Run Forest, Run!

My father told me that after Pearl Harbor occurred (my father was 18 years old in 1941), he noticed that one of his neighbors, a Japanese man, had friends over to the house on a regular basis. My father reported this fact to some authority in our town, and the FBI raided the Japanese man's house. My father admitted to me that his suspicion was based upon the man's appearance. I cannot remember if any traitorous activity was uncovered, and my father has been dead for years.

When I was a child my dad and several of my uncles regularly remarked upon how they had beaten the "dirty Japs" and it was never within the realm of possibility in our family or our neighborhood to question the origin or value of such terminology. The animosity was deep, real, and abiding, and it belonged to them and their world, just as our certainties belong to ours. To judge them because of it would, I feel, be a mistake, because they lived within cultural boundaries that shaped them in ways they could not understand or combat. I am grateful that they channeled their hatred into beating back the Japanese navy and air force, because the Japanese of the 1940s believed we Americans were worthless. Racism is always a matter of perspective.

"...conservatives, who believe he should not talk about things he has no idea about."
As if the racist quotient is anything less than plainly apparent to anyone who cares to look at it (then or now)?!

"It would be naive to assume that racism was not part of that quotiant of World War II," he told CNSNews.com.
Then they begin... "It's not clear cut,..."

I would have to agree with Mr. Hanks... except that any assumptions that racism is not in the quotient by states/news-people (or anyone else) could even be naive. It may be a lot of things , but its not naivety that fosters racist views, or denial of being engaged with such.

I know a number of seemingly non-racist, and generally wonderful, white folks who have no idea they are promoting racist views or fears in some of their demeanor. But when confronted honestly many can begin to recognize the seemingly hidden reality and basis for harboring such disposition in themselves ...without realizing they were living it.
And it turns out to be less about naivety than it does lack of consideration or willingness to simply stop and take an honest interested look at 'it' and at oneself.
Part of the meaning of naive includes "having or showing a lack of experience, judgment, or information;"
..well hey people, at this juncture in time we do not have the luxury of fantasizing that we lack experience, or ability to judge, or enough information to discern what the truth is about racism and the part it supports in how we play together.

So I don't buy it... I see a fierce rebuke by the conservative faction only demonstrating how pathetic, and how pathetically deep and widespread, racist disease really still is.

Tom is a cool guy, especially for speaking his mind...his perception is good and he has a valid point...there are still many people here in America who advocate just killing the whole lot of the Islamists, who have the same religious roots as Christian, Jewish, Hinduism, Buddhism and many other religions. It is the Extremists who advocate hostility, they who are misleading the vulnerable...

Instead of searching the past to understand the hostile present, so we can all find the peaceful solutions for the future, is the Military Industrial Complex still way too busy designing new ways to kill..?

Consider whether the Conservatives are so pompous that they deem their point of view as the only one to believe in. Everyone else in this civilization is just too uncivlized and ignorant to know what's going on...closed minds are of a stagnant nature...

Maybe it's time to clear out the cobwebs and remove all the mildew from the brainwashed closed minds...invest more into helping the people to live good productive lives and less into finding ways to innihilate them...propagating the vicious tyranny cycle...