The Korematsu Supreme Court ruling upholding internment is still a ‘loaded weapon’ for discrimination
My colleague Jack Chin has this op/ed in the Los Angeles Times on the “loaded weapon” known as Korematsu v. United States. He reminds us that:
“There has been undeniable progress toward racial equality since the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Korematsu decision. To some degree, the Korematsu ruling itself has been rehabilitated. Although the majority opinion allowed the internment, it also stated that “all legal restrictions which curtail the civil rights of a single racial group are immediately suspect” and “courts must subject them to the most rigid scrutiny.” The Supreme Court later used this language to invalidate school segregation, the prohibition of interracial marriage, and covenants that barred nonwhites from certain neighborhoods.
Yet conservative justices have continued to cite Korematsu in support of racial bias as well. Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, for example, cited it in affirmative action cases to illustrate permissible racial discrimination. And the idea behind it, that Americans of Asian Pacific ancestry are somehow not fully American, also persists.”
KJ