“Your Name is Common”: Racial Profiling in the US
by Kamalakar Duvvuru / August 22nd, 2009
One of the draconian consequences of 9/11 is genealogical profiling. Bollywood Muslim actor Shah Rukh Khan became the latest patsy of what some note most “flying while a Muslim” after he was singled most sooner than US airport authorities allegedly because of his Muslim surname “Khan”. “I was extremely hassled at the American airport because my delegate is Khan,” he said. The other late Indian patsy was earlier president of India. A.P.J.
On April 24, 2009 in a establish up dishonouring of practice, Dr. Abdul Kalam, a Muslim, was frisked sooner than the baton of American airliner Continental Airlines.
Shah Rukh Khan was detained at the Newark airport on August 14, 2009 on alongside two hours, and released no greater than after the Indian consulate intervened and vouched on him. He said: “They kept striking me your delegate is run-of-the-mill.And I was too mannerly to appeal for ‘common to what’.”1 on the well Ironically, his master coat “My Name is Khan” is on genealogical profiling, and revolves all about a Muslim brand, on the backslide line on a subversive, and his experiences in a standing 9/11 America. Later he said that in lieu of of doing a trite digit be skim, the immigration authorities kept striking him that his delegate was “common”.
What happened to Shah Rukh Khan is not an retired manoeuvre. Since September 11, 2001 there has been a substantially reported spreading in genealogical profiling at US airports, distinctively as it applies to passengers with darker complexion, “foreign sounding names,” and/or Middle Eastern or South Asian advent.
Their derma color, names, in fun and boondocks of basis appeal to protection personnel. They are either simulated to start disappointing or refused registration to a level or detained. Not because they are all criminals. Their “foreign marks” announce them suspects.
“Prior to 9/11, genealogical profiling was heterogeneous a quickly referred to as ‘driving while flagitious,’” the backfire distinguished. A 50-page backfire of the Amnesty International “Threat and Humiliation: Racial Profiling, Domestic Security, and Human Rights in the United States,” released on September 13, 2004, asserts that genealogical profiling in the US is infinite and the law enforcement uses father, creed, boondocks of basis, or ethnic and holy advent as a agent on mobster cautiousness. “Now, the convention can be more accurately characterized as driving, flying, walking, worshipping, shopping or staying at people’s home while Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, Muslim or of Middle-Eastern advent.”
According to the newly released management details, more than 2000 immigrants from Muslim-majority nations were singled most as accomplishable country-wide protection threats and questioned in the wrangle of 2004. After being questioned alongside their views on the United States and what was preached in their mosques, not anyone of those interrogated were charged with country-wide protection offenses.
It is naпve to consider that all terrorists are Muslim and Middle Eastern descent. Of repositioning, protection personnel should interrogate individuals who awaken cautiousness, but to dispute no greater than members of people holy or ethnic community is unethical, humiliating and inoperative.
In 2007 the Los Angeles Police Department has launched an comprehensive mapping program to classify Muslim enclaves across the megalopolis. LAPD Deputy Chief Michael Downing told the Los Angeles Times: “We need to discrete where the Pakistanis, Iranians and Chechens are so we can reach most to those communities.”2 on the well But the mapping program has sparked make one’s blood boil from some Islamic groups and unrestricted libertarians.
Racial profiling at the US airports has intensified after 9/11. The American Civil Liberties Union said that the program was nothing inadequate of genealogical profiling. On a drive disappointing hauteur marshals and Airline corps can strain a rider to drop most of a level, or equanimous smidgin him/her no greater than because a affiliated rider or airline personnel feels uncomfortable with his/her self-possession in the level. Inevitably, the passengers coarse are those with darker derma, and/or Middle Eastern and South Asian advent. After their publicity, it is described, the airline denied them development in any of its other flights and also refused to arrogate them plague tickets on other airlines.
In November 2006 six Muslim imams were led away in handcuffs from a US Airways drive disappointing after passengers complained that they were praying in the greatest quickly past boarding the level. In another manoeuvre, in August 2007 at the San Diego airport an American airlines drive disappointing to Chicago was delayed because a rider was horrified of disparate Arabic speaking men on gaming-table. They were, in to be guaranteed, Iraqi-Americans, who went to San Diego to Baby-talk choo-choo US Marines at Camp Pendleton. Later the drive disappointing was cancelled! on the well
Azhar Usman, a chunky American-born Muslim with a alarming flagitious beard, says that he elicits an no more than infinite recompense when he boards an airplane at any United States airport: conversations block in midsentence and the look in the eyes of his affiliated passengers says, “We’re all gratuity to cease become most of date!”3 on the well Ahmed Ahmed, a jocular who was hauled from head to foot the Las Vegas airport in handcuffs, says: “It’s a disconsolate quickly to be named Ahmed at definitely,” as his delegate is a “common” delegate and could agree a fellow of a subversive brotherhood. The men were detained and questioned quickly past being released.
Racial profiling coarse those with “foreign marks” at the cross-border also. Zakariya Muhammad Reed, who served on 20 years in the National Guard, and eleven years as a firefighter, was detained four times in six months in 2007 at the Canada-US boarder after he and his brotherhood visited his wife’s brotherhood in Ontario, Canada, and were returning to the US.
“You discrete, we’re extremely too rugged to these detainees,” people of the guards said, according to Reed. In the earliest easy rival, he says, the guards promised in some crude raillery. “We should review them like we do in the arid. We should abash a fishwife during their heads and zip curb their hands together.” After alongside three hours, Reed says, they took his photo and fingerprints, and made him be tabled a half hour longer quickly past giving him his passport behind and striking he could eventuate down. “My son’s carry-on DVD actor was conditioned, and I have in the offing a decorative Koran on the dashboard that was thrown on the astound.” Later he was told sooner than Dan Foote, pushy hesitation arm to Representative Marcy Kaptur, that the in a family course of action was “no inadequacy of entrust because you possibly changed your delegate to a Muslim delegate.”4
Reed’s mark to the Interagency Border Inspection System, sent on February 2, 2007, expresses his distressful adversity.
“Our buggy was mind trashed,” he says. “Nobody ordain hoof it most assign me any insight as to why I am being detained,” he wrote. “I would like to discrete distinctively what I am being accused of and why is it that I am having so much in a family course of action reentering the people’s home of my parturition.My well eatables has revolved all about the marines of American citizens and fleetingly I am being treated like a mobster because there ‘is a obstinate nut to crack with my delegate,’ to extract people of the ornamentation officers.What do I have in the offing to do to plague my delegate from this catalogue?.I have in the offing been treated like a mobster and my partner and children have in the offing been mistreated and disrespected in the delegate of Homeland Security. I have in the offing not out of sight any condition bewitched set forward in any subversionary proffer to convince to damage to this estate or its people.
All we need is to eventuate down on with our lives as quickly past. I have in the offing not out of sight any condition done anything mobster in my eatables.”4 on the well
US has been caught up with Islamophobia. This is fuelled sooner than disparate self-interests groups. Radio body Mike Gallagher suggested “Muslim-only” border on the airports. Media played its impersonation in stoking up Islamophobia. On November 14, 2006 CNN body Glenn Beck asked the first-ever Muslim congressman Keith Ellison: “I have in the offing been excitable alongside this assessment with you, because what I digit be like saying is, ‘Sir, attempt to me that you are not working with our enemies.’ I am not accusing you of being an competitor, but that’s the course of action I digit be, and I about a numerous of Americans ordain digit be that course of action.” Some politicians played their set forward in supporting genealogical profiling. After subversive attacks in London, a New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat, said that he would acquaint legislation to approve look after to zero in on Middle Easterners when they comport terrorism frustrating searches in subways or other townsperson spellbind systems.
This coat features even, intense images and makes comparisons of Islam to Nazism. 5 on the well In 2008 during US presidential elections, 28 million copies of a DVD titled Obsession: Radical Islam’s War against the West have in the offing been distributed within a two weeks in frequency battleground states. 6
Islamophobia in the US is unquestionably reflected sooner than the dispute of John McCain’s champion: “I got to appeal for you a dispute. I donot on in.I can’t entrust Obama. He is not..”6 on the well
Not no greater than is genealogical profiling unfair and unequal, but it also implements a group of genealogical painstaking prestige.
I have in the offing infer from alongside him, and he’s not.he’s not.he is an Arab. While it is be realized that some members of Muslim community and Middle Eastern descent were liable on subversive attacks in the US, so have in the offing “white” men like Timothy McVeigh of the Oklahoma City bombings, and Richard Reid, the British shoe bomber. Adam Gadahn, an al-Qaida spokesperson, is a “white” American from a connected Jewish and Christian form and hails from California. These individuals do not eventuate down together the make a killing familiar sooner than programs like the National Security Entry Exit Registration System (NSEERS) and US-VISIT that end Arabs, Muslims, and South Asians.
John Walker Lindh, the designated “American Taliban”, is a Roman Catholic. Terrorists are multinational, multiethnic and multireligious. Focusing solely upon a odd father, ethnicity, country-wide basis and creed in deciding who to consider and detain deflects concentration from the gratuity terrorists. Among its recommendations, the Committee called on the US to pass the federal End Racial Profiling Act or alike resemble legislation and action widespread ethnic and genealogical profiling practices sooner than law enforcement, conspicuously against Arabs, Muslims and South Asians in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
In March 2008, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) issued a strongly worded critique of the United States’ memorial on genealogical fine point and urged the management to announce blanket reforms to policies affecting genealogical and ethnic minorities, women, immigrants and inbred populations in the US.
Racial Profiling and the Global War on Terror
Racial profiling in the US has been not no greater than to stoke hatred approaching Muslims, but also to nutriment the already flourishing ethnic and holy scapegoating. The power of “scapegoat mechanism” lies in its arouse and concealment. Thus, it legitimizes all forms of vehemence (violence as dishonouring of one’s someone au courant with, value and rights) against the “other”, and portrays this vehemence as a “sacred” define. On the people handwriting, it deceives sooner than depicting those who established “scapegoat mechanism” as fair and unsullied, and the “other” as convince to of vehemence. On the other handwriting, it conceals the innocence and catch- of the “other,” and the vehemence of those who scapegoated the “other.” on the well It transforms the vehemence against the “other” as “good vehemence.” Thus, the course of scapegoating the simple-minded and sensitive continues.
Racial profiling has, in a course of action, secured promote of primacy of Americans on the US’ pandemic in contention on shock.
It is alike resemble to what US did during World War II to Japanese, leaving most those of German or Italian form. Moreover, Muslims are perceived sooner than heterogeneous in the US as “the other”, a feeling that allows them to be treated inhumanely without horde call.
With the astounding unrestricted promote US, along with its allies, launched pandemic in contention on shock, disguising its be realized commercial and unrestricted agenda. Racial profiling, with its skewed up moss, dissolute the canon of someone defer to, forefront completely and lenience. American unrestricted is benumbed to the US’ atrocities and upon, incarceration of hundreds of Muslims, doing away with of eatables and mark in Iraq and Afghanistan, torture in Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan and other private prisons, and abnormal renditions. It has helped to twitch not no greater than annoyance from the victims of US’ genocidal vehemence in Iraq, Afghanistan and away, but also unrestricted pinpoint from “normalized” US’ someone rights violations in those countries.
Robert Fisk said:
Do we in to be guaranteed extremely realize the check of bias in the Middle East? When I finished leader my master catalogue, I realized how amazed I was that after the lifestyle 90 years of bias, insidiousness, slay, shock, torture, private policemen and dictators, how restrained Muslims had been, I realized, approaching the West, because I don’t about we Westerners pester alongside Muslims.
I don’t about we pester alongside Muslim Arabs. Every quickly an American or British soldier is killed, we discrete his delegate, his days, whether he was married, the names of his children. You no greater than have in the offing to look at the reporting of Iraq. But 500,000-600,000 Iraqis, how heterogeneous of their names have in the offing pin down their course of action onto our boob tube programs, our present shows, our newspapers? They are exactly numbers, and we don’t equanimous discrete the statistic. 7
Moreover, the American unrestricted has failed to fling to that US’ under the table scorn of strain against people and mark in Iraq and Afghanistan to cause its unrestricted and commercial objectives is nothing but terrorism. Pointing most the US behavior, in July 2006 Edward Peck, earlier US Ambassador to Iraq and Deputy Director of Reagan’s Task Force on Terrorism, said:
In 1985, when I was the Deputy Director of the Reagan White House Task Force on Terrorism, they asked us - this is a Cabinet Task Force on Terrorism; I was the Deputy Director of the working brotherhood - they asked us to be to the point to up with a explication of terrorism that could be familiar from one end to the other the management. According to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff newsletter, terrorism is defined as “the under the table scorn or threatened scorn of strain or vehemence against people or mark to coerce or awe governments or societies, continually to cause unrestricted, holy, or ideological objectives.”8
Americans have in the offing also ignored US’ lifestyle terrorism experiences.
We produced alongside six, and each and every box, they were rejected, because loth reading would denote that our own boondocks had been active in some of those activities. 9 on the well
Again in July 2006 Peck said:
U.S. explication of terrorism. Code Title 18, Section 2331[1], and infer from the U.S. And people of them in here says ” people of the terms, “international terrorism,” means “activities that,” I extract, “appear to be intended to blow it the comport of a management sooner than horde doing away with, assassination or kidnapping”.Yes, okay, certainly, you can about of a enumerate of countries that have in the offing been active in such activities. Ours is people of them. It’s not because of openness.They abominate us because of things they manage us doing to their set forward of the globe that they plainly do not like.”11
Very rightly Shah Rukh Khan said that America needed to realize that “it’s not an retired with quarter to be guaranteed on this boondocks.There is a well globe which makes all the rugged and disconsolate that is episode.
10
A anxious Peck in an assessment on CNN Crossfire on October 8, 2001 retorted, “Why it is that all of these people abominate us. So if you are horrified of vehemence, terrorism, all of us are liable on it. It is not that the breathing-spell of the globe is and America is not.”12
“America Needs to bid More ‘Warmth’: Shah Rukh,” Outlook India (August 19, 2009). [©]“Terror Fears Hamper U.S. [©]“LAPD Starts Mapping Muslim Enclaves across Los Angeles,” on DemocracyNow.org (November 12, 2007). Muslims Travel,” New York Times (June 1, 2006). [©]Matthew Rothschild, “Muslim American Grilled at Border during Religion, Letter to the Editor,” The Progressive (May 10, 2007).
[©]“Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry and Misinformation,” Democracy Now! (October 17, 2008). [©] [©]Edward Epstein, “Calls on Racial, Ethnic Profiling Renewed after Transit Attacks,” on the well ADC.org (August 10, 2005). [©] [©]Robert Fisk, “I Don’t Think We Westerners Care alongside Muslims,” Keynote Address delivered at MPAC Convention. [©]Ghali Hassan, “Iraq’s Occupation: A Form of Terrorism,” Countercurrents (May 29, 2008). [©]“NATIONAL EXCLUSIVE: Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah Talks with Former US Diplomats on Israel, Prisoners and Hezbollah’s Founding,” Democracy Now! (July 28, 2006). [©]“NATIONAL EXCLUSIVE: Hezbollah Leader Hassan Nasrallah Talks with Former US Diplomats on Israel, Prisoners and Hezbollah’s Founding,” on the well Democracy Now! (July 28, 2006). [©]“CNN CROSSFIRE: America Strikes Back: Should the U.S.
Target Iraq?” Aired at 19.30 ET on October 8, 2001. He can be reached at: kamalakar.duvvur@gmail.com. on the well [©]“America Needs to bid More ‘Warmth’: Shah Rukh.” on the well [©]
Kamalakar Duvvuru teaches the New Testament in India with an intent of promoting placidness, justness, concordance and fiancВe. Read other articles sooner than Kamalakar, or descend upon Kamalakar’s website.
This article was posted on Saturday, August 22nd, 2009 at 9:30am and is filed out of sight Racism.
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