links for 2011-06-08

"Mr Slade said police were targeting ''vulnerable young people'' for the enforcement of bail conditions and Aboriginal children were over-represented among those falsely arrested. Police should only deprive children of their liberty as a last resort, he said."

"It’s as though you’ve flown into El Paso or Nogales, and you could spend days without uttering a word of English, getting by quite well with a mastery of Spanish. Signs, advertising, clerks and waiters in these businesses speak the language, many with limited knowledge of English. It’s no different from the ethnic neighborhoods of New York City or Chicago, where Yiddish, Polish and Italian once dominated. Yet the sounds of Spanish or any foreign language create a sense of foreboding for some merchants who lack an historical perspective. Many fail to realize that by the second and third generations of the immigrant experience, English is fluently spoken, and the native tongue is mostly forgotten. But it’s that existential uncertainty that contributes to the reluctance of some Southern Nevada business operators to effectively reach this market."

"One day, Herzig-Yoshinaga stumbled upon a report that suggested the policy was based more on racism than military necessity.

"Government lawyers had argued that the U.S. rounded up all Japanese Americans on the West Coast because there wasn't time to determine who was loyal and who was not.

But the document Herzig-Yoshinaga found, an early draft of a report by Lieut. Gen. John L. DeWitt to his Army superiors, said that time had not been the issue. DeWitt wrote that internments were necessary because Japanese cultural traits prevented officials from distinguishing between loyal and disloyal Japanese Americans—'it was impossible to separate the sheep from the goats.'

"Herzig-Yoshinaga's discovery played an important role in the commission's conclusion that internment was a product of 'race prejudice, war hysteria and the failure of political leadership.'"

"The lawsuit says the crackdown has created a climate of fear among minorities in the Antelope Valley and may have influenced vigilante attacks and hate crimes.

"Palmdale's First African Methodist Episcopal Church was firebombed in August, and garages and other property of Section 8 renters have been vandalized with graffiti including racial slurs, swastikas and 'I hate Section 8.' One mother of four reported in the complaint that a carload of white youths shouted racial epithets at her children and threw a bag of urine at them."

"Specialist Adam Jarrell, the only African American in a unit of 216 soldiers of the New Mexico Army National Guard, told Reuters on Tuesday that his complaints to superiors were not only ignored, but resulted in increased harassment.

"'It's dangerous when the only people you can count on are the people hanging nooses outside your room, telling you they hate you because you're black,' said Jarrell, 23, a Sheriff's deputy in Hobbs, New Mexico, who has been with the National Guard since 2006. He arrived home in New Mexico a year ago."