Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” said philosopher George Santayana, a phrase often repeated as a stern reminder to learn from historical examples. But George Bernard Shaw also lamented, “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”

Section Introduction

The incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II is a stark reminder that not all rights under the Constitution—not even “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”—are to be taken for granted. From the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the Red Scare, and the Palmer Raids of World War I to the treatment of Arab and Muslim Americans in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, history has shown that actions by government during times of crises can seriously threaten Constitutional freedoms.

This module examines the experience of Arab and Muslim Americans in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, when government and public scrutiny isolated this group of Americans endangering their rights and the rights of all Americans. This section also explores the various constitutional crises that the United States has faced throughout its history, including modern examples with the ongoing crisis of anti-Asian hate and violence, as well as movements to explore reparations proposals for the African American community.

The War on Terror and

Its Impact on Arab and Muslim Americans

This section examines the experience of Arab and Muslim Americans following the September 11th attacks and the manner in which the federal government acted to protect national security. These actions are similar to the experience of Japanese Americans in the aftermath of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941. These two episodes are historic models for examining the actions by government in times of crisis where on the one hand, the constitutional rights of American citizens were knowingly abrogated by exclusion and detention policies, and on the other, civil liberties of all Americans were threatened, and the fundamental underpinnings of Constitutional freedoms were challenged.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 marked the dawn of a new era. President George W. Bush launched the “War on Terror,” and the executive branch was granted sweeping powers to investigate people’s private lives in the name of security. Hyper-vigilance and extreme security measures became the norm. The government employed counter-terrorism tactics that relied heavily on racial profiling rather than on any real intelligence, as issues of national security were once again deemed to trump civil rights and freedoms. The target of these measures were Arab and Muslim Americans who were citizens and legal residents, living in communities settled by their ancestors some of whom came to America as far back as the 1800s.

A brief history of Arab Americans

The history of Arab immigrants begins over a century ago. Arab American immigration was motivated by a yearning for economic opportunity and political freedom, the same ideals sought by America’s earliest immigrants. The term Arab American encompasses immigrants from Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Despite the range in nationalities, the Arabic language is one of the great unifying and dis-tinguishing characteristics of Arab people. Contrary to popular thought, not all Arabs are Muslim. Their religious beliefs are Christian, Greek Orthodox, as well as Muslim.

Though commonly grouped together, Muslims and Arabs fall into different categories of religion and identity. Muslims practice Islam, a religion that originates in the Arab World. The Qur’an is the holy book for Muslims, revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in Arabic. Though Islam has strong Arab influence, only approximately fifteen percent of Muslims worldwide are Arab. Large populations of Muslims also live in India, Iran, Indonesia, other parts of East Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa.1

The American story of Arab immigration dates back to the 1870s, as part of a period in American history known as “The Great Migration.” This first wave of Arab immigrants were Christians from Lebanon and Syria who, like other immigrants from European and Asian countries, sought economic opportunities. Origi-nally working as peddlers selling everyday household goods, they eventually established businesses in urban communities from modest dry goods stores to larger department stores in Arab neighborhoods in New York, Boston, Chicago, and Detroit.

A second wave of Arab immigration to the United States began near the end of World War I but was cur-tailed by xenophobic fears brought on by the Russian Revolution, when Communism supplanted Czarist rule. Prompted by a widespread fear of socialist threats from within, the United States’ immigration reform laws in 1921 and 1924 established strict quotas that limited foreign immigration, which was seen as a threat to the “American” way of life.2

The partitioning of the Middle East after World War II resulted in the creation of the Israeli state and its attendant conflicts in the Middle East. The intervention of western nations (viz., Great Britain and the U.S.) in the post-World War II Middle East further exacerbated the volatility of the region as countries there struggled unsuccessfully to settle internal conflicts, resulting in a third wave of immigrants from the Arab nations. In 1953, the U.S. Nationality Act re-established quotas to accommodate the large numbers of immigrants and refugees from the Arab nations and those escaping communist regimes in Eastern Europe.

Since the 1960s, when Congress enacted immigra-tion reforms to significantly increase quotas, immigra-tion from the Middle East has increased as citizens of countries in that region fled widespread political upheavals and military conflicts. Those who have sought to immigrate or secure visas primarily include educated professionals, students and international businessmen.

September 12: Beginning a new era of xenophobia

While Arab Americans previously suffered discrimination following the hostage- taking of American diplomats in Iran in 1979 and Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the worst came immediately after September 11, 2001. A group of nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing two of the planes into the World Trade Center’s twin towers in New York City, collapsing the buildings and killing 2,974 people. A third aircraft hit the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the fourth hijacked plane, its intended target unknown, crashed in a field in rural Pennsylvania after passengers battled the terrorists for control of the aircraft.

When it was discovered that Al-Qaeda, a radical Sunni Muslim terrorist group, was responsible for the attacks, despite the fact that most Arab Americans are not Muslim and have no affiliation with Al-Qaeda, nonetheless they suffered the brunt of the backlash. According to a report from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee Research Institute (ADCRI), there was “a massive increase in the incidence of violent hate crimes [against Arab Americans]”3 during the first nine weeks after the September 11 attacks. Soon after, legislation was enacted that would limit the constitutional freedoms of not just Arab Americans, but all Americans.

In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the U.S. Department of Justice launched a concerted and wide-ranging terrorism investigation, arresting and detaining Muslim, Arab and South Asian men throughout the United States.4 Yet despite, this large-scale effort, most of the detainees rounded up have never been charged with terrorism,5 raising questions about the efficacy of the government’s draconian counter-terrorism tactics.

The post September 11 round-up was carried out by the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), a unit of the FBI which included agents from Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) and the Drug Enforcement Administration.6 Ostensibly, the investigation was based on intelligence collected by the JTTF from a variety of sources, including a watch list of over 100 “potential hijackers” compiled by FBI Headquarters.7 The FBI also encouraged tips from the public, and received over 96,000 potential leads just within the week following the attacks.8

Yet the leads the JTTF worked from were tenuous at best, tinged heavily with ethnic and racial bias; innocuous behaviors became suspect when seen in Muslim or Arab men. Expressing interest in learning how to fly an airplane, having pictures of the World Trade Center, or running a grocery store that kept odd hours were among the myriad reasons for investigation and arrest as part of the September 11 terrorism inves-tigation.9 Furthermore, if the JTTF agents encountered individuals with immigration violations while following a lead, they would also be arrested as part of the terrorism investigation. “No distinction was made between sub-jects of the lead and any other individuals encountered at the scene ‘incidentally.’”10

The JTTF cast this wide net out of fear of the consequences of accidentally allowing a terrorist to go free. However, such a policy turned the foundation of the American justice system, the idea of “innocent until proven guilty,” on its head. The Department of Justice labeled anyone arrested in connection with the Septem-ber 11 attacks as a “suspected terrorist,” as illustrated in a speech given by Attorney General John Ashcroft in October 2001: “Our single objective is to prevent terrorist attacks by taking suspected terrorists off the street. If suspects are found not to have links to terror-ism or not to have violated the law, they are released.”11 Thus all detainees were presumed to be terrorists until proven otherwise. Furthermore, each individual was forced to undergo a double clearance process, informally known as the “hold until cleared” policy. Even after the INS had reviewed a detainee’s immigration status and given a final order of either deportation, voluntary departure or release from custody, the individual was not allowed to be released until both the FBI and CIA had completed their checks and issued a formal clearance letter.12

Most detainees did not have charges brought against them, much less know the reason for their arrest, until well into their detention. The process was further delayed by an interim regulation issued by the Department of Justice on September 20, 2001, which extended the period of detention without charge from twenty-four hours to forty-eight hours “or an additional reasonable amount of time in the event of an emergency or other extraordinary circumstance.”13 Not only were the detainees themselves kept in the dark about their situation, the government sought to keep the arrests secret from the public as well. Detainees were prevented from contacting attorneys, family and the media, and the government refused to reveal their names and loca-tions,14 as well as the charges against them.15 In one instance, a lawyer hired by friends of a detainee was unable to determine where his client was being held for over a month, while the Bureau of Prisons denied that he was being detained at all.16 Furthermore, the depor-tation hearings of individuals whom the government deemed as “special interest” were closed to public.17 Shrouding their investigation in secrecy made it impos-sible for citizens, the media and watchdog groups to hold the government accountable or even determine the well-being of the detainees. An investigation into the conditions of the September 11 detainees by the Migration Policy Institute found that “many...were subjected to solitary confinement, 24-hour lighting of cells, and physical abuse.”18

In addition to those detainees held as suspected terrorists or on the basis of immigration violations, the government detained a large number of individuals under the “material witness” law, which includes indi-viduals believed to have important information related to an investigation. The government has the authority to detain these individuals when they pose a flight risk, but they are not suspects themselves. Yet those held as material witnesses were treated as criminals, detained in harsh conditions and subjected to harsh questioning.19 The government essentially used the material witness statute as a tool to hold individuals without evidence or grounds for detention.20 None of these detainees were requested to testify or give evidence in any proceeding, giving credence to the accusation that the government abused the material witness statute as a form of preventative detention.21

While it was created and aimed to protect Americans, the Patriot Act opened the floodgates to a series of laws that seriously undermined the civil liberties of Americans.

Acting like a PATRIOT: Policy post-9/11

The voluminous USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 (Uniting and Strengthening America by Provid-ing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) was approved by a near-unanimous vote of Congress in October 2001, within nearly a month after the attacks. This new law was immediately assailed by civil rights groups for provisions that undermined civil liberties.

The USA PATRIOT Act, or Patriot Act, contained a number of provisions aimed at protecting the American public, but at the expense of their civil liberties. It ex-tended the power of the federal government to deport and detain immigrants, conduct secret hearings and searches, and increased phone and online surveillance.22 While it was created and aimed to protect Americans, the Patriot Act opened the floodgates to a series of laws that seriously undermined the civil liberties of Americans. Some of those policies include:

“Sneak and peek” searches that allowed federal investigators to delay notification of a search warrant, allowing them to look through a person’s home without prior notice.
Wiretap surveillance and documentation of records, even library records.
National Security Letters (NSLs) requiring entities such as employers or institutions to submit all records related to the employee or individual without requiring the government to provide probable cause.

Other new policies included:

Alien registration based on ethnicity and national origin (taking fingerprints and photographs upon arrival into the country).
New security checks on visa applicants, particularly those coming from Middle Eastern countries.
FBI questioning of international students throughout the United States, but mostly Arab and Muslim.
Mandatory deportation of those who overstay their visas, with a focus on people coming from “Al-Qaeda harboring countries.”
Closed hearings from the public of certain immigra-tion cases.
An interim regulation immediately after the attacks that allowed the Department of Justice to selectively detain individuals for up to 48 hours without filing formal charges, or keeping them beyond that period of time in an “emergency or extraordinary circumstance”

While some of the act’s provisions were eventually struck down as unconstitutional by the court, many of these policies remain. In a significant case, Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Yaser Hamdi, an American citizen, was captured in Afghanistan in 2001 by Northern Alliance forces and turned over to the U.S. military. He was transferred to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, and upon discovery of his U.S. citizenship, was sent for further detention at a military base in Virginia, and designated as an “enemy combatant” to maintain legal control of his detention under military authority. On June 11, 2002, Hamdi’s father filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court to bring a legal resolution to his son’s case. The government argued that Hamdi was captured in a combat zone and was an “enemy combat-ant,” which was sufficient grounds for detention, and further, that the courts had no authority to review the government’s military decisions. The government’s claim was rejected in a Federal District Court, whose decision was later upheld by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Hamdi’s case was finally heard in 2004 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled 8-1 that it was unconstitu-tional to hold a U.S. citizen indefinitely without charge, even an “enemy combatant.”

The FBI’s annual report in 2001 showed a 1,600 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes — from 28 incidents in 2000, to 481 incidents the following year

Backlash: Resentment and anti-Arab sentiment

Following the September 11 attacks, Arab and Muslim Americans were the victims of verbal and physical assaults and their community institutions were vandalized. Over seven hundred violent incidents and a number of murders were committed against Arab and Muslim Americans (or those who appeared to be Arab or Muslim) within two months following the attacks. This trend extended into other areas of life for Arab Americans, with hundreds of cases of workplace discrimination and with dozens of cases of passenger removal from airplanes after boarding, all based solely on ethnicity.23 The 2003 Washington Report on Middle East Affairs states that some American Muslim charities were shut down “without trial or due process on the basis of ‘secret evidence’ not available to the accused or their lawyers, with the government apparently not needing any real proof of wrongdoing.” The FBI’s annual report in 2001 showed a 1,600 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes—from 28 incidents in 2000 to 481 incidents the following year.24

Of the hate crimes that occurred in the weeks and months after September 11th, many involved assaults and even hate-motivated murders. The following excerpt from the Human Rights Worldwide report, “We Are Not the Enemy,” relates just one of the many violent crimes committed against Arab Americans and anyone perceived to be Arab or Muslim after September 11:

“Balbir Singh Sodhi, a forty-nine year-old turbaned Sikh and father of three, was shot and killed while plant-ing flowers at his gas station on September 15, 2001. Police officials told Human Rights Watch that hours before the crime, Sodhi’s alleged killer, Frank Roque, had bragged at a local bar of his intention to “kill the ragheads responsible for September 11.” In addition to shooting Sodhi three times before driving away, Roque also allegedly shot into the home of an Afghani American and at two Lebanese gas station clerks.” (In 2003, a jury convicted him of first degree murder.)

Sodhi was one of many who fell victim to anti-Arab and anti-Muslim hate crimes. He was a Sikh, and not a Muslim or Arab. Both Sikhs and Muslims may wear turbans, but Sikhism, a religion born in India, and Islam are two distinct religions. The racial backlash extended not just to Arab and Muslim Americans, but also to Americans of South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Hispanic descent. Mosques and temples were indiscriminately attacked, some even firebombed.

Civil Liberties in Times of Crisis: From the Alien and Sedition Acts to the Palmer Raids

The issuance of Executive Order 9066 which led to the incarceration of Japanese Americans and the enactment of the Patriot Act following the terrorist attacks on September 11 posed serious concerns regarding the tension between the security interests of the country and the civil rights of individuals. This section discusses additional historic events when a national crisis led the government to restrict individual rights. They include the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War, the Red Scare, and the Palmer Raids of 1919.

The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798

In 1798, the federal government under President John Adams adopted four pieces of legislation known collectively as the Alien and Sedition Acts. These acts individually served to expand presidential power, strengthen immigration laws, allow deportation of suspected dangerous aliens, and outlaw printing anything deemed “malicious” about the government. Together, they created a climate of censorship directed toward the American public.

Despite having adopted the Constitution a mere decade earlier, the federal government’s decision to restrict the rights of its citizens derived from an apparent threat. After the French Revolution, the new government of France viewed Great Britain’s economic ties to the U.S. as traitorous and disloyal to French-U.S. relations. The Jay Treaty between Great Britain and the U.S., signed in 1794, was meant to resolve untreated issues from the American Revolution and nourish stronger economic ties between the two nations. The French viewed the treaty as a betrayal of their alliance with the U.S. from 1778, which promised to defend the other in the event of a British attack. After a series of diplomatic conflicts and the infamous “XYZ Affair,” in which French diplomats seized U.S. ships and demanded bribes to continue talks, an undeclared naval war known as the “Quasi-War” arose between the U.S. and France.

It was this murky tangle of international politics and diplomatic hostility that quickly led to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Adams and the Federalist Party implemented the Acts in an attempt to prevent subversive attacks from alien residents, particularly French sympathizers. The first three acts created stricter immigration laws that allowed Federalists to freely deport resident aliens who exhibited any sign of “subversive behavior.” The third act, the Alien Enemies Act, threatened that any alien male fourteen and older could be “apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies”25 on mere suspicion of disloyalty.

Vice President Thomas Jefferson opposed these pieces of legislation as violating citizens’ constitutional freedoms, especially since members of his party, the Democrat-Republicans, were often targeted in the enforcement of the acts. The working class citizens who formed clubs to discuss domestic and international policy—in particular, the French Revolution—were immediately denounced as “disloyal.”

Democrat-Republican clubs were often broken into, newspaper editors were arrested and several congressmen were threatened with arrest. The Sedition Act made it “illegal to write, print, utter, or publish false, scandalous, and malicious writings” against the government. Since it was up to the government to decide what exactly constituted “malicious writings,” self-censorship increased dramatically for fear of government reprisal.26 It was not until 1801, when Thomas Jefferson was elected president and the Acts expired, that these constitutional rights were restored.

Habeas Corpus and the Civil War

Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution states that “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public safety may require it.”

The writ of habeas corpus, Latin for “to hold the body,” is usually used “to bring a prisoner before the court to determine the legality of his imprisonment. It may also be used to bring a person in custody before the court to give testimony, or to be prosecuted.”27 In short, it is the right not to be imprisoned unlawfully or indefinitely.

The Civil War began in 1861 when seven Southern states formed the Confederate States of America and seceded from the Union. They were thereafter joined by four other states. Soon after, President Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, initially in Maryland, a state that sympathized with the South. A year later, he enforced that suspension unilaterally, despite its unconstitutionality.

While the suspension was, for all intents and purposes, directed at Southern rebels and suspected spies, Lincoln’s orders could be applied to anyone “guilty of any disloyal practice.” “Disloyal practice” could range from espionage to riots, to libel. (Much like the Sedition Act, this suspension meant that any citizen suspected of defamation or rebellion against the government could be potentially arrested and imprisoned.) Without the right to petition for a writ of habeas corpus, prisoners could not dispute the legality of their imprisonment; they could even be held there indefinitely without having formal charges filed against them.

One month after Lincoln’s action, Lt. John Merryman of Maryland was arrested after burning down bridges to prevent the infiltration of troops from Pennsylvania. Arrested and taken from his home in Baltimore, Merryman was confined at Fort McHenry and accused of aiding the Confederacy. From there he petitioned for and was denied the writ of habeas corpus.28 In a court decision Ex parte Merryman, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney stated:

“...[T]he military authority in this case has gone far beyond the mere suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. It has, by force of arms, thrust aside the judicial authorities and officers to whom the Constitution has confided the power and duty of interpreting and administering the laws, and substituted a military government in its place, to be administered and executed by military officers.”29

Lincoln disregarded the decision and continued to act in accordance with his suspension of the writ, claiming that a time of war called for such measures. In 1864, Lambdin P. Milligan, a Confederate sympathizer, was accused of trying to overthrow the Union and arrested shortly thereafter. He was also denied the right to appeal his imprisonment and brought his case to court—a trial that lasted through the end of the war to 1866. The decision in Ex parte Milligan affirmed that civilians could not be tried in military tribunals.30

While some have argued that Lincoln’s decisions were appropriate for a time of war and chaos (if Maryland had seceded or been overtaken, the Capitol would have been surrounded by Confederates), there is little doubt as to the unconstitutionality of his decision. By the end of the Civil War, thousands of people were ultimately incarcerated without being given a timely hearing. In the Milligan decision, the Court upheld the rule of law and stated, “Wicked men, ambitious of power, with hatred of liberty and contempt of law, may fill the place once occupied by Washington and Lincoln; and if this right is conceded, and the calamities of war again befall us, the dangers to human liberty are frightful to contemplate.”31

…by the end of the raids in early 1920, Palmer and Hoover had arrested over ten thousand and deported over five hundred people.

The Red Scare and the Palmer Raids of 1919

In the midst of the turmoil of World War I, and with the disarray and exhaustion of a nation at war, the eruption of the Russian Revolution brought on yet another threat to the U.S.—Communism. The Bolsheviks had overthrown their ruling leader, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, leading to the rise of Marxist Communists such as Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin. An angry Russian public—students and workers, blue collar and white—had grown dissatisfied with their lot and cried out for change. In early 1917, Tsar Nicholas II formally abdicated his throne and he and his family were killed.

This political upheaval made U.S. government officials nervous. Communist theory advocated a rebellion against the ruling bourgeoisie that included violence, if necessary; the public was to “conquer and destroy” should the circumstances call for it. Much like the origins of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, foreign events moved the U.S. government to preemp-tive action. The fear spread quickly in the U.S. that alien residents—this time, the Communist Russians—living in America would be similarly incensed and rise against the U.S. government, especially after a bomb threat was uncovered in 1919, in which three dozen bomb packages were to be sent to U.S. public officials (though it was never confirmed by whom).

One of the targeted officials was Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. A bomb, packaged and delivered to Mitchell’s residence exploded at his door.32 In 1917, immediately after the bomb incident, Palmer instituted anti-sedition and anti-espionage laws, blaming Bolshe-viks and Socialists for the bomb scare.

Though Communists and Socialists statistically constituted a minute fraction of the population at best, public agitation revolving around the dangerous “Reds” was ignited, and from there, could not be stopped. Riots began in Cleveland after a peaceful Socialist march was disrupted and participants were set upon by U.S. Navy and Army soldiers. Sensational claims about Communists and Socialists reigned, causing public confusion and panic.

The Anarchist Act and the Espionage and Alien Acts of 1918 threatened to legally deport any alien resident who seemed disloyal or held radical views. This set of alien and sedition acts looked much like the ones that preceded them over a century earlier. The Sedition Act of 1917 called for individual fines of up to ten thousand dollars and twenty years in jail for printing, writing, publishing or using “any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States.” Speaking ill of the government became illegal. Even though the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 had immediately been deemed unconstitutional, over a hundred years later, the same unconstitutional laws were being enacted again.

Between 1919 and 1920, at the direction of Attorney General Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover, the newly appointed head of the FBI, the residences and meeting places of “suspected radicals” were raided in what has become known as the Palmer Raids. In one night over four thousand suspected Communists were arrested, and by the end of the raids in early 1920, Palmer and Hoover had arrested over ten thousand and deported over five hundred people.

The motive behind these raids was “to tear out the radical seeds that have entangled American ideas in their poisonous theories.” According to Palmer in his essay “The Case Against the Reds,” the “tongues of revolutionary heat were licking the altars of the churches, leaping into the belfry of the school bell, crawling into the sacred corners of American homes, seeking to replace marriage vows with libertine laws, burning up the foundations of society.”33

However, only a few months after the raids, public support—and governmental sanctions—of the Palmer Raids began a steep decline. A group of prominent lawyers (and one Supreme Court justice) issued a report decrying the raids as unconstitutional and condemned the deportations as illegal, and after Palmer incorrectly predicted an attempted May Day overthrow of the government by Communists, his credibility and the “Red mania” he created soon died, and with it, the hysteria that produced the con-stitutional challenges to American civil liberties.

Anti-Asian Hate

Prejudice and bigotry persist as obstacles to achieving a society where all individuals and groups feel safe and equal. In 1942, Japanese Americans lost their liberty following Japan’s attack at Pearl Harbor when America ignored the Constitutional rights of some of its citizens in the wake of a barrage of racism. Today, anti-Asian sentiment continues to be directed at individuals and groups within the Asian American community.

JACL works to eradicate the use of negative stereotypes and misperceptions about Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. To accomplish this, the JACL monitors and combats hate crimes and hate incidents including defamation and racial/ethnic profiling.

Anti-Asian Sentiment

Xenophobia and Population Visibility: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are easily identifiable by their physical appearance. Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are the fastest-growing populations in the United States, especially in the states of California, Hawaii, New York, Illinois, Texas, and Washington.
Economic and International Relations: When the U.S. economy declines or when an incident occurs involving an Asian nation, attention often shifts to the role other countries play in providing “unfair” competition or the negative impact of the incident. As a result, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are often perceived as “foreigners.”
Media Portrayals and Public Perceptions: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are often portrayed in the media in a variety of contradictory stereotypes, ranging from the “model minority: at the head of their class in school, to the non-English speaking immigrant who may be perceived to be an undocumented worker. Asians are also characterized in films as unscrupulous businessmen and cruel mobsters or as compliant, submissive, and exotic. One-dimensional portrayals, coupled with the absence of accurate images and positive role models, obstruct public understanding of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community and can contribute to an anti-Asian climate.
Stereotype of the Asian Monolith: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are often perceived as a monolithic group despite extensive diversity within the community. Thus, even though an act of anti-Asian sentiment might be perpetrated with a particular ethnic group in mind (e.g., South Asian, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Chinese), a failure to make distinctions between Asian American and Pacific Islander ethnic groups causes members of all groups to become potential victims.

Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act (H.R. 40/S 40)

H.R. 40 was first introduced by the late Rep. John Conyers [D-MI-13] in 1989. Representative Conyers, an American politician of the Democratic Party, served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1965 until 2017. During his time in office, Rep. Conyers was the main sponsor of H.R. 40, successfully introducing the Act first in the 101st Congress, and lastly in the 115th Congress.

Following Rep. Conyers’ resignation in 2017, U.S. Representative Sheila Jackson Lee [D-TX-18], who has served in Texas’s 18th Congressional district since 1995, introduced H.R.40 into the 116th Congress on January 3rd, 2019. Since 2019, Rep. Jackson Lee has been the bill’s main sponsor, advocating for reparations on a national scale.

What is H.R. 40?

H.R. 40 is a bill that would establish a commission of 13 members tasked with studying and developing reparation proposals for African Americans and presenting their findings to Congress. These 13 members would be proficient in ‘African Studies’ and ‘reparatory justice. Furthermore, the commission would not only research reparations, but also develop an appropriate apology directed towards the African American, Black, and African communities of the United States, all of whom have and continue to suffer under our country’s discriminatory policies that followed emancipation such as Redlining and Jim Crow. H.R. 40 is much more than studying the institution of slavery and what has occurred within the last 400 years it is more about understanding why our country’s African American, Black, and African communities are suffering today, and how we can progress moving forward. Rep. Jackson Lee has stated that reparations should include financial compensation and “restitution, rehabilitation, acknowledgment of injustices, apologies, memorizations, educational reform and guarantees that such injustices won't happen again.”

Japanese Americans stand in solidarity

In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed into law H.R. 442 which became known as the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. This bill granted redress of $20,000 and a formal presidential apology to the Japanese Americans who were incarcerated during WWII. This was a historical moment in Japanese American history and the greater journey of ethnic minorities in the United States. Like African Americans, Japanese Americans have long experienced racial prejudice and a lack of political leadership, which led to the mass incarceration during WWII and further discrimination. Following the international COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, a pandemic that shook the globe, the Asian diaspora, specifically in the United States fell victim to deep-rooted anti-Asian hate. Now, more than ever, Japanese Americans are standing in solidarity with Black Americans, recognizing the power we hold through unity. Many Japanese Americans reflect on their strenuous journey to reparations, viewing H.R. 40 as another path of reparations that is (1) overdue and (2) possible through togetherness. Once our nation acknowledges slavery and segregation on a national level, progress can be made for future generations to come.