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During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#211

Post by ericd »

conistonwater wrote: post #106
ericd wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one can't successfully appeal to someone's sense of morality (perhaps because they have different morals), one can try to appeal to their sense of self interest.

This one, uh, I point-blank refuse to believe. The moral principles about how you can treat other people are so widespread and uniform (made it into the bloody bible, even; the only bit that everybody knows from that MLK speech is about this), that you're gonna have some serious convincing to do, before I believe that people "have different morals". It seems more believable that people have just the same morals they…

Believe what you want, different people believe in some fundamentally different things. Go hang out on Breitbart, and see if you still feel the way you do.

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#212

Post by iambateman »

conistonwater wrote: post #30
iambateman wrote: post #15

I love this article, because we have to remind people that Americans have been afraid of Italians and Germans and Swedes and Jews and the Japanese and Muslims and the Chinese and DEFINITELY the Irish at one time or another. Established groups feared new groups. But in the end, these people generally brought new innovations and economic growth and interesting new foods. They mashed new cultures with old - not without…

I don't know how well it works on Trump supporters, but there's something that bugs me about this argument. It seems to take a moral issue (do you treat other people well?), and replace it with an economic issue (do you know of inventions, food, or some economic benefit from those people?). I feel like it's a racing certainty that many Italian-Americans lived ordinary lives, and didn't do anything out of the ordinary…

By the way, I think you're right. The moral argument is stronger than the economic one. And among another crowd, I would probably lead with moral.

That said, there is no need to only have one argument, they can both stand together.

As best I can tell, we have no moral obligation to let every person into the United States, but we have an economically-sound reason for accepting a steady stream of new folks.

Really thoughtful comment though, thanks.

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#213

Post by KirinDave »

true_religion wrote: post #186
KirinDave wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, the article doesn't discuss 'whiteness', so your comment is something of an irrelevant narrative imposition. It discusses "outsider" status, and WW2 represented a massive debate about who was "trustworthy." Historians have pointed out that in many cases these camp approaches were in part appeasement tactics for the rather large fascist movements growing in America. Hell, WW2 was the mark of the last unsucces…

> AND YET! Mysteriously! Japanese were specifically targeted for the harshest treatment, Italians the second most, and the fewest German Americans ended up in concentration camps. Practically speaking, it would be difficult to round up all German-Americans and put them into concentration camps in WW2. They had basically interbred with other people with dissimilar European ancestry, did not retain any unique accent, o…

> Additionally, many believed that by fighting against Germany in World War 1, all German-American's had proved their loyalty beyond any more doubt.

I'd love to see a source for this. My research and interviewing my relatives who were there suggested that they were quite concerned that the germans were "hard to spot".

> Italians were a 'new' wave of immigration, pushed into ghettos due to existing social bigotry, and easily differentiated from the normal phenotypic blend of older immigrant populations that became the white American norm.

I mean it wasn't _that_ new. There was a major wave of immigration in 1910.

But bigotry based on appearance is almost always the basis of this.

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#214

Post by dionidium »

tptacek wrote: post #154
badmadrad wrote: post #109

Using this as a criticism of Trump's travel ban is a false equivalency. There have literally been a rash of terrorist attacks in Europe perpetrated by radicalized Syrians, Somalians, and Iranians. Not to mention the knife attack from Somalian refugee (who was getting a free ride) at Ohio State. Read through these lists and tell me there is nothing to be worried about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_i…

What travel ban should we enact to create common-sense protections in this country from the gathering toddler threat? In 2015, more people were shot by toddlers than by radical Islamist foreign nationals.

This has become a pretty popular retort. More people are killed by cows or staplers or whatever every year. But I think it fails in two very important ways:

1. Toddlers and cows and staplers do not have the potential to destroy Midtown Manhattan. This is a different category of threat entirely.

2. We aren't robots. We're humans who have evolved in a particular set of environments and contexts to be more scared of some things than others. It's perfectly rational to try to reduce the chance of harm from certain classes of things that we happen to fear more, even if those things aren't the most harmful over all. Fear matters. Reducing fear matters. Because we're people.

You seem to think this is evidence that people just need to be educated about the relative risks. But I think it's evidence of something much deeper in the species.

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#215

Post by true_religion »

KirinDave wrote: post #213
true_religion wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AND YET! Mysteriously! Japanese were specifically targeted for the harshest treatment, Italians the second most, and the fewest German Americans ended up in concentration camps. Practically speaking, it would be difficult to round up all German-Americans and put them into concentration camps in WW2. They had basically interbred with other people with dissimilar European ancestry, did not retain any unique accent, o…

> Additionally, many believed that by fighting against Germany in World War 1, all German-American's had proved their loyalty beyond any more doubt. I'd love to see a source for this. My research and interviewing my relatives who were there suggested that they were quite concerned that the germans were "hard to spot". > Italians were a 'new' wave of immigration, pushed into ghettos due to existing social bigotry, and…

> My research and interviewing my relatives who were there suggested that they were quite concerned that the germans were "hard to spot".

Were they talking about German nationals, or German-American's?

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