Monuments, Japanese Internment Camps in Delta and White Guilt

I spent the day in classes. I'm really getting tired. But I can do it. I'm not wasting as much time on television. Grad school should be a snap!

Here is some of what I learned today:

There was a monument put up to honor the firefighters of 9/11. It caused some controversy.

The tribute created to honor the firefighters who lost their lives in the 9/11/01 attack on the world trade center was thought to be more ‘politically correct’ than accurate. It was created to honor all of the fire fighters and meant to represent more than what was depicted in the photograph it was modeled after. I guess I can understand why there may be a few people who would be bothered by it. Particularly, the family members of the men whose picture it was modeled after. If my husband, brother or son was one of the white men who was left out, I suppose my 15 minutes of fame would be non-existent and I can understand why that could be bothersome,
However, the bigger picture seems to be more important. The uniting of a city and of many races seems to be more important than that. But something still irked me about it. So I looked up the story online. I found the following:

"I wouldn't blame those three firefighters if they felt a bit betrayed right now. Historically, firefighting has been regarded as primarily a male activity. Nonetheless, there have been numerous women who actively fought fire alongside their male counterparts. called forth from some bureaucrat's imagination to represent diversity. They did it. Three white guys. So the statue ought to reflect that fact. That it apparently won't says nothing about diversity and everything about political correctness. And frankly, blacks and Hispanics should be just as insulted by this as the white guys whose images are being erased. Maybe even more so. Consider New York City, according to the last census, is home to 8 million people, 26.6 percent of whom are black, 27 percent of whom are Hispanic. Yet a fire department spokesman says that, of its 11,500 men and women, only 2.7 percent of the department's firefighters are black and only 3.2 percent Hispanic. We were attacked, not because some of us are black or some Hispanic, but because all of us are Americans. So there's something inherently offensive in the belief that the image of these three white men must be doctored so that it will represent people with brown skin or Spanish surnames. The truth is, it already does."
Pitts, Leonard. (2002, January 28). Politically correct version of Sept. 11 insults firefighters. (Commentary) The Free Library. (2002).

That article gave me another viewpoint; I guess it helped me to better understand my own. The way I look at it is; if I was a teacher taking a bunch of second graders on a field trip, I would want the black and Latino boys to feel they could grow up to be firemen just as well as the white boys. I guess what bothers me is that history will not be fairly represented in this monument. I think there is something wrong with that, too. If we are going to be completely fair about every race and gender, than why wasn’t a woman thrown in? Can’t little girls grow up to be fireman? fire person?

I think the reason for all the emotion surrounding this issue has to do with the fear white people have of becoming a minority themselves, and retaining their “hero” status. But the loss of truth bothers me.

Speaking of truth, why didn't I ever know about the Japanese Internment camps near my home town of Delta, Utah?

Japanese Internment camps were not widely known about it the 1940s which seems to be a direct result of the quality of media coverage of what was going on in our country. The fact that this may be a reflection of what is happening now and that there are racial attitudes that linger is thought provoking.
I grew up in a small town in the middle of nowhere. There was a Japanese Internment camp in the desert only a few miles from my home. I was unaware of it until just a few years ago when a determined high school English teacher wanted to help people understand the history of our area. Jane Beckwith set up a museum and collected relics from the camp. Today, the children of my hometown study the fact that history was made not far from where their grandfathers were growing alfalfa. Some of their grandfathers actually worked at the camp and one friend told me her family had an old building from the Internment camp as one of their storage sheds for years on their property. She also told me that several of the old buildings had been put to use by the local thrifty farmers. I realized that the internment camp had an effect on the culture I grew up in, whether I knew it or not. I probably played hide-and-seek in an old building some Japanese family was forced to live out of.

Most of the townspeople were clueless, or didn’t care. Not because they were uncaring people, but because they didn't think it affected them. Perhaps Japanese people were thought of as non-people. Which is ironic in light of the fact that Mormons were thought of that way in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois less than a hundred years earlier.
The fact that 1,200 immigrants have been secretly detained in the last two years, and the federal government still hasn’t released any information on their names and whereabouts was appalling to me. Yet there must be a way to limit the people we welcome into the US. I’m not sure what the answers are. Racial profiling seems like a lame attempt at keeping the white in and the colors out. My niece was strip searched at an airport because she has the look of an individual of Arab descent. The irony is, her "Arab" look stems more from her Native American anscestors than anything.

The white majority needs to be aware that if people of other races are profiled, we all can be. It doesn’t seem a fair way to narrow down the flow of immigration. Don't people of every nationality deserve the same freedoms we enjoy? I know this kind of thinking gets people upset, but why am I so lucky to live here? I didn't do anything. I've been to other countries and seen the disparities.

Oh the guilt of being blessed. Guess I need to pass on some blessings.