Open mouth, insert boot
Manzanar Committee responds to Roanoke mayor’s remarks regarding Syrian refugees.
Earlier this month, the mayor of Roanoke, Virginia compared current Syrian refugees to Japanese Americans during World War II, arguing that neither can be trusted and it’s probably best not to welcome the potentially dangerous outsiders.
“President Franklin D. Roosevelt felt compelled to sequester Japanese foreign nationals after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and it appears that the threat of harm to America from ISIS now is just as real and serious as that from our enemies then,” Democratic Mayor David Bowers said Nov. 18. He said Roanoke should refuse to assist Syrian refugees until the conflict in the Middle East has ended.
Bowers comments are in response to the Obama Administration’s call to allow 10,000 Syrian refugees into the U.S. in the next fiscal year, and came on the heels of terrorist attacks in Pari and Beirut. There was also a rumor that one of the Paris terrorists had snuck into Bower’s town.
Bruce Embrey, co-chair of the Manzanar Committee, called the statements “insane” and said that he couldn’t believe Democrats are jumping on the band wagon. Anti-refugee sentiment appears to be sweeping the nation. Al Jazeera America reported that the Church World Service, one of the refugee resettlement agencies, has received death threats because it’s trying to help. Bowers joins 31 state governors in believing more security measures are needed before any more refugees can be admitted to the States.
Bowers’ comments pale in comparison to the borderline hate speech of Presidential Candidates like Donald Trump and Ben Carson. Trump has said, if elected, he will send the refugees back to where they came from. Carson has compared the refugees to rabid dogs.
Roanoke City Council quickly released a statement Wednesday night condemning Bowers’ remarks, adding that his remarks do not reflect the majority view of that city. Bowers has been removed from Hillary Clinton’s Virginia Leadership Council election team and both the Governor of Virginia and the Chair of the Democratic Party have condemned his remarks.
Embrey told The Sheet that there’s been an overwhelming backlash against Bowers’ statements, with hundreds of articles written and 7,000 hits to the Committee’s blogsite, but he said that now the statement is out there, it can’t be removed.
What Bowers said, released on official City of Roanoke stationary, will become fodder for others with little knowledge of American history or for the average American racist. The words become a justification, a racist bandwagon to jump on.
To discriminate against the Syrians is exactly what ISIS wants, Embrey said. The only way to combat that hate is with knowledge and information.
“We’re not going to die down anytime soon,” Embrey said. “Our issue has been injected into this broader debate.” Embrey said he hopes other groups will join in the pushback against xenophobia. “We could be making it clear that we are a democratic society and we won’t turn our backs on this,” Embrey said.
Actor George Takei, best known as Lt. Sulu on “Star Trek,” was interned during WWII. He blasted Bowers on Facebook, writing, “You who hold a position of authority and power, but you demonstrably have failed to learn the most basic of American civics or history lessons.” Takei currently has a Broadway show, “Allegiance” about the Japanese American experience in the camps and invited Bowers to attend, “Perhaps you, too, will come away with more compassion and understanding.”
Embrey said the mission of the committee is to educate. He said he wants to make sure the American people, and anyone else who wants to pay attention, knows what happened during WWII. He said there are so few people who know what happened to Japanese Americans in WWII, fewer that have even heard of it, and those that have, don’t seem to understand it.
Bowers has since apologized, saying he didn’t mean to sound racist. “No one else is to be blamed but me,” he said. Bowers said he didn’t expect his comments to receive the national attention it has. He hasn’t announced his Presidential bid but he shows promise; he’s a good flip-flopper on decisions, has little knowledge of U.S. history and only apologized because it offended people, not because he doesn’t believe in what he said.
