C. K. Doreski (2001). "Kin in some way": the Chicago Defender reads the Japanese internment, 1942-1945. In Todd Vogel (Ed.), The Black press: new literary and historical essays (161-187). New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

In her essay “Kin in Some Way,” C.K. Doreski looks at the unique role of Black media in covering the racial injustices perpetrated against Mexican Americans and Japanese Americans during World War II.

During a period when patriotic war time news stories frequently included a strain of race baiting and demonization, the Chicago Defender, an African-American weekly, put together a diverse group of editorial and opinion writers who brought a fresh perspective to the meaning of patriotism.

Defender publisher John Sengstacke considered voicing opposition to the mainstream press his patriotic duty, saying this reframing of events was the “essence of loyalty and devotion to democracy – and a free press.”

As the mainstream press often reported, unquestioningly, statements by U.S. official sources that referred to Japanese Americans as an “enemy race,” African Americans understood the racialization that was occurring, having experienced the same treatment themselves. The Black readership was well poised to understand the rescinding of rights of U.S. citizens based on racial lines. These opinion writers for the Defender were able to connect Jim Crow laws to the internment of American citizens of Japanese descent. Against the backdrop of a war that was projected as a fight against fascism, the Defender challenged Americans to recognize and fight fascism at home.

After the internment of Japanese Americans, the Defender writers saw how white American anxiety become fixed on Mexican Americans.

In both cases, race and color and become linked with the idea disloyalty by the mainstream. White Americans of Italian or German origin were left untouched by the national anxiety of “foreignness.” Writing in the paper, Langston Hughes noted that political allies or foes did not create prejudice in the U.S., but skin color did.

By reporting on the racial injustices affecting other ethnic groups, the Black press opened the discussion of racialization beyond their own experience and into an understanding of a shared experience of all ethnic groups. (Reviewed by Judith Klapper)