Have We Really Come that Far?

Several events from our history leave a lasting impression on our lives even if we weren’t around to see it happen. We rely on the people that write about significant historical instances to relay the information in a factual way. Chapter 4, History and Intercultural Communication, explains that historical writings are often one sided. It is often easy to see how politics affected each country at the time by the way it is projected in the writing (Martin & Nakayama, 2013). When history is recorded from the point of view of a mainstream culture, we may only be getting the partial truth about what really happened. Nonmainstream culture plays an important role in the identities of the people in that cultural group. Many of these nonmainstream cultural groups have histories that have been suppressed and possibly forgotten by the mainstream cultures (Martin & Nakayama, 2013). These hidden histories have led me to question the truth behind some of the things that I have been taught about the history of the United States.

Everyone who was raised in America knows, or has at least heard about Pearl Harbor. In December of 1941 hundreds of Japanese warplanes attacked a U.S. base in Hawaii. According to the written history, the Japanese were sent to internment camps to protect others from future terroristic attacks. This previous statement encompasses the “white American identity” and leads readers to believe that it is fact when there may be more to the story (Martin & Nakayama, 2013).  When history is viewed from the White American standpoint, injustices such as these are often left out or written in a way that makes America look better. In order to right their wrongs, in 1988 the government distributed official apologies and a $20,000 payment to each surviving Japanese internee ("The war at,").  Although it seems as if this is minute compared to what the internees suffered through, it was America’s way of fixing their mistake and moving forward.

 



It seems as if America feels that they are beyond segregating people out of fear, but some recent events show that this may not be true. After the 9/11terrorist attacks Americans were extremely cautious about other Muslims. Americans were so afraid another attack would happen that they began detaining Muslims for months until they could be cleared as non-threatening (Martin & Nakayama, 2013). The way Muslims were being treated was beginning to look familiar to how the Japanese were treated years ago. The distrust of the Muslim religion seemed to die down until 9 years after the attack. In 2010 the construction of a Mosque at “Ground Zero” was approved. This approval led to a huge controversy across the United States. The argument that allowing people with the same religious affiliation as the terrorists would be destructive to the country. This outcry of disapproval caused a frenzy in the media turning what normally would be a minor issue into a reason for people all over the country to pick sides. President Obama stepped in to take a stand against religious stereotypes as a way to calm the country, but this only fueled the fire. How do we solve this dilemma?

My thoughts on this subject are mixed. I understand that people are scared that a terrorist attack may happen again; therefore they will go to great lengths to prevent that. On the other hand, there are two reasons I think this is a flawed thought process. My first issue with people taking offense to this is that many are under the impression that terrorism is related to the Muslim religion; just as people thought the same of the Japanese in the 1940’s. These judgments make it hard for people to look beyond the fact that these people are separate from the terrorists that happen to be from their country. In order for people to get past being upset over the building of the mosque, they must first remove the thought that the religion/race of a terrorist makes all people of the same religion/race a terrorist as well. The Second thing that bothers me is that by discriminating the Muslim religion, it makes it hard for the followers of the religion to practice freely. Every other American has the right to practice any religion they choose and American Muslim’s have this right as well. In order to move forward from the judging of this particular religion we must learn to not live in fear and realize that all American citizens have the same rights.  

References

The war at home. (n.d.). Retrieved from                 http://www.pbs.org/thewar/at_home_civil_rights_japanese_american.htm

Martin, J. N., & Nakayama, T. K. (2013). Intercultural communication in context. (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.