Katy Perry Produces New #DontNormalizeHate PSA with a Twist

January 13, 2017 Music News Group

Noam Galai/WireImageKaty Perry has never been one to keep quiet about her political and social beliefs. In a show of support for the #DontNormalizeHate movement, the singer has produced a new PSA called “Is History Repeating Itself?”

The clip features an elderly woman named Haru Kuromiya speaking about her experience with Japanese-American internment during World War II. In 1942, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, anywhere between 110,000 and 120,000 Japanese people living on the West Coast were relocated and confined to internment camps. In 1988, the government apologized to those affected, saying the actions were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.”

In the video, the woman says, “We were an American family now living in an internment camp, and our constitutional rights were taken away from us. It all started with fear and rumors, then it bloomed into the registration of Japanese-Americans. Then the labeling with physical tags and, eventually, internment.”

But the video has a twist. After Haru tells her story, the woman unmasks herself and turns out to be a young Muslim-American. “Don’t let history repeat itself,” she says, in reference to Donald Trump‘s proposed Muslim registry.

Katy is credited as executive producer on the PSA and director Aya Tanimura tells the LA Times that Katy covered the short film’s costs, including the expensive prosthetic materials.