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LEST WE FORGET

When Americans feel put-upon by “the other,” and ask, “Why do they hate us?” – the image in the mirror responds, “Why do YOU hate?”

For those of us who remember the 1940s—and those who do not—Ken Burns’s latest epic of Americana is a warts-and-all memoir of “The War,” which dominated that decade. Within the scenes on the home-front and savage fighting in all of the elements, we are reminded of the impurity of the American effort. While, supposedly, we were struggling against an enemy who espoused and practiced extreme racial and religious bigotry, we were guilty of harboring the same ugliness within our own borders and among the very fighting forces themselves.

Although our racial foibles were (are?) farcical, because of their dead-seriousness, they evoked no laughter. In retrospect, however, we can at least allow ourselves a wry smile:

In a poignant, telling demonstration of the blind racial hatred on our side, there is a first-person account by Dr. John Hope Franklin, an African American educator and author, a nonagenarian who today is active physically and intellectually. Franklin indicates that, in response to a Navy call for clerical workers, he presented himself at the recruiting office. When asked about his skills, he indicated that he had a doctorate and could type and take shorthand. The recruiter replied that his qualifications were admirable, but that he failed the skin-color test.

American citizens of Japanese heritage were stripped of hearth and home and bundled off to barbed-wire-enclosed, armed-sentry-guarded concentration camps in Middle America. Implausibly, recruiters were sent into the midst of these same prisoners, seeking volunteers to help “their country” defeat the forces of intolerance and uphold the American ideals of equality and the right to freedom. Of course, that fight to protect the American way would have to be done from racially segregated units.

This has not appeared in the Burns series, so far: Just before Europe went completely aflame, there was a boatload of Jewish refugees from Germany that remained docked off the coast of Florida for some time, while the Roosevelt administration debated, and ultimately decided not to admit them. The ship had to return to Europe, where those escaping the scourge we condemned were taken in by other countries.

At that time in the United States, there were only two official races, “white” and “colored.” Apparently, the other colors were too complicated to sort out, so in practice the only real non-whites were “Negroes.” That did not leave the other colors off the hook, however; whenever they were thrust into a milieu of whites, their racial impurity was properly pointed out to them.

As in the Civil War, and later World War I, there was strong opposition to “allowing” African Americas to fight. Finally, the exigencies of war overcame those objections—but with the stipulation that the fighting units be racially segregated. Toward the mid-point of the 20th century, that thinking went unchanged.

So, here we are in this brave, new millennium--and guess what, folks? Still, we cannot hear the image in the mirror.