HOW WE GOTHERE
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Hidden history
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1. Before disembarking from bus at War Relocation Center, evacuees of Japanese descent are again examined by fellow evacuee medical staff. This baby (center) was found to have measles. The nurse is accompanying mother and child to Manzanar hospital. Photo by Clem Albers.
current climate
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S M I T H COL L E G E SCHO O L FO R SO CIAL WO RK
2. No Ban No Wall! March for Muslims and Allies in New York City. Photo by Tommy Liggett.
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3. Ichiro Okumura, 22, from Venice, California, tends these young plants in two-acre field of white radishes at this War Relocation Authority center for evacuees of Japanese ancestry. Photo by Francis Stewart.
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4. Relocation Nisei girls getting a bucket of water from one of the hydrants at the relocation center. Photo by Clem Albers. 5. Thousands march through central London, in protest of President Donald Trump’s Muslim ban and his state visit to the UK. Photo by John Gomez. 6. Newcomers move into Manzanar, a War Relocation Authority center for evacuees of Japanese ancestry. Photo by Clem Albers. 7. Grandfather and grandson of Japanese ancestry at this War Relocation Authority center. Photo by Dorothea Lange. 8. Protesters rally against President Trump’s travel ban in Washington, D.C. Photo by Rena Schild. Historic photos courtesy of the National Park Service (www.nps.gov).
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anti-immigrant nationalist rhetoric increased in fervor during the 2016 presidential election cycle, many people started noticing parallels to other historical moments and responded with alarm. Yoosun Park, associate professor at the Smith College School for Social Work, was dismayed—but not surprised— by the tone of the popular discourse. “We have a national myth that we used to have open borders,” said Park. “It’s a belief in a rosy golden past, a time when we welcomed all immigrants.” It’s simply not true, according to Park, an expert on the historical and contemporary relationship between social work and immigration.
“Immigration restrictions have always existed that were based on the usual suspects: race, culture, gender, sexuality, class and ability,” Park said. Only 14 years after the Declaration of Independence, the Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted the right of naturalized citizenship to “free whites.” In 1870, naturalization was extended to Blacks—those “of African nativity” or “African descent.” Shortly thereafter, in 1875, the first restrictive immigration law in the U.S., the Page Act, was passed, prohibiting “undesirables” from immigrating. A series of subsequent laws—beginning with the Chinese Exclusion Act
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(1882)—explicitly restricted Asians from entry and naturalization on the basis of race. “Prior to the late 1800s, immigration was not federally controlled and restricted, but that didn’t mean we liked those who came,” said Park. “There was always disdain for ‘new’ immigrants. Even German and Swedish immigrants were considered uncouth and ‘undesirable’ in their time. But all these European immigrants, including the reviled Irish, were always considered ‘white’ and thus eligible for both entry and citizenship, while others were deemed unfit.”
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“ As a profession, we should get back into policy making and influencing policy. We have to spend less time being outraged and more time doing something about it.”
“We’re seeing the same kinds of dynamics play out now, especially around the Latin American and Muslim immigrants of today,” said Park. “The Trump administration did not invent racism in immigration policy, but it does seem to be promulgating a more explicit version of official racism than there has been in a while.” Park’s interest in immigration history was piqued during her graduate studies at the University of Washington—though it has its roots in her own experience as a Korean American whose family immigrated when she was a child. As a scholar, both her research and her approach to pedagogy are informed by poststructuralist theories and methods of inquiry. For her dissertation, Park did a textual analysis of references to immigrants in social work documents from 1875 to 1952. “In the years prior to World War II, there were a lot of immigrants, not refugees,” said Park. “The tendency was to valorize refugees and denigrate immigrants. They were economic migrants. This was in contrast to the pilgrims, who were seen as principled refugees.” According to Park, when World War II resulted in millions of displaced people, the discourse started to shift with attitudes turning against refugees. “Refugees then were talked about as permanently broken. It was believed that they would not be productive. Jews released from concentration camps, for example, were written about as damaged people from whom all traces of civilization had been stripped.” Social workers insisted that refugees would be productive, benefitting the country if they were allowed to immigrate. Park sees this as well-intentioned, but ultimately problematic. “At no point does social work say, ‘Why should economic productivity be the gate?’ Social work never gets out of the binary. The terms of the argument are set and we don’t go challenge the terms, think out of the box,” she said. “If you are not challenging the
—YOOSUN PARK
categories, you may very well be perpetuating the problem. With all the best intentions in the world, you may be upholding the kinds of ideas and ideals you say you agree with.” While doing graduate research, Park discovered that social workers had played a significant role in the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Social workers often interviewed Japanese Americans before internment, made recommendations about whether individuals could leave for purposes such as education, and served on the social work units that existed in every camp. “I was really shocked,” Park said. “Certainly, no one talked about that, not in my M.S.W. program, not in my doctoral program. In all the social work books I’d read, not a single one mentioned it.” Park feels social workers have often inadvertently played the role of “the handmaids of oppressive politics.” Organizations such as the American Association of Social Workers and the National Conference on Social Work essentially went along with the internment plan, rather than attempting to disrupt it.
As she researched the JapaneseAmerican internment, Park also realized how clear it was that history repeats itself. “Many of the people working in Japanese internment camps were ‘Indian specialists,’” said Park. “They were selected because they had experience displacing and incarcerating whole populations.” Social work schools have an important part to play in paving a better way forward. That includes teaching history as part of training clinicians. Understanding history can put the individual in context of the structural dynamics in which they live and are shaped, which Park thinks is key. History exposes why this individual is here, what obstacles were placed before them and their forbears, and how those historical obstacles—or new ones—continue to affect them today. “That we have a certain population today is not an accident,” said Park. “If you don’t know anything about that, you don’t know anything about our society and the social context in which you and your clients live and struggle.” “Know the laws,” said Park. “Know how we got here. You’ll have a
Left: Newcomers vaccinated by fellow and sister evacuees of Japanese ancestry on arrival at Manzanar, a War Relocation Authority center. Photo by Clem Albers. Above: The first grave at the Manzanar Center’s cemetery. It is that of Matsunosuke Murakami, 62, who died of heart disease on May 16. He had been ill ever since he arrived here with the first contingent and had been confined to the hospital since March 23. Photo by Dorothea Lange. .
different take on who’s sitting in front of you.” “As a profession, we should get back into policy making and influencing policy,” said Park. “We have to spend less time being outraged and more time doing something about it.” Park sees her work for social change as a fundamental part of all her roles: as a teacher, an adviser, the editor of Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, and a widely-respected scholar. “My work is absolutely activism,” said Park. “Every piece of sound scholarship should be viewed as the work of activism.” ◆
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