I skipped to the entertainment section to read about Kumar Pallana, an Indian man who has a small role in "The Royal Tenenbaums." Interesting stuff, but there was still a good hour left before my daily three-hour sitcom run. Turning to the "U.S. News" section of the paper, my stomach curdled. A report of racial profiling of Asians and Muslims by police in New York, an especially disturbing anecdote about an Indian man chased by three men as he fled the site of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 and a story about the "offloading" of "liquor baron" Vijay Mallya, an Indian man, from a United Airlines flight were linked on the page by a headlining account of an Oregon woman arrested for "intimidating Sikhs." I hate reading about this stuff. Truth be told, part of me would rather ignore it. My parents have been bringing it up for years in warnings about racism and I have always dismissed their fears as misplaced, though understandable, immigrant paranoia. But, now that the threat of terrorism has become a much more familiar reality and the general profile of South Asians, Muslims and other "brown" people has been raised in the media, I recognize that there has been, and will continue to be, some racist backlash.
Right after the WTC attacks, I, like most people, was stunned and scared. A day or two later, my best friend from home called me to see how I was doing. Stunned, I told her. "But are you okay?" she continued. Apparently, in St. Louis, Mo., her Indian and Muslim friends were experiencing the after-effects firsthand; Washington University had shut down access to their online directory to protect such students from ongoing threats and harassment. My friends at school didn't bring it up, but were open to listening to my fears, as always. Their reactions were varied. Almost all assured me that the Valley probably wasn't a place where I'd face any problems like this. Some were surprised that I was worried at all, since I'm not Muslim. One person even told me I "don't look Arab," so I shouldn't worry. I wasn't happy with having my anxiety summarily dismissed by someone's idealistic notion of how racism works.
I would like to offer another perspective on this uncomfortable issue, addressed in the last issue by Geoff Walter in his column "The battle against bigotry." Some people are unaware of racism or would like to attribute racist actions solely to the uneducated (another term thrown back at me in a discussion). The fact is that the victims and perpetuators of racial profiling, racist attacks and/or racist insults following Sept. 11 aren't members of one specific or localized group. Besides the fact that a good portion of the Indian population is Muslim, who can always tell whether someone is Muslim or not? If a person thinks racist behavior is appropriate, he is not likely to be very assiduous in marking his victim(s) and who is to say that one American's idea of what 'looks' Muslim/Arab is the same as another's? Of course, Muslims, and those of Arab or Indian descent with a beard, a turban, a veil or an accent, face the most difficulty in these times, as their religion has been called into question, their travel sometimes has been made more difficult and they encounter suspicious glances all around. But this determination of who is deserving of suspicion varies widely. Those targeted by the police or Immigrant Naturalization Services (INS) are also more likely to be working-class people. Hearing about racial profiling has thankfully only affected my mental comfort at this time-nothing compared to the economic repercussions meted out to families whose sole sources of income are removed when their fathers/brothers/grandfathers are taken into custody simply based on their ethnicity.
The attacks on the WTC, the resultant war in Afghanistan and the current tensions between India and Pakistan have probably left a number of U.S. citizens wondering about South Asians and Middle Eastern people in general. Absent in U.S. popular culture for the most part (aside from an analyst or two on CNN), the culture, beliefs and even the faces of people of such descent are unfamiliar to many Americans (although many are familiar with the face of Arafat, the crisis in Israel, and, now, the machinations of Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda). Rubbish, you might say, speaking from metropolitan or Amherst viewpoints. But take it from me, someone who grew up in the outer suburbs of St. Louis: this unfamiliarity, and the wariness that comes with it, is a reality in some areas of the U.S. and eastern Missouri isn't unique enough in any way to be a blip in the radar of general public consciousness.
I term this an uncomfortable issue because, in my experience, the topic has made some avert their eyes, making it easier to spout some cliche in comfort, or say-and believe-that it doesn't happen here, wherever that may be. People don't want to think about the backlash of Sept. 11, especially the infringement on the civil liberties of many Arab-Americans by our government and police, which consists of both these unsavory elements and positive values such as patriotism. Others react defensively, incredulous of-or refusing to entertain-the notion that these things do indeed happen. These are the people that worry me.
According to Sin Yen Ling, spokesperson for the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, "As long as the public supports [racial profiling], the police will still keep doing it ... Most don't know how civil liberties are being infringed. They're more interested in the war overseas, and the economy." Hopefully, the American public will find some way to extend their attentions to civil injustices in the U.S.
I, for one, intend to pull my head out of the sand and look into another item covered by this week's India Abroad's coverage of the new trend in racial profiling-Desis Rising Up and Moving, an urban Indian advocacy group. If I hadn't sat down with this newspaper, I might have been able to ride out the latest wave of cultural prejudice, glossing over the "incidents of racial backlash" and other general references to racism after Sept. 11 that I've heard on news broadcasts and U.S. newspapers. But since I have read about these unsettling incidents, I'm telling you, because if I didn't know before, maybe you didn't either.