Opinion | Cameron Turner: Ben Carson’s Prejudice is Eerily Familiar

My father and I recently shared the sad and inspiring privilege of going to the Pasadena Buddhist Church for the funeral of a longtime family friend. The loved ones who honored Kazuo Kitani at the warm and solemn service remembered him as a loving husband, dad and granddad, a dependable buddy and an energetic community leader known for his spirit-raising smile, impish humor and enthusiastic dedication to his kids and grandkids.

We were also reminded that Mr. Kitani spent a major part of his childhood imprisoned in one of the federal camps where Japanese Americans were forcibly held during World War II. I had first learned of this when I was a student at Muir and Keith Kitani – eldest of the three Kitani sons – quipped that his ninth grade term paper was going to be about “barbed wire.”

President Ronald Reagan denounced the wartime internment of Japanese Americans as “a grave wrong” as he signed the 1988 law issuing cash reparations and a formal apology to families of the internees. That milestone moment was another signal that our nation was gradually turning away from the paranoid bigotry that paints all members of a certain group with a brush of suspicion. But, to this day, not everyone is on board with that goal.

By repeatedly suggesting that Muslims are unfit to serve as President of the United States, Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson is rationalizing the same the kind of prejudiced fears that forced 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent into prison camps. Of course, Carson does not advocate imprisoning American Muslims. Neither has he argued they should be prohibited from running for office. What Carson has done is validate prejudice, distrust and fear of Muslims – rancid feelings that can easily and quickly flame into bigotry and hatred.

Carson is in step with conservative extremists who apparently believe that followers if Islam are, by nature, a threat to the United States.

Members of this group often misuse the word “Muslim” as a synonym for “terrorist” and they promote the false idea that American Muslims are working to supplant our US Constitution with Sharia law. Carson told The Hill that the only way he could support a Muslim presidential candidate would be if that person “publicly rejected all the tenets of Sharia and lived a life consistent with that.”

Similar misconceptions of innate disloyalty based on culture were used seventy years ago to demonize Japanese Americans. Such attitudes were wrong then and they are wrong today. Prejudice is indefensible. And given the tragic and evil racial history of our nation, prejudice is even more abhorrent when it is expressed by a black man — like Ben Carson or his campaign predecessor Herman Cain (who told reporters in 2012 that he would refuse to appoint a Muslim to his cabinet if he was elected president).

Happily, most Americans seem to disagree with the anti-Muslim prejudice being voiced by people like Carson. According to a June 22 Gallup poll, 60 per cent of Americans answered “yes” when asked if they would support a Muslim presidential candidate. So, while a contingent on the far right is working to reintroduce the toxic way of thinking that has poisoned our nation throughout much of its history, most of us are not buying in.

Thanks for listening, I’m Cameron Turner and that’s my two cents.