So much for comforting thoughts

Yesterday a colleague was showing a retrospective of seminal virtual reality artworks. One work in particular brought back a poignant memory.

It was early September, fourteen years ago. I was in Amsterdam watching the presentation by Tomiko Thiel of her brilliant interactive piece Beyond Manzanar (created in collaboration with Zara Houshmand). The experience immersed you in the point of view of a Japanese-American in one of those bizarre internment camps erected during World War II.

I remember thinking several different things while I was watching her presentation. One was how strange it was that you could be born in the U.S., a citizen of this country, and yet be locked up because you had an inconvenient ancestry.

I knew that a very large proportion of the U.S. population derives from German immigrants, and I found myself musing how strange it would be if our government had tried to pull the same trick on U.S. citizens of German ancestry. That would have required locking up a fairly large proportion of the U.S. population.

Interesting that they did that to native born Americans of Japanese ancestry, but not to native born Americans of German ancestry. What on earth could the difference be? The answer might be beyond the bounds of rational thinking. Maybe you can figure it out.

The other thing I was thinking in that moment was how fortunate we are that our country no longer looks in fear and loathing at entire segments of its population, just because they hail from a particular ethnicity. We’ve moved beyond that level of paranoia.

It was a comforting thought. And while I was thinking it, somebody came on stage and announced that a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

So much for comforting thoughts.

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