<Begin Segment 13>

TI: Well, it sounds like you're leaving it... I mean, so, to essentially get the reparations you framed it in a way that was practical for them to be able to give reparations to Japanese Americans who actually lived through this experience. But the moral considerations, I mean, it sounds like, I guess, that, I guess what I'm trying to get from you is on a moral, sort of moral considerations do you believe that African Americans have a case for reparations?

GU: Well, as I say, I'm sympathetic. On the other hand if you're six generations removed from slavery, I don't think the case is as good as, by direct analogy; as good as let's say your father and mother who went to camp as teenagers. See you're six generations removed, and then there are questions of... a little bit like affirmative action, about which I have conflicting views, this is a form of reparation isn't it? Let's say, well, you're a very light-skinned black, and you're a very light-skinned Japanese. You're one-eighth Japanese, and what are you? Are you one thirty-second black? Does that mean if there's a twenty thousand dollar reparation, does that mean we give you twenty thousand dollars times one over (thirty-two)? You're a Jamaican black. You shouldn't get anything because your ancestors didn't suffer from American slavery. They were the slaves of these British sugar plantation owners. So how one sorts all of that out, I don't know. I also feel that as a practical matter, it won't happen.

TI: Why is that?

GU: Because it'll not get through Congress. The average congressperson will say, I think, let's see, how many people... what's the size of the class here? Well, we're talking, let's say for round numbers, one-tenth of the American population. We're talking twenty-seven, let's say for the sake of discussion, twenty-eight million people, times twenty thousand dollars. Do the math. You can't do that. (Also), the Republicans still control the House, and George Bush would never sign anything like this. So if you had a very substantial majority, at sort of a veto-proof majority in the Senate, and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, and you had a very substantial number of Democrats over Republicans in the House, and you had a very liberal guy, let's say a Tom Daschle as opposed to, who knows, a John Edwards as President, you might get a shot, there might be an outside shot at it. I think it might be very successful as a public relations media thing. But to turn this into concrete legislation and get it passed, I say what are we talking about? Well, we're talking over a period of ten years. We're talking, pick a number, three hundred billion dollars, and you say, well no, we can't do that. And then the other side of the argument is, you know, we did affirmative action. Some of the meaner people will say a lot of the social welfare programs are really targeted towards blacks. And the fact of the matter is, over these many, many years, if you look at all the social welfare programs beginning with the Great Society and even before, these are for all poor people. Well, a disproportionate number of poor people are black and this is a way of, this is guilt money. So, the mean people will say, "We already did that. We feel really shitty about slavery." I don't know, Newt Gingrich, just feel like, that's terrible. I can't believe that we did that. But Japanese Americans are sort of a special case. If there were for example, for the sake of discussion, a hundred thousand in the Japanese American class at twenty thousand dollars apiece. We probably wouldn't have gotten it, too much. So, like Little Red, not Little Red Riding Hood, Little, like the story of The Three Bears: "Not too hot, not too cold, just right."

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.