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Guantanamo Bay is destined for the American Hall of Shame. There it will grovel with the genocidal policies against Native Americans enacted in the name of Manifest Destiny. There it will huddle with 200 years of African American enslavement, justified by an ideology of white superiority. In the Hall of Shame, Guantanamo Bay will sit alongside the almost forgotten internment camps that imprisoned Japanese Americans in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Guantanamo Bay is the latest example of white America's deep racism against people of color; it demonstrates our tendency to lash out against people of color in times of fear, stress or economic need.

This illegal prison camp holds men from the ages of fifteen to seventy. I fail to see how a blind old man or a pubescent teenager pose much of a threat to the most powerful and richest nation in the world. Yet, the Bush administration feels that they are so dangerous we are justified in ignoring their human rights. We are justified in taking a young boy from his parents, an old man from the comforts of his home. I do not deny that in guerrilla or terrorist warfare, these seemingly innocent people can, in fact, be a deadly enemy. But if this is the case, we must have evidence, and these people must be tried and legally punished according to the guidelines set out in the Geneva Convention.

The Bush administration has read the American people well. As long as Guantanamo is fairly quiet, as long as the people imprisoned there are Arabic, we will tolerate the atrocities committed against them. We have tolerated this blight on democracy for five years, with very little outcry. We have an obligation to learn from the past. We must stop attacking people of color in our fear - we weaken our democracy, the spirit of freedom, every time we rob someone of their human rights. It's time to stop mouthing apologies for crimes committed long ago and nearly forgotten - we must show that we have learned from our mistakes.

Learn more about this author, Emily Ackerland.
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