The U.S. Census Bureau Gave Up Names of Japanese-Americans in WWII (2007) | Hacker News Reader

The U.S. Census Bureau Gave Up Names of Japanese-Americans in WWII (2007)

scientificamerican.com

149 pointsgoblin8983 comments

The Obama White House has proposed adding a new racial category for Middle Easterners to the census. It is a poor plan for many reasons; now we have another.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/09/30/white...

It's not that unusual. The UK's IC codes[1] are more fine grained than those in the US.

With all the information organizations have on people, I'm not sure the government having official classifications makes any difference.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IC_codes

If my memory is correct, the Japanese census does not collect data on ethnicity/race at all.

Did they have need to, given they are pretty homogeneous?

On the other hand you have to register with the local Koseki[1] and last names are positive indicators of ethnicity for the non-Japanese [except for haafu with ethnic Japanese fathers].

On the other hand, France by law does not track race characteristics, so they can't rely on census statistics to know how well or poorly a population is doing.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koseki

The irony is that we don't know, other than anecdotally or non-official sources, how racially/ethically homogeneous Japan is, unless I am mistaken.

Is it not true that non-citizens do not have entries in the koseki system? I may be misunderstanding. Is it not also true that on becoming a citizen, a "Japanese name" must be selected? Though I habe heard that such a name can be entirely in katakana, and simply a transliteration of a Western or Chinese name.

I know however that one may select an entirely "native Japanese" name upon naturalisation.

If you marry into a Japanese family then you have a "dead-end" entry in the Koseki system, otherwise as a regular foreigner I think you have to register in the Alien Registration registry --altho some of this may be changing, so I could be misrepresenting things.

With regard to name, I'm unsure, though I believe what you stated has validity.

I know nothing about Japan, but how about people of Burakumin descent? I recall reading that there was great effort made to make it difficult to look up, including the removal of labels on old maps that showed the blocks where they had been forced to live.

Presumably there are legal restrictions on record collection to impede the possible future discrimination.

I know such discrimination is unconstitutional, but I do not know if there is legislation to set up penalties.

That is correct.

It has some downsides. A recent piece of research into racism recently assumed that all Japanese nationals were ethnically Japanese so did not survey them on their experiences with racism. Considering around 1 in 50 children in Japan are 'mixed race' this seems a little off.

Racism is one factor which is impacting my decision making with regard to teaching English in Japan. I have never experienced racism (other than comments when I was younger), so I don't know if I could deal with what I have anecdotally heard to be both institutional and xenophobic

"Middle Eastern" is not a race though. I'm Turkish and we are very Caucasian. :)

It should fit in nicely with "hispanic" which runs the gamut from white to black.

Seems like a minor nitpick, but Hispanic is considered an ethnicity, not a race.

You can be black and Hispanic. And my favorite...according to the federal government, it is entirely possible to be "Hispanic - White and Black."

At which point we can all agree that discussions of race are almost always more confusing than helpful.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Source: worked on some USDA reports.

If the cops put out an alert for a Hispanic, or a black person I'm pretty sure you'd be able to identify them. Is it genetically scientific? Of course not! But other people will also categorise that person the same way, thus allowing their "racial" group to be targeted. Race might be a bullshit term, but we clearly assign people to such groups so it's just as valid as any other construction we've come up with (like the difference between a Canadian and an American).

Well, of course there's really no such thing as race to begin with, it's a big bag of various cultural and historical prejudices with all kinds of different people thrown together into arbitrary "races". Racism had to be invented to justify slavery and colonialism.

I'm with you on the prejudice part. But pedantically, its not so easy to dismiss 'race'. We see strong genetic pooling around the world. We can make up a new word for that, or use the one we have. Unfortunately the current word has been muddied by history.

There certainly are genetic differences around the world, but they line up only vaguely with race. If race were about genetics, then there would be a ton of different races in Africa, and we'd probably lump all other people under one "non-African" race.

My favorite way to illustrate the arbitrary nature of race is to ask what the race is of our current (alas, soon to be former) president. Typically the answer is "black." Yet his mother was "white." If it were genetic, we'd say he was mixed, but we're still operating under the influence of old arbitrary rules where having just a small amount of black ancestry makes you "black."

The answer to your question is 'black' because of political correctness. This is a great example of why it's pernicious - as it robs us of ability to describe the world.

There is actually a more appropriate term - 'mulatto' which was specifically created to describe people born to black / white parents. Today it's considered 'dated and offensive', so we don't have a 'polite' and 'correct' way to describe the ethnicity of our (current) President.

Would you deny the existence of dog breeds because there exist labradoodles or any other mixes?

Wow, blaming political correctness for the idea that black ancestry makes someone black. You might find this to be enlightening:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypodescent#Hypo.2Fhyperdescen...

The idea that a mixed-race person is considered to be a member of only one of their parents' races long predates people's unwillingness to use "mulatto."

And the idea that people must call him "black" because they're not allowed to say "mulatto" is absurd. "Mixed" would describe it without causing any offense, as would "half white, half black."

I remain amazed at how insistent some people are that the lingering consequences of centuries of racial injustice in this country are somehow caused by "political correctness" in the past few decades.

Even before mulatto fell out of use, most white people called anyone with "a single drop of black blood" black. I grew up an a racist part of the southern US, and I assure you that my neighbors would have considered "mulatto" to be a kind of black person.

Strangely, we still do that. Imagine if a 'single drop of white blood' (whatever that means) meant you were white. Then America would be 99% white?

You know, every time I hear somebody complain about "political correctness" they follow it up by saying something really ugly and inaccurate. Then they complain, "gee, isn't it too bad that people don't let us use these dated terms anymore?". The reason we don't use the term "mulatto" is that there are a whole bunch of wrong assumptions rolled into that word. That there is any such thing as mixed vs pure race, for instance. The distinction is wrong. I mean, yeah it takes away your ability to describe the world a certain way, but it's because that way of describing the world is historically linked with murder, genocide, and slavery!

I'm not a native English speaker and to me this word has none of the connotations you describe. I'm with

'Residents of Spain, Latin America, the Caribbean, and some countries in Africa freely use the term mulatto, or its cognates in other languages, usually without any suggestion of insult'

The term mulatto is almost intrinsically offensive, as the two most likely etymologies mean "mule" or "foreign". It has a strong pejorative connotation.We have several polite terms for the President and others of mixed ancestry, like "multiracial", which is more accurate, comprehensive,and descriptive than "mulatto"

How is multiracial more accurate when it equally describes someone who's amerindian / chinese as european / african?

If you could propose a more PC term than mulatto (which specifically describes someone with white/black parents), I'd take it - but I don't think there is any.

In the US, when mulatto was in more widespread use, the term was used to describe Turks as well as persons of white/south Asian and white/ Native American backgrounds. So it is not necessarily more specific, in practice. I think the best reason not to use the term when in North American circles is that those it refers to generally strongly dislike it because of its poisoned historical past, which created an implicit comparison between mixed people and sterile mules, or more generously, strangers in their own land. Imagine if the colloquial term for Americans of Irish/German ancestry was "banana slug" or "interloper".

I find it difficult to believe anybody would throw out "black" as a race. That's about as specific as saying my heritage is "white".

From: http://www.arogundade.com/is-barack-obama-black-or-mixed-rac...

Barack Obama's ... was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii. His parents were of contrasting ethnic backgrounds. His mother, the late Stanley Ann Dunham, was born in Wichita, Kansas. She was an American of English and Irish ancestry. Obama’s father, the late Barack Obama Sr., was born in Kenya’s Nyanza Province. He was of African heritage, belonging to an ethnic group called the Luo. They make up Kenya’s third largest ethnic group, with other members scattered across eastern Uganda and northern Tanzania.

Just google "first african american president" and watch the results roll in. "African American" is just a modern euphemism for "black," or at least "black American."

> "Middle Eastern" is not a race though. I'm Turkish and we are very Caucasian. :)

"Race" is kind of a silly thing to begin with. For example, "Caucasian" doesn't actually mean "white", even though people use it colloquially as if it were.

"I'm sad to learn it," he says of the new discovery. "It would be sadder yet to continue to deny that it happened, if, as now seems clear, it did happen. You cannot learn from and correct past mistakes unless you know about them." I wonder if this will ever be said about Snowden in the NSA

>> You cannot learn from and correct past mistakes unless you know about them.

I must getting older, because I see this statement a lot and when you look back, its clear we never do learn from our past mistakes.

> I must getting older, because I see this statement a lot and when you look back, its clear we never do learn from our past mistakes.

Hence the current JavaScript development stack(s)

Sure we do. Every living person is here because someone learned from their past mistakes at some point.

Implying that "we" don't learn from our mistakes is suggesting that we are all complicit when in reality I'm not sure most Americans even support programs like registering people based upon their religion. You could argue that every vote for Trump was condoning this policy but I think that is too simplistic.

The real issue is that we still don't have an effective means to resist the stranglehold that certain interests have on those in power and we have a shortage of inspirational leaders willing to tell the truth rather than whatever the crowd wants to hear.

It's okay, "we need to look forward" - so that Trump can now hire the exact same torturers and torture architects that Obama pardoned.

Hopefully now people finally realize what a dumb "mistake" that was, to think and act like that post an administration like Bush's. Will the next Democrat president act the same way about Trump's administration's crimes? Probably, especially if people don't criticize him or her about it, because they would be too busy patting themselves on the back for beating the Republicans in the election.

> I see this statement a lot and when you look back, its clear we never do learn from our past mistakes.

Well, we do. We have greatly improved (but not sufficient) civil rights for minorities and women, European wars are a thing of the past (hopefully), we have mechanisms that have prevented economic depressions for over 70 years, etc.

But it's not a spectator sport. If I sit back and say, 'we haven't learned', then in effect I'm the one who hasn't learned. Democracy relies on its citizens to come forward, speak up, organize, and act. I've read many great leaders complain that their biggest obstacle isn't their enemies, but those sitting on their hands.

the thing some people will learn from this is that they should not trust the census bureau with their information

Hopefully the lesson learned is that they should not "trust" any organization, ever. Trust should be a concept reserved for children and Santa.

If this bothers you, what are you doing about it?

Is your company retaining data that can be used against your customers? Is it implementing tech (end-to-end encryption, data minimization, anonymization, decentralization, etc.) to reduce their exposure? Don't wait until someone shows up with a NSL, claiming all Muslims are terrorists and therefore spying on everyone who believes in Islam or is suspected of being a friend of a Muslim person is a national security issue. Then it will be too late. Start now. We are all responsible for what happens next.

Are you calling your elected representatives? Let them know now that you abhor civil rights violations, especially in the name of security, and will hold them accountable - now before they are caught up in sensationalized threats and secret briefings.

FWIW, there is currently city-level opposition to some of the upcoming administration's round-up threats. While not the Muslim part of it, NYC Mayor deBlasio has already promised protection of undocumented NYers.

http://abc7ny.com/politics/mayor-says-if-trump-tries-to-depo...

Throw a wrench into the works if this happens: report a bunch of your conservative Christian customers as Muslims. It'll suck for them but it serves them right anyway.

(Make sure to leave the country before the authorities figure out what happened.)

I would absolutely oppose this; everyone is due the same freedoms and rights. However, I think you are joking ...

Excerpts from the article:

1."What it suggests is that the statistical information was used at the microlevel for surveillance of civilian populations, ...

(appears suspiciously similar to what is occurring now)

2. "At the time, available evidence (and Bureau lore) held that there had been no … release of microdata,"

(Hahaha)

3. The Census Bureau has improved its confidentiality practices considerably in the last six decades, former director Prewitt says.

(How could this be? The government requested and the govenment got the information. It happened then, it could happen now.)

The more things change the more they remain the same.

To be fair anyway, the picture is not black and white. The government had a real and valid fear (proven wrong by events) that the japanese population could be used to foment trouble in the states during the war. However the action still does leave a bad impression

Why is anyone surprised? If we should've learned anything from the last couple of weeks, it should be that it turns out that despite recent progress, America hasn't strayed far from its roots.

The powers of government have long been used as a weapon against various groups over our history. All that's happened recently is the removing of the mask.

um, well, if you're going to take it in that direction... FDR was a democrat.

I'm not sure I get your point.

Why do so many people think this is a useful point? Who cares what party someone is in?

that's exactly my point! neither party has some kind of monopoly on intolerant ideas.

Then why bring it up?

i don't think there's any reason to engage with you because you're just willfully ignoring the implication of the text i responded to. see ya.

Then your point isn't related in any way to the comment you replied to, which mentioned neither party.

I tend to agree. This doesn't surprise me in the slightest, to the point of being un-newsworthy. Of course the Law Enforcement / Intelligence Apparatus is able to get info they need from teh Census Bureau...

> "should've learned anything from the last couple of weeks, it should be that it turns out that despite recent progress, America hasn't strayed far from its roots.

What do you mean by that?

> The powers of government have long been used as a weapon against various groups over our history. All that's happened recently is the removing of the mask.

Agree with the first part. Can you expand on how what happened recently removed a "mask"?

Not OP but (some) white people are openly talking about how great Hitler is. It used to be just reserved to neo-Nazi gatherings and their occasional protests. I'm assuming that's what's meant by the mask.

> white people are openly talking about how great Hitler is.

That's terrible, but why would they be talking about it lately and not before? I don't think there was ever a time without loonies. Do you mean talking on the news about it?

A co-worker told me there is this weird Hitler obsession in India for some reason (he is from India). Searched for "India Hitler cafes" and was completely flabbergasted. Was expected it to be a joke some sort...

Or at least talking around minorities and mixed company (i.e. politically correct liberals and what not) about it. I have no idea what white people have been plotting when minorities aren't around (this is a joke people).

Hate, oppression, and slavery: the original "great" American values the rubes can't get enough of. Staying true to our roots, indeed.

A sad chapter in our history. What's terrifying to me is that many prominent people still defend it today. And not just people associated with the winner of the recent presidential election.

Interesting fact: Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court decision upholding the internment of Japanese Americans, was never explicitly overruled by the Supreme Court because there has not been a similar controversy before the court.

France doesn't ask for or record race/ethnicity on its censuses for exactly this reason. If you don't store it, you can't be made to give it up.

Nowadays you can do it with drone, camera and facial recognition software. If president Le Pen needs the info she could get in 2 days.

That would take the complicity of hundreds, if not thousands, of people.

I doubt it would exactly be a secret or entirely quick, implementing racial recognition on a national scale.

Releasing information, especially today, takes only a few (Let's ignore bureaucracy and assume it takes only a few sign-offs to give away massive data dump legally)

Have you seen how the French protest? Especially the unions (which tend to be left wing). They were almost burning cars to stop Uber http://time.com/3935645/paris-taxi-drivers-protest-uber/

How long do you think such a drone programme would physically last? Antifa activists will literally start smashing things.

The US government can contact one of the many consumer data brokers and obtain a list of every Muslim in America in about five minutes. They have no need to use the Census or anything else.

"Experian’s Ethnic InsightSM is a comprehensive predictive name analysis process that identifies the ethnic origin, probable religion and language preferences of individuals."

This is a great precedent to why folks don't want to register their firearms.

http://ibmandtheholocaust.com/

IBM was contracted to collect census data for many of the European govts. with their wonderful new Hollerith machines in the 1930s.

This was then passed on / sold to the Third Reich and used to filter who went where.

You didn't think it was all done with pencil and paper did you ?

Allegedly, IBM also was the subcontractor who ran the internment camps (or some part of them) for American citizens of Japanese ancestry.

I wonder if they'll do the same for Muslim Americans for the upcoming presidential term.

I'm certain the federal government as a whole already does. Various TLAs hand over data to the FBI easily, 'cuz terrorists. The census dept. is no longer important, compared to others, such as NSA, NRO, etc.

Looks like the EU decision that people shouldn't have to transfer data to the USA is a good move.

And nobody goes to prison for it. Nobodies legacy is tarnished.

Why are we even talking about this?

Wait, what? Government can't be trusted?!?!?

And they will again. More kinds of people.

Well there are no records of any Japanese running around with katanas chopping heads from that time.

On the other hand in blindly immigrant accepting Europe though... We learned our lesson since last year.

Are you joking? The Japanese military committed many atrocities in invaded countries:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

I think the GP meant civilian Americans chopping other Americans heads with katanas.

Also isn't the katana mostly stabbing weapon? Slicing someone in two requires too much effort IMO.

I was under the impression that katanas are primarily slashing weapons[1], as is generally the case with long single-edged blades

[1] http://www.systemofstrategy.com/articles/the-truth-about-tan...

From the little kendo I did, it's both, but mostly slashing. You wouldn't so much slice them in two as open them up from shoulder to hip, if you can. If you're going for the neck though, the basic technique is throat-stabbing, not slicing the head off. If the enemy has good armor, I guess you'd have to go stabby, I can't imagine a katana can slice through good steel plates (or mail, really).

But 1) the spear is the stabby weapon of choice when not in close quarters. From horseback you'd only use the katana to slice. Certainly, you wouldn't try stabbing someone with a katana from horseback.

And 2) the Japanese mostly didn't have excellent armor. They had shitty iron, so making good steel was very expensive for them. They couldn't have mass-produced steel plate armor.

The amazing thing about katanas is not that they're better than european swords (they're not), it's that they were able to make good weapons at all out of shit-tier iron.

>The amazing thing about katanas is not that they're better than european swords (they're not), it's that they were able to make good weapons at all out of shit-tier iron.

How are they not better? I'm pretty sure European swords never had that neat feature of higher hardness at the blade than at the back side, giving the sword better strength while still staying sharp on the cutting edge.

Katanas are really different swords from medieval European swords, designed for an entirely different type of fighting. European swords are a product of the type of warfare they waged, which involved a lot of metal armor with knights. A katana wouldn't work too well here, so European swords are designed to crush armor and to be good at stabbing straight through the armor. Katanas were designed to use against unarmored or lightly-armored foes (I think Japanese samurai armor was basically leather), and are designed to be used in slashing motions more. I'd say that for their purpose and their style of fighting, katanas are definitely better. But against heavily armored opponents, they're just not the right weapon.

Some European swords do show a degree of differential tempering and differential hardening. I don't know what technique they used though. IIRC correctly if you polish some of the swords the same way you do a JP blade, you get hamon-esque patterns:

http://www.archaeologie-online.de/magazin/fundpunkt/forschun...

Also remember that JP swords are a few hundred years more modern than what we typically think of when we think EU swords. However the Vikings had some knowledge of carbon/crucible steel making as early as 9th-10th century:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulfberht_swords

Masamune was like 14th century with the famous Maramasa and Kotestu being 16th century onward.

> How are they not better? I'm pretty sure European swords never had that neat feature of higher hardness at the blade than at the back side, giving the sword better strength while still staying sharp on the cutting edge.

I'm not sure where you got that idea. Any well made sword of that era would have a softer core and harder edges.

Japanese swordsmiths used folding to do that, a type of pattern welding. At the time swordsmiths all across Europe and Asia were using different, equally good pattern welding techniques. The Japanese technique was one of the more complicated ones, because they had worse iron.

Damascus blades are the best example of pattern welding. They were made of the highest quality steel (at the time).

Japaneses swords were well made, and comparable to European swords of the time, but not better or worse.

In the USA.

How do we know that they won't give muslin citizen's data to Trump?

It would be far more difficult for President Pence to round up all of the homosexuals as he promised, but luckily for him, now we have Facebook and Google. Also, if Obama and Clinton hadn't protected and enabled the NSA, and completely ignored the mass data collection of private companies, it wouldn't be far too late for people afraid of being targeted to delete their accounts now.

Why shouldn't people want to share their real names online? If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear, Muslim.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com