The Color of Citizenship: Legacies of Japanese Incarceration from WWII to Stop & Frisk

Co-sponsored by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU, Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, and The Hunter College Human Rights Program.

The mass incarceration of nearly 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II is a powerful but often occluded illustration of the fragility of US citizenship and civil liberties. As such, this event demands frequent reexamination in relation to ongoing conversations regarding post-9/11 special registration, detention, and deportation, as well as long-standing formal and informal practices of profiling and surveillance of communities of color. This daylong conference presents a three-part program examining: 1) the history of the Japanese American incarceration and how it is made meaningful to multiple publics in different locations – higher education, museums, and our national landmarks; 2) artists who deploy this history as relevant to their artistic and political practices in the present; 3) the legal significance of the incarceration to contemporary local and national state policies directed against communities of color.

Keynote address by Norman Mineta, 14th United States Secretary of Transportation.