Thoughts on what diversity means in past, present society | Column

Published 4:14 pm Friday, February 5, 2016

I was extremely happy to see the Federal Way Mirror take an active role in reaching out toward an ever-broadening segment of our community by initiating a Diversity section in their publication. I took the question raised by Mr. Greg Baruso about what diversity means, and what follows is my personal view.

My views are shaped by the words of Jorge Agustin Nicolas Ruiz de Santayana y Borres: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” No more fitting words were selected to be placed prominently on a plaque at the Auschwitz concentration camp. We have thousands of years of history to learn from and yet my memories amounting to less than half a century show a stubborn disregard for the past.

Many Americans of Japanese descent have direct family histories associated with the unconstitutional roundup of their families from the homes and businesses they had worked so hard for by a shameful act of government overreach and disdain for due process under the law. My family history has a bit of a twist. What was deemed right for Americans was deemed right for families of Japanese descent living in Peru. My grandparents had worked hard to establish a grocery store in Peru, only to be rounded up and sent through the Panama Canal for an eventual train ride to the concentration camp at Crystal City, Texas. There they lived in a split camp with Japanese people in one half and people of German descent in the other.

How distasteful it is to see polls today that show some still believe that it is right that we rounded up people on the basis of race in World War II and should again today based on race or religion.

Many of those same people profess a great love of former President Ronald Reagan, who happens to be the one who signed the law issuing reparations to be paid to Japanese-Americans along with an apology on behalf of our government for the lawless act of racist hysteria. My grandmother’s reverence was for Colorado Gov. Ralph Carr, a great American politician who fought with personal courage against the internment order issued by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It kept her older brother a free man so that years later he could reach out to offer a place to live when our government sought to deport my grandmother and her children back to Peru after World War II had ended. Her brother fought against the deportation order and, in this case, the rule of law prevailed and our American journey began.

Great Americans continued to shape our lives. The employer and union that saw my father as a human being trying to raise a family provided him the opportunity to live the American dream. He eventually bought a dry cleaning business in South Central Los Angeles. He used to tell us never to get into a business that involves another person’s property because of the headaches with complaints, but in the aftermath of the Watts Riots it proved that by being the neighborhood closet, his business only suffered a random bullet hole in the storefront window while businesses next door and across the street were looted or burned down.

Believing that racial tensions had been addressed with courageous laws put into place by President Lyndon Baines Johnson on the strength of the vision put forth by President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I once again saw the disregard for history play out as Americans of Hispanic descent were beaten for “looking Iranian.” This was during the Iranian Hostage Crisis – a much more serious prequel to recent events. American virtues like “never kick a person when they’re down” were tossed aside with horrific disregard as Mr. Rodney King was violently beaten and kicked on national television and the subsequent denial of justice brought us a sequel to the Watts Riot, as well as King’s plea, “Can’t we just get along?”

I don’t deny that we live in relative comfort, but it would be extremely difficult to be so out of tune with current events to believe that there are no people who still act on the diversity among people with ill intent. I view diversity as nothing more than a statement of fact. It is just variety among fellow human beings. We have philosophical differences (religion, origin of life, etc.). We have cultural differences (language, clothing, food, etc.). We have differences in physique and abilities (gender, age, physical strengths, mental strengths, etc.). We have visual differences (skin color, eye color, hair color, etc.) and differences in gender preference along with so much more. Ultimately what I think is important is how we respond to the variety we see. I feel it is so much more important to act on good intentions and find what we can do for our fellow human beings than to take a self-destructive path in finding what we can do to people who have done nothing but show us that they are part of the variety among us all.

I know that the vast majority of people in our community show they embrace diversity as embracing humanity. They volunteer and initiate random acts of kindness by finding things they can do for people. Unless the vast majority stands strong against the few who go out of their way to find something to do to people that don’t match their range of acceptable variation, we will continue to see the disregard for even the short history I have lived through, and we will continue to watch innocent people suffer again through unjust deportation orders, unjust incarcerations, unjust seizure of property and unjust loss of life.

Thank you for the opportunity to communicate my views on diversity to members of our community.

Hiroshi Eto, a homeowner in Federal Way since 1988, returned in 2012 after retiring as a civilian member of the Army Corps of Engineers. He serves on the Federal Way Public Schools Board as Director, District 5 and serves the City of Federal Way as a Commissioner on the Diversity Commission. The views he presents are solely his own.