Political Quotes

“Madam President, on February 19, 1942--and that will be 80 years ago this coming Saturday--President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the blatantly racist mass incarceration of essentially all Japanese Americans inside the United States at the time. This was an indefensible move--one that resulted in locking up about 120,000 decent, hard-working, innocent people based on nothing other than their race. Two years later, in one of the most shameful moments in America's judicial history, the U.S. Supreme Court deferred to the Roosevelt administration's blatantly racist and equally unconstitutional imprisonment of Japanese Americans. Writing for the majority in a case called Korematsu v. United States, Associate Justice Hugo Black, a Justice with a history of bigotry, unconscionably glossed over the countless constitutional violations built into the race-based interment of innocent American citizens, who the Court acknowledged ``were loyal to this country overwhelmingly,'' based on the fact that ``[t]here was evidence of disloyalty on the part of some'' Japanese Americans and ``military authorities considered that the need for action was great.'' In a moment one might expect from someone like Justice Black, who had a history of bigotry, he cavalierly dismissed the blatant racism inherent in this action, reasoning that ``[t]o cast this case into outlines of racial prejudice, without reference to the real military dangers which were presented, merely co…”