MEDIUM POST #2
While much of the government fails to to step up to the task of assisting those in crisis, people turn to local communities and individuals for signs of hope. It is not our traditional leaders that we look to for inspiration but instead the small actions of doctors, neighbors, and fast food workers. We can see this echoed during the post-war period, newspapers publishing the needs and responses between various everyday citizens, student uprisings, the workers of the Yomiuri newspaper. Once normalcy is ripped out from underneath most people and suddenly the stability of the government and society crashes, people learn to value the small individual, seemingly altruistic actions of other human beings because they seem pure and devoid of the pervasive sense of systemic greed or corruption.
When examining the state of the zainichi Koreans it is low hanging fruit to compare them to today’s African Americans. What started as protests against the United States’ usage of Japan as a base in the Korean War and whether they should be repatriated or not, soon evolved into a broader fight for more Korean schools and better rights for the entire community. From the readings, one of these climaxes was the Kobe incident where demonstrations turned violent. Today, the recent statistics showing that blacks are around twice as likely to die from COVID coupled with the recent shooting of a young black man have changed the discussion away from individual policies, revealing deeper wounds remaining racial prejudices and divides. In both cases, once the stability of society had broken down, much broader and more conceptual issues became inflamed, rearing their heads to reveal that just because in the “before” world things might have seemed okay, this issues were by no means resolved.
My source is the Irish sending Native Americans money to repay their historic debt when they sent money to Ireland during the Potato Famine.
