiple federal agencies. This is the same president who publicly backed the Ku Klux Klan. It's the mindset that at the turn of the 20th Century saw the vilification of black people as wide-eyed "happy negroes" content with their lot as poor share croppers and shoe shiners.

It's the mindset that saw the erection of hundreds of Confederate statues of Southern civil war leaders, that are now the subject of controversy today. Men venerated as patriots, when they fought a war to break up the Union - men who should have been treated as traitors, not heroes.

Ah, I hear you cry. All that is ancient history, things have changed.

It is easy for white Americans to compartmentalise the past. To see the injustices of yesteryear as having no relevance to events today. African Americans don't have that luxury. The past is the present, the racism is the same.

I know this because having reported from America for nearly a quarter of a century, I'm seeing the same stories of police brutality, discrimination in housing and jobs, and black voter suppression, as I saw back in Los Angeles in the 1990s.

Suspicious deaths in police custody followed by rudimentary inquiries, followed usually by the exoneration of the officers involved. It's a pathetic cycle of indulgence that allows, even condones and encourages, bad behaviour.

There's another example of the past being the present.
I've already mentioned my first US presidential election in 1996. It was a blowout for Bill Clinton against a hapless Bob Dole for the Republicans.

A big issue in the campaign was urban crime and the Clinton administration's controversial 1994 Crime Bill that critics say increased mass incarceration and led to the disproportionate jailing of tens of thousands of black men. Joe Biden helped get that legislation on the books, and his involvement has come back to haunt him.

US election 2020: Why racism is still a problem for the world's most powerful country

The stories of police brutality against African Americans are similar to those of 20 years ago, writes the BBC's Clive Myrie.

www.bbc.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/03/18/history-anti-asian-violence-racism/

I have a feeling this is because of the recent ‘anti Asian’ stories...

I hate to break the news to you but you are being suckered by the liberal press. There are hundreds of attacks against whites that the liberals hide. Recently a little boy was executed by a black man, a disabled white man was recently burned to dead, many whites have been targets of hate crimes but that does not fit the leftist communist narrative. There are 1.4 million assaults in the US every year and Asians are the victims of only about 0.2%

Majority of perpetrators of attacks on Asians have been black. In San Francisco 85% of all Asians assaulted were by blacks. Around 51% of all murders in the US are committed by backs even though they only make up 13% of the population.

Since Trump is gone the liberal press are running out of stories so they focus on a few dozen attacks on Asians (mostly committed by black) then blame Trump and whites for it. CNN ratting have plummeted since Trump left so, they ignore the thousands of whites murdered and assaulted, lie about police violence and fixate on a few stories where they manipulate facts. Politically it works well too, they blame all these problems are republicans and whites then morons vote in liberals while they spew socialist, communist garbage and target certain groups as ‘privileged’ which was part of Hitler’s play book since he labeled Jews privileged.

If you want go after racists start by denouncing all the anti white racism thought by liberals in schools, also denounce all their violence. Antifa and BLM caused over 2 billion in damages in the past year while murdering dozens.

 

[Villager]

I have a feeling this is because of the recent ‘anti Asian’ stories...

I hate to break the news to you but you are being suckered by the liberal press. There are hundreds of attacks against whites that the liberals hide. Recently a little boy was executed by a black man, a disabled white man was recently burned to dead, many whites have been targets of hate crimes but that does not fit the leftist communist narrative. There are 1.4 million assaults in the US every year and Asians are the victims of only about 0.2%

Majority of perpetrators of attacks on Asians have been black. In San Francisco 85% of all Asians assaulted were by blacks. Around 51% of all murders in the US are committed by backs even though they only make up 13% of the population.

Since Trump is gone the liberal press are running out of stories so they focus on a few dozen attacks on Asians (mostly committed by black) then blame Trump and whites for it. CNN ratting have plummeted since Trump left so, they ignore the thousands of whites murdered and assaulted, lie about police violence and fixate on a few stories where they manipulate facts.

If you want go after racists start by denouncing all the anti white racism thought by liberals in schools, also denounce all their violence. Antifa and BLM caused over 2 billion in damages in the past year while murdering dozens.

How sad... The poor hapless, innocent and oppressed whites who lost their land, their lives, their women and what not to these non-white barbarians. I know how this racist savage state came to exist on a land that is not even their in the first place. I know why they pretend to have been colonised and gotten freedom from Brits when they had actually occupied someone else's land through deceit and brute force. How else would they find excuses to fool, invade, exploit and occupy the rest of world? These maniacs with no culture, civilisation, no ethics just run over other civilisation and then they become champions of humanity and democracy. But you are right, I must be getting suckered. I will probably remain suckered. I am just a naive two year old who accepts whatever gets fed to him. I see how much they celebrate the native culture, they have really fully assimilated with the regional people. I see so many natives who have led US and feel proud to be citizens of the world's biggest and strongest humanitarian democracy. US democracy is nothing but Satan's trickery at its best much like Ravana acting a Rishi.

This is just true America that world is starting to speak up against. You dictated a weak disturbed world through deceit and cunning. Now the world is rising and you will be made to see the mirror that you have been asking other to see. And your American racism isn't just an administration issue, that is your whole fucking race (maybe a few exception on individual level). The administration issue is with rest of the world, China, India, Iran, etc, they got culture, they got civilisation, the commoners there understand and value human lives. Of all the people in the world, Europeans (Whites) are least capable of intergrating and assimilating into non-european custom or cultures. Wherever they have gone in the last 600 years, they either butchered natives or colonised them. They sometime expressed their racism openly in the past, now some of them are just a little careful in their words but they continue to plot against them. To me those who are openly racist are much better being than those who are hidden racist. Trump is better than Biden, Clinton, Bush, Regan and all other pricks because he is an asshole but that's apparent. This isn't about liberal, illiberal, left or right. That's is just the fact. I don't form my opinion from press. That maybe true with you, however. But that's alright, if you want to have any chance of success in white state, you better suck up to them. It's not like you would be revolting against them even if you knew the truth. You ain't a revolutionary. You can talk, that's all.

Tell me what's greatest trick the devil ever pulled?

Spoiler: Spoiler

 

[Villager]

If you want go after racists start by denouncing all the anti white racism thought by liberals in schools, also denounce all their violence. Antifa and BLM caused over 2 billion in damages in the past year while murdering dozens.

Ask the white pricks to get the FU*k out of native land and I will do exactly as you asked. Ofcourse, you can't do that. Any guessing the amount of damages these white dic*s did to the rest and the amount they stoles and the lives they took and the lives they destroyed? Ooohhhh.... that's just past. Yeah. I get it Chump.

 

[Villager]

BBC host replaced over a joke in the land of free and made to apologise. Queen's media demands to love the queen or leave the state. Is this actually a nation or a king/queen dom?


What's there to love about the old h*g? I guess I won't be getting entry in the racist state anymore if they read my post. Cause I wanted to take a pi*s in the F****ingham palace.

Love the flag or ‘move to another country’, Conservative MP says

‘If people are not proud to be British, or of our flag or Queen, they don’t have to live in the UK’

www.independent.co.uk

 

[Villager]

Advice for Modern America, from When Buddhism Was Seen as a National Threat
by Funie Hsu and Hondo Lobley

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Buddhism was considered a threat to America. Hondo Lobley interviews scholar Duncan Williams about what we might want to remember from that time. Introduction by Funie Hsu.

The history of American Buddhism is a story of immigration.


Our understanding of the historical relationship between American Buddhism and immigration is obscured by a history of exclusion, white supremacy, and anti-immigrant sentiment. Today, the aggressive dismantling of protections for incarcerated non-citizen immigrants and frequent raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) serve as reminders that this legacy is a continued reality for many who currently reside in the U.S. It is worthwhile, then, to turn to the history of American Buddhism to recognize that previous generations of Asian and Asian American Buddhists have endured exclusion, erasure, and violence as immigrants in America and to consider what Buddhists in America today can do to support immigrant communities under attack.


The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was the first federal law to prohibit immigration based on ethnicity. To accommodate the demands of white labor organizations like the Workingmen’s Party of California, President Chester Arthur signed the law that curtailed Chinese immigrant labor. The Act also effectively stymied the growth of the first significant community of Buddhist practitioners in the U.S. Later, Japanese and Japanese Americans became the target of anti-Asian hostilities as their population quickly grew in the West Coast during the turn of the 20th century. As a predominantly Buddhist community, their religion was viewed as a marker of their foreignness. With the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japanese and Japanese American Buddhists became a special threat to national security. Martial law was immediately declared in Hawai’i, and FBI agents were quick to detain Buddhist priests for questioning. Executive Order 9066 authorized the eventual mass removal of 120,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans from the West Coast and sanctioned their incarceration into concentration camps for the duration of the war.


In the interview that follows, Hondo Masato Lobley, a descendant of Japanese American Buddhists incarcerated in the Amache camp and a member of the Kaiho Collective, sits down with scholar and Soto Zen priest, Dr. Duncan Ryuken Willams, to discuss his forthcoming book on Buddhism and World War II incarceration, American Sutra: Buddhism and the World War Two Japanese American Experience. The conversation presents an exploration of American Buddhism as it pertains to the Japanese American experience and issues of immigration and American identity. As such, it provides important considerations for our contemporary climate, especially in regards to the treatment of Muslims and Muslim Americans by the current administration. It also illuminates, as Dr. Williams details, the manner in which Asian immigrant Buddhists have paved a path towards liberation that Buddhists in America walk today. —Funie Hsu, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of American Studies, San José State University


A note on terminology: In choosing to use the terms incarceration and concentration camp in lieu of internment/camp, we adhere to the growing consensus among scholars and activists that denotes the accuracy of the former terms in best describing the political realities and conditions of the incarceration experience.

Hondo Lobley: “This is not normal” has become a common liberal outcry against the Trump administration, regarding actions like the travel ban, the proposed Muslim registry, and the blatant racism of cabinet members. Your research on the racial and religious persecution of Japanese Americans during WWII highlights the fact that state-sponsored prejudice has, in fact, been normal through the course of American history. What noteworthy incidents of government-sanctioned discrimination have you come across in your research?

Duncan Williams: There’s been a very long history. It’s not that the government itself says, “Let’s figure out a policy approach to specifically target a particular race or religion.” It’s more of a broader societal conversation that involves civic leaders, local politicians, state level people, church leaders, newspapers


There’s a model of inclusion that presumes Anglo-Protestants at the center of American identity. Those at the center of this model then make decisions on how to widen the circle of inclusion. When people started talking about America as a “Christian nation,” that was a move to start including Catholics — Italians and Irish — so it wasn’t just Protestants. Being Christian covered these groups. By the time we got to Judeo-Christians, we had a moment when America began to be seen as inclusive of Jews. Right after 9/11, George Bush made a famous speech when he talked about the “Abrahamic faiths.”


These frameworks for understanding national identity inform whether something is a threat to that national identity. The presence of people with different ethnic, race, or religious identity sometimes challenges an established understanding of Americanness.


To me, what’s interesting about Buddhism and Hinduism — religions that have nothing to do with the origins of the Abrahamic faiths — is that you can’t include them that way. There’s something interesting about the way Asians disrupt the idea of what America is and what it means to include Asians in America.

Looking at the Asian and Asian American example, we can start as far back as the late 19th century. San Francisco newspapers would use the term “heathen Chinese” — this idea of the unchristian, uncivilized Chinese migrant worker in America, which conflated a people being not-quite-human and not-quite-Christian. In that period, those things were all very much conflated.


The Japanese American incarceration is not only about race and national origin, but the idea of the religious other. That begins earlier with South Asians. The word “Hindu” meant both a race and a religion. It pointed to a backward people that were seen as not-on-par with immigrants from Europe, who were Christian.


So, to me, government policies don’t come out of the blue. They’re discussed within these kinds of frameworks. Senator Phelan of California’s discussion, right before the 1924 Immigration Act, doesn’t actually mention that one of the primary targets is Asians — just like executive order 9066 (which precipitated the Internment) doesn’t actually say the word “Japanese.” They are smart enough to understand that there’s something slightly unconstitutional in what they’re doing, and it’s slightly un-American. But, this framework is so dominant that there’s an urge to want to protect America by protecting that idea.


Going back to “it’s not normal” — saying that is okay, because it’s a strategy of de-normalizing the dominant idea. There are ways to reinforce the dominant idea and there are ways to undercut it. Saying “it’s not normal” is one of many ways to undercut it. There were allies to Japanese Americans during WWII — attorneys from the ACLU or members of the American Friends Service Committee — who used the same language: “this is not normal.” I’m okay with people saying it, not as a historical fact, but as a strategy to de-normalize things that people say are normal. I think Trump certainly has moved some lines about what is “normal.”


In an early draft of your upcoming book, you describe the role of what is currently referred to as “fake news” in generating wartime hysteria against the Japanese and Japanese Americans during WWII. Can you talk about the significance of fake news during that period?


It was widely recognized that news media outlets reported things that were blatantly false. A week after President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 announcement, in February of 1942, they reported a huge attack by the Japanese on the city of Los Angeles — 30 or 40 planes. Many newspapers reported that the local Japanese and Japanese American community aided and abetted these attackers. The attacks did not at all happen. The next day, the Secretary of the Navy had to clarify it did not happen. The newspapers ultimately said it was a rumor.


What happened was that American military personnel fired anti-aircraft artillery at something they perceived as Japanese planes. Once the artillery went up, locals panicked and thought they were under attack. This was made possible because the public was prepped by the news media of that time to think that an attack by Japan on the US mainland was quite possible and probable.


There are many other instances of that kind of reportage. What is troublesome — and potentially linked to today — is that it led to Japanese and Japanese Americans being targeted by mob violence and police arrests. One guy was trying to fix his headlights and he was arrested because they thought he was trying to signal the enemy. People were prepped to believe not only that Imperial Japan would attack, but also that Japanese Americans were ready to be traitors to their country. That was certainly fanned by the news media of the time.

A difference today is that, at that time, they didn’t have a Breitbart. They didn’t have an alternate-universe news outlet. These articles were in the mainstream press of the time. There are positives and negatives with the multiplicities of news outlets today. I think it’s quite likely that if we tracked down the people who commit violence towards Muslim Americans, we would find that the news world they live in and the Facebook groups they belong to are populated with news that is not based in reality and reinstates a paranoia about a particular ethnic group. We have seen that story run before.


Your work reminds us that at one time in this country being Buddhist was synonymous with being a racial “other” and thus considered by many to be incompatible with being an American citizen and seen by the government as a potential terrorist threat. Why was Buddhism was seen as a threat?


The best examples come from Hawaii, in the sense that it lies at the far western edge of American territories, that in the political philosophy of Manifest Destiny, was to be Americanized by Christianizing the region. You initially have Christian missionaries and commercial interests that define a territory as American. It becomes a militarily a zone where America will place its bases. American business can prosper in that zone. And it’s going to be, as its identity, a Christian space.


There are two examples in Hawaii that precede Pearl Harbor that get at why Buddhists were targeted right away.


On the day of Pearl Harbor: 8, 9, 10 am, the attack is going on. At 3:30 pm, martial law is declared. Before martial law is declared, at 3 pm — certainly before the United States Congress declared war — the first person is already arrested. That person was a Nishi Hongwanji Bishop in Hawaii.


How did that happen? The answer lies in the decades prior to December 1941.


The first example I think about are the strikes of 1904 and 1919 — labor disputes in which the government, the commercial interests, and the Christian Church felt under threat. The Japanese were at the forefront of these major labor disputes, and the Buddhist temples were where all the striking workers gathered. Many of the labor leaders came from the Young Buddhist Association. Buddhism became associated with that which would disrupt American business — or, that which would disrupt the entire identity of Hawaii as it became an American, Christianized territory.


Around that time, people began using the term “repaganization of the Hawaiian Islands.” By that, they meant that the Native Hawaiian peoples, whose religion they viewed as pagan, had been civilized by Christianity. But the Buddhists did not become Christian. That’s “repaganization.” They worried that Hawaii was going to become a more Buddhist-dominated space.


The second example: in 1927, there was a U.S. Supreme Court decision, Tokushige vs. Farrington. Farrington was the Governor of the Hawaiian territory at that time. The territorial legislature tried to ban the Japanese language schools that were primarily run by Buddhist temples. It went through the Ninth Circuit and eventually the Supreme Court, which decided in favor of the Japanese language schools. The territorial government was frustrated with DC and the Supreme Court for saying, in a sense, Yes you can be in an American territory and have a religion that’s different and speak a language that’s not English. It’s a very important case that very few people study.

The point is: all throughout these ‘10s and ‘20s, before Pearl Harbor, there was a very dynamic conversation in Hawaii about what it meant to be an American. And, because the Buddhists hadn’t converted to Americanism by becoming Christian, they weren’t “true” Americans — they weren’t showing loyalty to their adopted home. They weren’t assimilating. This was a conversation that happened within the Japanese American community in Hawaii in the decades before World War II.


Many of the people who helped the FBI come up with their lists were part of the group in Hawaii who believed that to be American is to be Christian and that Buddhists and Buddhist organizations were undermining — or were in fact a threat to — national security. That’s where it begins.


Buddhism has gone from being seen as a terrorist threat and a religion of heretical, “foreigner Asians” to being embraced by a faction of white American liberal culture and has even become trendy. How do you understand this apparent shift?


I think of it as Buddhism as an idea vs. Buddhism an embodied practice. There’s a difference between Buddhism as a threat to national security versus this image of an innocuous, peaceful philosophy–spirituality — a practical set of methods, such as meditation, that allow one to reorient one’s life.


There has always been a certain small segment of people who were not born into Buddhist families who have either been sympathetic or have actually converted to Buddhism. Thomas Tweed famously writes about Victorian Buddhism in late 19th century East Coast America. Most people only read about Buddhism in books, but they were fascinated by it. Tweed talks about people who were drawn to Buddhism and categorizes them into 3 kinds: rationalists, romantics, and esoterics. I think, in some ways, those categories still hold even in the 21st century. This is the late 19th century when he was talking about people, the rationalists, who saw Buddhism as a philosophy that was not anti-science. The romantics saw it as the mystical East. To them, Buddhism embodied a repository of wisdom in an almost-poetic way. Finally, the esoterics viewed Buddhism as magical–mystical, containing these hidden truths that you would be able to access if you were initiated in a certain lineage.


John Dower writes in War Without Mercy, his famous Pulitzer prize-winning book on the Pacific war, about the absolute brutality of the war in the Pacific and the view of the Japanese as uberhuman-but-not-actually-human. However brutal the war in Europe was, it was not that racially-based war. It was the same on the other side: the Japanese viewed the Americans in racial terms, too. It was a very serious clash, with each side not viewing the enemy as human.


We can see that there has been a shift post-war. Japan, these days, is identified with fashion, design, pop culture, anime, manga, and economic power. It shifted, right? So, its possible, in less than half a century, to shift perception. For me, I’m curious to see what it takes to shift today’s mainstream American discourse about Muslim Americans. What is it going to take so that, 50 years from now, Islam will be seen as innocuous, like Buddhism is, today?


How did Japanese American Buddhist organizations have to change in order to avoid repercussions from the government and stigmatization from the general public? How did these changes, and the incarceration experience in general, shape the current practice of Japanese and Japanese American Buddhists?


During war, questions of identity and loyalty come to the fore in a very heightened way. One of the responses of the Japanese American Buddhist community under martial law in Hawaii and inside the mainland U.S. camps was to accelerate the process of Americanizing Buddhism.


I always say that there are two dynamics at work when Buddhism moves from one cultural context to another. Here’s an example. In the field of Chinese Buddhism, there are two classic books out there: one about how the preexisting Confucian and Taoist traditions and the philosophical–religious landscape of China took this thing from India and transformed it socially and doctrinally to fit the Chinese milieu. There’s another book, The Buddhist Conquest of China, in which the basic notion was that this new unique religion radically transformed the Chinese ways of thinking and the religious landscape of China. There will always be these debates. But actually both are true; when religions move from one context to another, they get transformed and bring something new to the table.

Both of those things were happening prior to the war, there were already places in Oregon that were using the word “church” to talk about their temple. There were places that mimicked the Christian congregational style of worship. Jews from Europe also shifted to that model in the US. Like the idea of meeting on a certain day — like Sunday — and having a worship service. In the case of Japanese Americans prior to WWII, they already had this process of singing Buddhist hymns, often transposing Christian hymnal music and notation styles and putting Buddhist terminology and thematics in them. jodo


What the war does is it heightens this, because of the questioned loyalty of the Japanese Americans. So they “Americanized” their Buddhism first by transferring its formal registration to American citizens, who would be listed as the de facto leaders of the movement, putting it under American control. In 1944, in Topaz — which is where the largest of the Japanese American school of Buddhism, the Nishi Hongwanji school of Jodo Shinshu Buddhism — they held a series of meetings to become more American by democratically electing their leadership. Prior leaders were not elected. They were appointed by Kyoto, which is where the headquarters were based. They changed the name of the organization from “Buddhist Missions of North America” to “Buddhist Churches of America.”


As we discussed earlier, it appears now that Muslims and Muslim Americans are currently faced with a similar hostility that conflates their religion and ethnicities as being a dangerous, un-American threat to national security, much like the Japanese and Japanese American Buddhists during WWII. What lessons that we can learn history, and how can this understanding help prevent it from happening again?


People who were not Japanese who came to the defense of Japanese Americans during WWII — whether it was lawyers within the ACLU, the American Friend Service Committee, the Quakers, or more mainstream Christian groups — some of them were criticized for siding with the enemy, even within their own organizations.


In Los Angeles, after the war, when people were coming back from these camps, having lost their homes and businesses, the Buddhist temples often served as hostels. The Senshin Buddhist Temple, which is in an African American neighborhood, had quite a few African American neighbors who helped Japanese Americans find jobs or helped with groceries. You find examples of people who — when the war with Japan was seen as so brutal, when the Japanese and by extension Japanese Americans were often seen as the enemy — went out of their way to show these people that they viewed them as their neighbors. For the Japanese Americans who experienced those expressions of kindnesses, it meant a lot to them. I would say it was important, then, for people who were outside of that group to have of a sense of friendship and allegiance with the members of that group. Maybe it’s important today.


Is there any message from your research that you want to convey to the younger Japanese and Japanese American Buddhist community, who may not know much about the history of American Buddhism and incarceration and the way its affected Japanese American Buddhist organizations and practices?


There were pioneers who founded many of these Buddhist temples, who carved out a religious space in America, which contributed a different set of ideas and practices to American society. They struggled in the face of people telling them you can’t be both Buddhist and American at the same time. They asserted that you can be both Buddhist and American at the same time. That was hard-earned. One could take pride in knowing that one’s ancestors helped to make that possible.


I feel like they paved the way for people like Mazie Hirono, the U.S. Senator from Hawaii, or Colleen Hanabusa in the House of Representatives, and others who became the first Buddhists to serve in the U.S. Congress. Colleen’s grandfathers were co-founders of the Waianae Hongwanji Mission. Mazie comes from a Jodo Shu background.


Whether it’s getting “B” for “Buddhist” on dog tags, or Buddhist chaplains in the military, or tombstones for fallen soldiers with a dharma wheel instead of a Christian cross — if they didn’t work for that, we wouldn’t be in a place where Buddhism is an accepted religion. Ancestors and pioneers who broke these barriers, who staked a claim to being both Buddhist and American — I think it’s important to keep these things in mind as American Buddhists today.

Advice for Modern America, from When Buddhism Was Seen as a National Threat | Lion’s Roar

For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Buddhism was considered a threat to America. Hondo Lobley interviews scholar Duncan Williams about what we might want to remember from that time.

www.lionsroar.com

 

[Villager]

Duncan Williams: There’s been a very long history. It’s not that the government itself says, “Let’s figure out a policy approach to specifically target a particular race or religion.” It’s more of a broader societal conversation that involves civic leaders, local politicians, state level people, church leaders, newspapers

That's the fully evolved and real racism ingrained in their society and the culture of these savages. Difficult to grasp for those fantasising American Dream.

 

[Villager]

U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who is Black, clashed with her Chinese counterpart on Friday when she described her own experience with racism as a challenge, but said for millions of people in countries like China and Myanmar it was deadly.

U.S. and China spar over racism at United Nations

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who is Black, clashed with her Chinese counterpart on Friday when she described her own experience with racism as a challenge, but said for millions of people in countries like China and Myanmar it was deadly.

www.reuters.com

Yankees are smart using a submissive blacks ,who, instead of using the opportunity to make a real push for change for the blacks and the other non-whites; just goes on to defend them. What's to sympathise with these slave minds? But then if she was different and she chose to speak against them, she won't really get the position she occupies.

I think she should have spoken against anti-white racism too which she didn't. @Neptune must be sad that she only spoke of racism against blacks and the uighurs. She didn't denounce the black racist who killed the white kid.

 

[Villager]

A lot con butthurt in this thread. Yes Europeans are so evil that is why tens of millions of people flood into Europe, United States, Canada and Australia

Ah the European are so great and advanced because they didn't flood the Americas, the Australia, The Africa and the Asia. There is no native American state in America/Canada, No native Australian state in Australia, that's obviously because those who invaded were such peace loving civilised brutes. Weren't they? Whose lands is India occupying or China or North Korea, Saudi Arabia, just because they are somewhat poor now, partly due their own flaws and partly due to these very savages. They are inferiors. Most people know about Japanese, about Arabians and it is often talked about too. Fewer people know about European and even fewer people talk about it. The problem with Indians drooling on the thought becoming English-European white is they read their own history from their mouth and they read their history from their mouth. It can't be more white and fair than this.

 

[Neptune]

Ah the European are so great and advanced because they didn't flood the Americas, the Australia, The Africa and the Asia. There is no native American state in America/Canada, No native Australian state in Australia, that's obviously because those who invaded were such peace loving civilised brutes. Weren't they? Whose lands is India occupying or China or North Korea, Saudi Arabia, just because they are somewhat poor now, partly due their own flaws and partly due to these very savages. They are inferiors. Most people know about Japanese, about Arabians and it is often talked about too. Fewer people know about European and even fewer people talk about it. The problem with Indians drooling on the thought becoming English-European white is they read their own history from their mouth and they read their history from their mouth. It can't be more white and fair than this.

What I said obviously went over your head. Europeans were not the only ones that colonized lands and invaded lands. The Ottomans, Japanese, Arabs, mongols, ect all branched out. Do you think Arabs are native to North Africa? I don’t see you point besides bitch. So Europeans colonized lands...fair enough, but so did many other cultures.

Europeans are inferior? That is blatantly racist and shows how much of a moron you are. Almost all the modern important inventions came from Europeans, you may not like it but it’s true. Let me guess inferior Europeans stole technology from Africans...

Give up your vehicles, cell phones, computers, stop using air travel, trains, ect if you hate Europeans so much.

 

[Neptune]

U.S. and China spar over racism at United Nations

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who is Black, clashed with her Chinese counterpart on Friday when she described her own experience with racism as a challenge, but said for millions of people in countries like China and Myanmar it was deadly.

www.reuters.com

Yankees are smart using a submissive blacks ,who, instead of using the opportunity to make a real push for change for the blacks and the other non-whites; just goes on to defend them. What's to sympathise with these slave minds? But then if she was different and she chose to speak against them, she won't really get the position she occupies.

I think she should have spoken against anti-white racism too which she didn't. @Neptune must be sad that she only spoke of racism against blacks and the uighurs. She didn't denounce the black racist who killed the white kid.

Again you are a racist idiot. Blacks in America are the most privileged and economically advanced blacks in the world. There is a thing called affirmative action in the United States were blacks are actually given special privileges not afforded to others like. Blacks can get into elite universities with lower grades and SAT scores, they can hired for jobs with less qualifications and they get special scholarships. The US spend trillions in black communities.

The entire argument that the US is racist to blacks comes from Chinese propaganda, ignorant self hating white liberals and racist blacks. They spread miss information such as blacks are being killed and hunted by police when in reality most people shot by police are white. Congratulations idiot...you are pushing socialist CCP propaganda

 

[Neptune]

Ask the white pricks to get the FU*k out of native land and I will do exactly as you asked. Ofcourse, you can't do that. Any guessing the amount of damages these white dic*s did to the rest and the amount they stoles and the lives they took and the lives they destroyed? Ooohhhh.... that's just past. Yeah. I get it Chump.

Native lands? Does this include deporting millions of Indians (and hundred of other none native groups too) off those native lands? Again Europeans are not the only ones that colonized lands, almost every major culture did that.

Notice the irony. Europeans are racist and evil and the ones in North America live off of ‘stolen’ lands yet tens of millions of people from around the world are dying to live with racist whites. Why don’t ‘oppressed’ minority groups in the United States leave if it’s so bad? Many people complain about stolen native lands but don’t want to leave those stolen lands

This also doesn’t explain the tens of millions of none Europeans living in Europe. Europe is native to Europeans yet entire cities in Europe now have been over run by first and second generation immigrants to where the native population is the minority.

So again, if Europeans are so there racist and inferior why do people keep trying to flood into predominantly European countries?

 

[KurtisBrian]

Native lands? Does this include deporting millions of Indians (and hundred of other none native groups too) off those native lands? Again Europeans are not the only ones that colonized lands, almost every major culture did that.

Notice the irony. Europeans are racist and evil and the ones in North America live off of ‘stolen’ lands yet tens of millions of people from around the world are dying to live with racist whites. Why don’t ‘oppressed’ minority groups in the United States leave if it’s so bad? Many people complain about stolen native lands but don’t want to leave those stolen lands

This also doesn’t explain the tens of millions of none Europeans living in Europe. Europe is native to Europeans yet entire cities in Europe now have been over run by first and second generation immigrants to where the native population is the minority.

So again, if Europeans are so there racist and inferior why do people keep trying to flood into predominantly European countries?

hundreds of millions of non europeans living in Europe....ydna haplogroup R1b males are Canaanites from Central Asia.
Now you can see why others are coming.

 

[MIDKNIGHT FENERIR-00]

Native lands? Does this include deporting millions of Indians (and hundred of other none native groups too) off those native lands? Again Europeans are not the only ones that colonized lands, almost every major culture did that.

Notice the irony. Europeans are racist and evil and the ones in North America live off of ‘stolen’ lands yet tens of millions of people from around the world are dying to live with racist whites. Why don’t ‘oppressed’ minority groups in the United States leave if it’s so bad? Many people complain about stolen native lands but don’t want to leave those stolen lands

This also doesn’t explain the tens of millions of none Europeans living in Europe. Europe is native to Europeans yet entire cities in Europe now have been over run by first and second generation immigrants to where the native population is the minority.

So again, if Europeans are so there racist and inferior why do people keep trying to flood into predominantly European countries?

Majority people who are trying to get into the stolen lands and european countries are the same people who come from countries that were either looted or destroyed by Europeans.

 

[Neptune]

Majority people who are trying to get into the stolen lands and european countries are the same people who come from countries that were either looted or destroyed by Europeans.

This is a stupid argument for several reasons; firstly Europe was also looted and raided for hundreds of years by Ottomans, Mongols and Arabs. You don’t see Europeans flocking to Iraq or Somalia.

Secondly, much of Europe was ravaged by wars, famines, invasions and Communism. Yet Europeans don’t use that as a handicap or excuse, much like Japan was utterly destroyed in WW2 and the Japanese don’t use it as an excuse. Maybe some other people, especially on this forum, can learn to let go off history and stop dwelling in the past. It’s very pathetic.

Thirdly, much of the people moving to Europe move to European countries such as Sweden which never stole or invaded any lands in Africa or India or anywhere outside of Europe. It’s actually the opposite. Many Turks are moving to Europe, Turks invaded and committed genocides in Europe for hundreds of years, same with Persians, Mongols, ect.


Most people are are ignorant of history...all i hear is ‘white man bad’ yet the same people are suckling on the tits of the white man and at the same time are either too uneducated to know how badly Europe was ravaged by wars, invasions, famine ect, or are too stupid to know the history. Again to reiterate millions of Turks, Persians, Arabs, ect are comfortably living in Europe or North America while their ancestors slaughtered Europeans. People have a hard time admitting Europeans cultures are just better and more advanced, that is why people move. Blaming all white peoples for ancient history is lame, it’s smoke screens....people just can’t admit most countries outside of Europe are failed states and shit holes with backwards cultures. It’s always easy to just blame others on your failures.

 

[Villager]

Asian American Official Shows Military Scars, Condemns Racist Violence

This is what an army man has to face in the America built by white barbarians. Imagine what the normal non-europeans would be feeling but won't be able to say or express because of white ignorance who would insist on others to prove their loyalty because they don't look like a certain skin. It is these people whose services they have taken to build their fortunes and the same people have to prove their Americanism to these savages. Ain't gonna change anything before it falls for good.

 

[KurtisBrian]

Do you see either a European or an IndoEuropean Germanic nomadic cow herder here?

Asian man pummeled unconscious by stranger on Brooklyn subway train in caught-on-video clash

An Asian man was beaten senseless by a stranger on a Brooklyn subway train, and the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force is investigating, authorities said Monday. The caught-on-video clash apparentl…

www.nydailynews.com

 

[Neptune]

Asian American Official Shows Military Scars, Condemns Racist Violence

This is what an army man has to face in the America built by white barbarians. Imagine what the normal non-europeans would be feeling but won't be able to say or express because of white ignorance who would insist on others to prove their loyalty because they don't look like a certain skin. It is these people whose services they have taken to build their fortunes and the same people have to prove their Americanism to these savages. Ain't gonna change anything before it falls for good.

You complain about racism but are the most racist person on the forum

Once again you are spreading misinformation. Most Perpetrators of Asian hate crimes are black. Many hate crimes are hoaxes and the left wing media hires dishonest people like you to spread hate and disinformation. Again ironically this garbage is CCP propaganda, no wonder so many in the leftist media shill for China.

Dirty secret of black-on-Asian violence is out

The recent incidents of black violence against Asians is the perfect opportunity to open a...

www.sfgate.com

Here is more disinformation the media and dumb people spread: ‘majority of mass shooters are white’. Actually here is pictures of mass shooters from 2019, amazing how whites make up over 60% of the population but are here we see most mass shooters are again....drum roll......black.

Hate crimes against white people is something the media refuses to talk about and something district attorneys rarely charge minorities with.

Are Hate Crime Hoaxers Above the Law? by Wilfred Reilly | NAS

www.nas.org

A week ago a black man stabbed a white boy in the neck while creaming racist slurs. No hate crime charges and almost no media attention because the perpetrator is black:

https://local21news.com/amp/news/lo...-old-boy-stabbed-to-death-inside-pa-mcdonalds


Here a 5 year old white boy was executed by a black man, again almost no media coverage:

This website is unavailable in your location. – WSOC TV

www.wsoctv.com

White elderly couple shot in cemetery by a black racist, again very little media coverage:

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/delaware/articles/2020-05-23/authorities-police-fatally-shot-gunman-in-cemetery-shooting

Here a black man shot up a church with the specific aim to kill white people, again very little media attention:

Man Convicted in Deadly Church Shooting in Tennessee (Published 2019)

Emanuel K. Samson, 27, was found guilty of first-degree murder and more than 40 other criminal counts related to a 2017 shooting that left one person dead and seven others wounded.

www.nytimes.com

There are thousands of such incidents but of course because the victims are white the media ignores it. But god forbid an Asian gets pushed then its front page headlines and all the fault of white racists even if the perpetrator is a black person.

 

[Neptune]

Do you see either a European or an IndoEuropean Germanic nomadic cow herder here?

Asian man pummeled unconscious by stranger on Brooklyn subway train in caught-on-video clash

An Asian man was beaten senseless by a stranger on a Brooklyn subway train, and the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force is investigating, authorities said Monday. The caught-on-video clash apparentl…

www.nydailynews.com

The OP is a racist idiot. He doesn’t even bother to do research on the perpetrators of these attacks. He automatically just blames white people when most of the perpetrators are black. He further ignores all the hoaxes and attacks on whites.

 

[Villager]

You complain about racism but are the most racist person on the forum

I am racist toward racists and I will remain so, otherwise they will feel disrespected and unequal. You can have your opinion. I am not asking your judgement. Repeatedly ranting and hiding the gross white culture and history by telling me that I am a racist. I know all the world you have bombed and looted over last few centuries was only for the greater good of human kind and you will continue to serve the world unless some equally competent world does the same to you barbarians. Funny these pricks bomb and lecture the world on human rights and equality but you show them a little bit of mirror, they are like... How dare they.

Why are you ranting here anyway? This is thread on white racism and crimes. You want to enlighten the world and/or forum members?? Open another euro-enlightenment thread and also on black and brown racism so the forum can learn about the sufferings of white d***s. Start with all the atrocities those native Indians committed against the peace loving white migrants who were just peacefully settling in their land but those beasts, they just weren't worthy of existence in this human world and thus rightly and deservedly wiped out by our white saviours. Humanity is truly indebted to you. Go ahead, explain all the details. How did you do it but Don't poop in this thread. Shoo off.

 

[Rassil Krishnan]

BBC host replaced over a joke in the land of free and made to apologise. Queen's media demands to love the queen or leave the state. Is this actually a nation or a king/queen dom?


What's there to love about the old h*g? I guess I won't be getting entry in the racist state anymore if they read my post. Cause I wanted to take a pi*s in the F****ingham palace.

Love the flag or ‘move to another country’, Conservative MP says

‘If people are not proud to be British, or of our flag or Queen, they don’t have to live in the UK’

www.independent.co.uk

i am ok with the whites states decision to keep the uk flag,you got a problem?i am k with the white peoples quest to detroy wokesters,they are our no one enemy,you got that.