Resist and Refuse Anti-Arab Racism!
By now everyone knows the details of the terrorist attacks that took place on Tuesday in New York and Washington D.C. In the months ahead there will be time to talk about the degree to which U.S. foreign policy contributes to international terrorism, and the degree to which that policy is explicitly and implicitly racist. The more immediate concern, however, is the all too common reaction of many Americans.
I saw and heard signs, both on the Web and around Dallas, today of a virulent, unthinking, and twitchy anti-Arab racism. Some of my friends, including people for whom I care a great deal, are or are taken to be “Arab” by most Americans. They are nervous about the mood in the country, and I am nervous for them and for so many others. Dallas has a very large Arab-American community, including the beautiful people who fed me during my pauper days in graduate school, a family with whom I often talked about the new mosque in north Dallas, about life as a Muslim in America, about mundane things like baseball.
Despite being a White man, I am often taken to be Hispanic, sometimes Greek or some generic, non-Occidental ethnicity; and I felt the slightly-too-long stares all day as people seemed more willing to give everyone else less benefit of whatever doubt and apathy is ordinarily at work among us. I cannot very well imagine what it must be like for Arab-Americans now.
It seems certain that in the days and weeks to come — or at least until or unless a non-Middle-East connection is proven — our fellow citizens who are or seem to be of Arab or non-Occidental ethnicity will be targeted by the same racist Americans who targeted them, with harassment and abuse, after the Oklahoma City Bombing and the TWA 800 Crash, neither of with which Arab-Americans had anything to do.
The White antiracist course of action is a vigilant watchfulness, first of oneself, then of other Whites, for signs and displays of racism against people of color, especially Arab-Americans. Watch for it. Refuse and resist it. Raise your voice against it in your community, on your favorite mailing lists and Web discussion forums. Name it for what it is — irrational, jingoistic hatred — and name it forcefully and with dispatch.
To do so is your minimal moral duty.
June 10th, 2002 at 9:49 pm
I recently interviewed Paul Findley, author of “Silent No More: Confronting America’s False Images of Islam,” and attended two events with the former Congressman: a meeting at a Pakistani Muslim Center in Bensonhurt, Brooklyn, and a board meeting of the National Council of Churches. It was a very interesting couple of days. Would you be interested in running a write-up? The story has been on hold for some time now, as Mr. Findley’s wife has been ill, but I still have the transcripts and notes.
October 7th, 2002 at 8:30 am
there will never be a time in history where racism is dead unless people open their eyes. open your eyes and realise the world is bigger than categorizing people. imagine you labeled everyone from your friendly store clerk to the vidoe store clerk to the president, what would the definition of individualism be? nothing. im sad to say its the sheep-like mentality that supports rasicm, following what others think blindly im America. i got stopped by a police man for not putting on my headlights(or so he said) he made me get out of the car and asked me blatant racism questions that had no relation to what my “offence” was. where are you from? i told him im american? you look arab, i told him yes i am. “are you a terrorist?” i started to cry. why must i have to deal with ignorance and subject myself to being hurt emotionally and physically just because of the way i look? why? can you controll your genes? this is one of the reasons i wish i could just move to Canada.
March 1st, 2003 at 6:31 pm
You are soooo wrong on this issue! Someone should take you out and kick your ass!!