Senate Being Middle Eastern and South Asian in the US

In the same vein as the Black Men vs Society thread, I've been meaning to make this thread for a while. There's a series of similar problems Middle Eastern, North African, and South Asian Americans face in the US: racism stemming from anti-Islam bigotry, assumption that one is Muslim, all the general issues that come with being darker skinned, being thought if as "foreign" regardless if citizenship or place of birth, etc. I don't really know where I want this thread to go, and I know there isn't as much representation here in the JCC as there are African Americans, but the news story I just read was so infuriating I decided to finally make this.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/comm...ock-to-school-so-you-tried-to-make-a-bomb.ece

Dark Skinned Muslim high school kid who loves and excels at engineering and robotics, who will probably grow up to be a productive member of society and maybe even invent/develop something, built a homemade clock and brought it to school to show to his engineering teacher. Instead of being congratulated for his hard work, initiative, and skill, he was sent to juvenile detention, interrogated by police officers, and os facing a charge of making a hoax bomb. It's hard not to think that his race and religion had nothing to do with this. It's Texas, after all. But I guess brown skinned people have to stay away from engineering because that's too terrorist-y

He's vowed never to take an invention to school again. That school deserves underachievers, not hard workers with initiative.

 

I just read about this a minute ago and was looking for a place to post about it. Thank you, Vivec.

I think this particular situation is insanity. This happened (and is happening) specifically because of the student's ethnicity and background. I think schools today in general are far more paranoid in general than they once were, and that can sometimes extend to white students throughout the country, but I think it afflicts non-white students in particular.

The messages we send to those of Muslim backgrounds, and anyone who could be from the Middle East area, is appalling. It's not just the surface-level messages, but also the ones between the lines, what could be called subtext. I think those are worse, and it's the primary way that we're sabotaging ourselves going forward as a country.

We should be supporting students like this and encouraging their inventiveness. Instead, we treat them with rabid suspicion.

 

Before 9/11, many Americans assumed I was Puerto Rican or Mexican (often with a racist remark). After 9/11, many Americans assume I'm from Pakistan. When I tell them that I'm actually Canadian, they all have this same look of utter confusion and shock. Sometimes I help them out and explain that my skin is brown because my parents are from Guyana.

9 out of 10 times, they'll follow up with: "That's in Pakistan and the Middle East, right?"

 

Ah yes, the classic "So where are you from?" scenario.

As for the story about the student....it is beyond insanity.

 

Hey I have some Canadian Guyanese friends.

 

There's an interesting parallel here, in that decades ago -- long before you were born -- Bloom County was sort of making this point with their boy-genius (Oliver) who was usually misunderstood by adults (his parents and teachers, etc.).

He was black, but I assume you are correct and that there's a negative stereotype against any "dark-skinned person" being that good at math or science, but one would think that certain kinds of South Asian (read: Indian) would escape this given popular culture and stereotypes these days (offshoring, etc.).


On a side note, on Monday I was in Starbucks and saw two NYPD members enjoying a coffee together who were both Indian and speaking Hindi, which was cool to me (our Asian population on the NYPD is low). One of the reasons I love my city is I can see things like that and I sort of pity people who grow up without the diversity afforded by large, metropolitan cities in the US.

 

A letter from the school district is going out today:

http://www.irvingisd.net/cms/lib010...al&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

The casual racism is stunning, and I don't use those any of those words lightly.

 

My blood is boiling.

 

Incoming juicy lawsuit.

 

Texas ACLU should be on the case. Someone call ASO.

The worst part is we all know this isn't the only case of discrimination. Brown skinned people routinely get chosen for "extra security." Have to always make sure that if you are carrying a bag, it's with you at all times (god forbid you leave it on your train seat for five minutes while you're away). Figures of speech that someone else can use, you can't. Muslims can't pray or reference their god anywhere in public without people thinking it's an attack. I don't mean to draw this back to the Black Men vs Society thread, but one thing similar I'm seeing is that it's always on the discriminated to have to change their behaviors and walk on eggshells just so they don't get targeted. That pisses me off in both instances.

And then of course there are times when brown skinned Asians are attacked for either being Muslim or being perceived as Muslim. I'm sure I've posted this news story before, but it encompasses pretty much all facets of what is faced here.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...mistook-for-one-of-those-people-10290957.html



Here's the case of an 82 year old Sikh man who was brutally beaten for looking like "one of those guys" (meaning Muslim). He was on his way to his gurdwara where they were going to serve food for free to the community (which they do every sunday).

This is why I'm unimpressed when people who are Islamophobic claim they are not racist because Islam isn't a race. Their bigotry has everything to do with race. They use racial markers to identify who they accuse of being Muslim. They use place of birth/family origin as markers for who they accuse of being Muslim. They wouldn't know if a Bosnian Muslim walked in and they'd discriminate against Indian Jains. This is why the idea that islamophobia isn't racism doesn't hold water.

 

Wut.

 

It's a clock it's used for time school administrators and police are morons.

 

Maybe a couple years ago, didn't a woman in New York push a Sikh man onto the subway tracks because she also thought he was "one of those people?"

 

There was also the shooting at the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, a few years ago.

 

Haha, nice shot across Trump's bow there, too!

Edit:

This poor kid...

https://i.imgur.com/PMgDR7m.jpg

I hope NASA remembers why he was arrested when they see that on his record in 8-10 years.

 

The situation with this kid makes me furious!

What a way to make kids afraid to share something they are proud of. We should be encouraging kids to learn things other than what they are getting in school, this kid did that, wanted to show it to someone he probably looks up to and got arrested for his trouble. He's also been suspended, which is also ridiculous and will probably hurt his chances for getting into a great college.

 

The device looks exactly like a bomb from parodies of all the movies about last second attempts to diffuse movie bombs just before detonation. There's no way to get around the fact that it looks exactly, precisely, 100% unequivocally like a movie bomb prop. Giant digital readout in a compact case.

Not saying anyone should have been arrested or suspended, but if someone *anyone* had brought that to an airport there would have been SWAT teams and assault rifles and evacuations.

 

Well first off, a school isn't an airport. Secondly, there are many things that look like movie bombs. Bombs used by terrorists look more like the pressure cookers in the boston bombing, not movie parody bombs complete with giant countdown clock conveniently placed for the diffuser to keep track of how fast he needs to work.

The school didn't evacuate. The teacher took the alleged bomb, which is behavior no teacher would do if they thought it was a real bomb. They all knew it wasn't a real bomb. The police said as much too.

 

Did you see a picture? I haven't been able to find one- did they just release one?

 

It was in the Dallas News article:



I'm no bomb expert, but I don't see anything that even remotely looks like explosives.

 

I'm not seeing any explosives there either.

What I am seeing is a teacher who saw a Muslim with LED numbers and assumed terrorist.

 

I agree, context is important, and schools and airports should not be treated the same, nor should young teenagers who like robotics be treated the same as adults trying to board an airplane.

We can all assume that a young teenager is going to be unaware of movie bomb plot memes. He's never seen Speed or a Mission Impossible movie or any of the hundreds of movies that prominently feature the ticking bomb meme.

I'm no bomb expert either, but like most moviegoers, I'm a lay expert in the aesthetics of movie bomb props. And this is a movie bomb prop.

 

Ah, once again, hoisted by own my own petard, this one being my habit of never going into the actual news article that's usually linked in the first post of threads like these. Thanks, mav.

I should think a teacher would have better judgment, and if not him or her, then the principal, Jabba. I mean, practically everything gets a Hollywoodized version of itself in the movies. Then again, this is an English teacher we're talking about. They always have deep-seated issues about wishing fiction were more real, for lack of a better way of putting it.