As Robert has mentioned , this past year saw a resurgence in good ol’ fashioned hate in the great country we call the United States. In 2008 we had the election of Barack Obama to president, numerous states bringing the question of homosexual marriage to the ballot and two women who could have potentially spent their days in one of the top two spots in our government. It’s not surprising that there are still some Americans who can’t seem to get on board the tolerance train.
For instance, the fears of passengers on an AirTran Airways flight got a Muslim family kicked off the plane, after they overheard a remark about the safest place to sit on board of an aircraft. Even after the passengers were removed from the plane, rescreened and cleared by the FBI, they were not allowed to fly with AirTran Airways and were forced to fly with another airline. The saddest part about something so ridiculous as this is illustrated best by this statement from the article:
“We’re very careful about what we even say on the plane,” Atif Irfan, who was kicked off the flight, told MyFOXDC.com. “Even if we were to say that’s the bomb, we wouldn’t even say that on the plane because we know to avoid certain buzz words, and we’re very careful about this kind of stuff so, I don’t know where they would have thought this whole incident even started from, quite frankly, what words we used.”
When people of Middle Eastern descent have to censor the way they speak just to avoid being hassled by paranoid rednecks, it’s pretty safe to say that we have a problem. September 11, 2001 is not a free pass to hate people. I’m going to say that again just in case the point isn’t getting through: it doesn’t matter if your entire extended family was killed in the attacks on September 11th, you don’t get a free pass to hate. If you are really scared that a terrorist attack is going to happen at any moment, please get a hobby. I recommend knitting or fishing. Both will give you ample time to reflect on why you’re so worried about brown people.
For those of you playing the home game, lets go over a couple of things real fast to make sure everyone understands the world they live in. Not everyone who comes from the Middle East is an Arab. Kurds are not Arabs. Persians are not Arabs. I know there are plenty of Americans who would get pretty angry at being called a Mexican or a Canadian (and vice versa naturally) so it’s kind of stupid to refer to the entire population of the deserts of Eurasia as “Arabs”. Not all people from the Middle East are Muslim, not all Muslims are from the Middle East and hardly any Muslims are those we would define as “radical” Muslims.
The United States has gone seven years without a single terror attack. I’m not trying to insinuate the wound has healed, but I think it’s safe to say that the chances of you getting blown up during your average work day are pretty slim, provided you aren’t employed by the United States military and currently deployed. It’s saddening to see the battles fought by our grandparents and parents for civil rights erased so quickly because some people got scared. I am piss scared of radical fundamentalist Christians. Does that mean it’s ok for me to hate White America? It’s no wonder our country is despised by the rest of the world.
Please, stop making them right about us.
