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Japanese American Internment Summary

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Sheth begins, “Events such as the enslavement of African Americans, the internment of Japanese-Americans, and the current harassment and torture of Muslim or Arab men would be accidental deviations from the framework of liberalism.” (41) The subtext to liberalism is based of the ideal framework of equal protection and rights. Sheth argues this framework, creating her own framework, that she calls, “Violence of Law.” In general, her framework features racialization and racial division as a critical part of politics and sovereign power. This paper will further describe Sheth’s argument, while connecting her view of sovereign power to population control and racialization. In my opinion, I agree with Sheth’s new framework, and I will support her …show more content…
Having broken no laws, hundreds of thousands suffered the undue loss of their freedom and property.” One of the many subjects that are under-taught in our schools, includes the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, signed an executive order. Japanese-Americans were ordered to report to assembly centers around western America. Eventually, they were moved to “internment camps,” where they stayed for the duration of World War II. Sheth uses this event as an example to provide information to support her claim, that state violence relates to the process of racialization. “However, this event can be grounded in a series of moments occurring decades before, which foreshadow the depiction of Japanese as unruly and vulnerable to outcasting by the time President Roosevelt’s executive order is issued in 1942.” (Sheth, 59) She supports this statement, by describing how the Japanese immigrated to America shortly after the Chinese entered America in 1882. Over the next decade, Japanese labor begins to serve as substitute labor for the Chinese. By 1907, when the Gentleman’s Agreement was issued, Japanese were inexpensive labor. However, about a decade later, a series of Alien Land Laws were passed, with the intention to disfranchise settles Japanese immigrants from lands, business, and other properties. Many hostilities followed, including anti-miscegenation laws, barriers to naturalization, and the use of “aliens” for the citizenship of Asian immigrants. Eventually leading to the 1924 Immigration Act, that prohibited Japanese immigration entirely. “In turn, these laws refocus the hostility on the “strangeness” of the “inscrutable Japanese, with inexorable and disastrous consequences.”

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