For three years, Andrew Osborne helped his bosses promote the idea that good design could make imprisonment more humane. As a public relations specialist at DLR Group, one of the largest architecture firms in the world, he crafted campaigns for multimillion dollar projects, like the construction of a “youth campus for empowerment” in Nashville. Or the rebuild of San Quentin state prison—former home of California’s death row—into a “rehabilitation center.” It wasn’t about simply adding more windows, he argued in marketing material. Prisons could be revamped to prioritize education; jail space could be set aside to help people through mental health crises instead of booking them into the system.
“I was selling the shit out of it,” Osborne says. “I genuinely was a convert.” A 34-year-old creative type, he’d taken the job at DLR Group after earning master’s degrees in philosophy and English literature. He truly believed the design firm, which has over 30 offices and rakes in at least $500 million in annual revenue, was committed to the stated ethos of its Justice+Civic division: to pursue “healing, equity, and transformation for the individual and community” as “stewards of the built environment.”
So when he found out on February 4 that DLR Group held a current contract to turn an old private prison in Oklahoma into a new detention center used to hold the immigrants swept up in the Trump administration’s escalated, increasingly deadly ICE operations—the sense of betrayal was instant. “I think what ICE is doing is the worst thing America has probably done since the internment camps during World War II,” he tells me, comparing the agency’s use of racial profiling in arrests to the mandatory incarceration of Japanese Americans. “It’s horrific, they’re shooting people, and here I am hating that in my heart of hearts. And it turns out my company is involved in it.”
It always bothers me that the German concentration camps in the US during WWII are never mentioned.
I didnt even know germans were interned. But I do think there is relevant context.
120,000 Japanese-Americans were concentrated, 2/3rd of which were citizens. 127,000 lived on the continental US. There were 150,000 living in Hawaii of which only 1,800 were confined.
Meanwhile German-Americans numbered in 12 million, of which 11,500 (described as overwhelmingly German Nationals but cannot find hard numbers) were forcibly detained. I cannot find numbers for family members who voluntairily entered the camps who are also uncounted.
They’re both injustices, but one does seems more egregious than the other. Both in raw numbers and in proportion.
But thanks for that wikipedia dive.
Although I agree that it’s an injustice, I also don’t forget that the first Japanese Americans that got the choice chose for Japan and betrayed the US.
It’s very broad and will hurt far more innocent than (potentially) guilty people, but it’s important not to underestimate the nationalism ingrained into some people through ethnicity and upbringing either
3 people in a single incident is hardly enough evidence to indict an entire already heavily discriminated populace, that’s just racism.
Sure, and for the record I don’t condone that choice.
But I also think it’s naive to claim that it must be pure racism. From a military/intelligence point of view, it’s just far more likely to find collaborators when they have a link to the other side.
Those 3 aren’t proof that all Japanese Americans would have collaborated, but it’s still interesting that the very first that found themselves in that position and having almost no other information, immediately chose to betray the US. I don’t really think that would have happened if they were of Chinese descent, for example.
The main focus in my history classes that I remember were on Japanese internment.
Exactly. The only reason my school taught about the German ones was because we had one in the area.