Black Americans are getting support for reparations from other multiracial groups
Amy Iwasaki Mass knows the power of apology and reparations. She was in the first grade when her family and more than a hundred thousand other Japanese Americans were rounded up by the federal government and sent to internment camps in response to Japan bombing Pearl Harbor in 1941.
“They didn’t have their guns out protecting us from the outside. They had guns pointing at us,” the 88-year-old California native recalled to CNN. “It was a pretty scary time.”
Four decades later, in 1981, she testified before the congressional committee on wartime relocation and internment of civilians – part of a Japanese American redress and reparations movement.
“Although we may be seen by others now as model Americans, we paid a tremendous psychological price for this acceptance on the surface,” Mass said in her interview with CNN. “Our scars are deep and permanent.”
Japanese Americans eventually won redress, with the US government granting an apology and $20,000 to those citizens who were incarcerated during World War II. Mass is part of a growing wave of multiracial support for Black American reparations – with many Jewish and Japanese organizations among them.
“When we were having trouble, Black people were being good to us,” Mass said. “It’s not the race. It’s just human beings.”
This is what white racists and sellout Asians here do not understand. Blacks stood with Asians when they were facing the same persecution. It was Frederick Douglass who stood strong in fighting against the Chinese Exclusion Act. Blacks stood with white American Jews during WWII when American white Gentiles were against them. Reparations are coming. I may not see them myself, but just like the others who are now ancestors, I will continue arguing and fight to insure a better future for the young ones coming after me.
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