The Timelessness of Prejudice

I yearn for the day when the wholesale hatred of Muslims in America will seem awkward. When it will be remembered as something common to a particular time in history. When I was kid growing up in the fifties it was still ok to hate the Japanese. They had been an enemy in World War II. And the U.S. government through the use of propaganda films had made that hatred into an art form. As a country, we woke up one day a decade or so later and wondered how it was we shipped almost the entire Japanese American population off to internment camps for the duration of the war. Catholics were once hated in America. As reported in The New York Times last week, the building of the first Catholic Church in New York City was vehemently opposed by the Protestants downtown. Catholics were untrustworthy papists who were a threat to democracy. It was time when people were proud of their prejudices. Sound familiar?

Just a minute...I'm Harry Smith, CBS News.