Posted on 09/19/2002 6:33:05 AM PDT by 2banana
Fear and ignorance fueling racial profiling after Sept. 11 By Acel Moore
The case of the three Muslim men who were detained by authorities in Florida for 17 hours last weekend is evidence that African American men are no longer the primary focus of racial profiling.
The men, all medical students, were on their way to a meeting in Miami when a woman who had sat near them in a restaurant called police because she feared they were planning a terrorist plot. Two of the students were U.S. citizens of Jordanian and Pakistani decent. The other was here on a visa from Iran. They were released after being questioned by federal authorities in what was an apparent case of mistaken suspicion.
The incident is an example that the fear generated by 9/11 attacks is pervasive and, when combined with ignorance, is a dangerous threat to individual freedom.
I saw a television interview with the woman who sat in a booth next to the Muslim men at a Shoney's restaurant in Calhoun, Ga. She heard only "bits and pieces" of the men's conversations, and concluded from what she heard and saw that they were talking about a terrorist plot.
What she saw was important. The three men were dark skinned, spoke English, but only one clearly could be identified as a follower of Islam in that he wore a beard and a Kufi, a Muslim prayer cap.
If she had closed her eyes and not looked at the men, she probably would not have concluded that they were plotting terrorism.
It reminded me of something singer Ray Charles said. Though I am blind, he said, I see better than sighted folks. Charles said that in listening, he sees a more accurate view of a person's character.
In some ways, the woman was blinded by the color of the men's skin and by their religion.
The case also is evidence that law enforcement authorities, because of 9/11, often overreact to reports of suspicious persons or circumstances.
I am not suggesting that the men should not have been stopped for questioning after police received the information from the woman. But officers closed down a 20-mile stretch of a major highway for 18 hours - even after a search showed that the men's vehicle did not have explosives. This is an example of erring too far in favor of caution.
As an African American, I know that racial profiling - targeting people whose skin is black or brown - is as American as the Stars and Stripes.
Black people in America have endured and tolerated such injustice since being brought to these shores in chains.
Even black soldiers in uniform while serving this nation in war have been lynched, mistreated and disrespected by the majority culture.
A church was bombed in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963 by terrorists called the Ku Klux Klan and four little girls were killed. It took nearly four decades before law enforcement officers and the courts brought all of those terrorists to justice.
There were not a lot of law enforcement officers, nor everyday citizens like the Georgia woman, running around looking for or profiling white men to arrest back then.
White men were not profiled by the police in the Birmingham case nor in the case of Timothy McVeigh, the white terrorist who used a truck bomb to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The 1995 bombing that killed 168 people had been the worst act of terrorism in this country.
The reality is that what happened in Florida and other places may get worse before it gets better, particularly if this nation moves unilaterally in a global war against terrorism.
I am not being a cynic but a realist.
We all need to be more tolerant and thoughtful before we act, particularly those doing the profiling.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact Acel Moore at 215-854-4533 or amoore@phillynews.com.
Well, at some point, if the US govt. will not stop Achmed, then it will fall to the good citizens of the US to stop Achmed. And at that point, things WILL have changed, I assure you.
And Achmed will have been stopped, and all/many/most of his buddies/lookalikes/co-religionists will be EAGER to distance themselves from the bad guys. Note how they rollover so quickly when caught.
We aren't dealing with the most brave, committed folks, here. I was always taught that suicide was an act of cowardice, and I still believe it, more than ever. Remember, these guys are basically the cousin's of Saddam's brave troopers, who surrendered in mass, to CNN photographers.
Sorry if it sounds like I'm full of false bravado, about a potentially dangerous foe. I'll grant the danger. Otherwise, these folks' real specialty is killing women, children and civilians. They've never put up a decent fight, against armed soldiers.
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