9/11- Cameron Nesmith

Since September 11th, South Asian, Sikh, Muslim, and Arab Americans have been the targets and victims of various amounts of hate crimes, as well as employment discrimination, bullying, harassment, and profiling. Also, places of worship have been vandalized and attacked due to the attacks of 9/11, including the tragic shooting of the “Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin and the numerous alleged hate crimes in the Muslim community that followed.” For decades, African Americans  were subjected to this rhetoric and stereotype, but around this time period, South Asians, sikhs, Muslims, and Arab Americans have increasingly become the targets of a society that is supposedly a safe place for all races and ethnicities. These hellacious verbal attacks include “xenophobic rhetoric aimed at South Asian political candidates” as well as a more general and basic portrayals of our community such as dangerous outlets through statements by prejudice government officials and the media.

September 11, 2001 was day of tragedy, grief, and sorrow. On September 11, 2001, the United States experienced the worst terrorist attack of the 21st century. Terroist hijacked four airplanes in mid-flight. The terrorists flew two of the planes into two skyscrapers at the World Trade Center in New York City. The impact caused the buildings to catch fire and collapse enormously. Another plane destroyed part of the Pentagon which is the U.S. military headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. The fourth plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In all, nearly 3,000 people were killed in the horrific 9/11 attacks.

Following September 11, 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported a “1,700 percent increase of hate crimes against Muslim Americans between 2000 to 2001.” Although the term Muslim is a religious discrimination or tag and does not specifically pertain to race, the “line between racism and religious discrimination is often blurred.” Muslim Americans are often perceived as a monolithic group of people, “conceptualized as a religious minority thought to act, think, and behave similarly,” despite extensive ethnic differences that exist within the Muslim American cultural

Since 9/11, Arab Americans have been beneficiaries of what it feels like to usually be a African American problem. Although it is wrong to treat Arab Americans like criminals or miscreants, as a country, society shouldn’t be surprised when they are oppressed in ways African Americans have been oppressed for centuries. During the time of 9/11, the South Asian/Arab American community was having a hard time trying to figure out why we’ve they’ve been racially demoted from an “ethnic house slave to ethnic field slave.” From a black perspective, South Asian American’s have been signaled out as an ethnic group and more disappointedly, have been pathetically “courting the very White privilege that has the power to decide which group will be signaled out.”

Like countless immigrant communities before 9/11, many South Asian/Arab Americans freely participated or engaged in stealthy and overt acts of racism against African Americans. This is no secret to most Black people who already knew that Arab Americans have the same type of “superiority complexity” that European Americans do. This “superiority complex” is not only evidence in the way Arabs act towards blacks, but the way Arabs choose to disassociate ourselves from their community. South Asian/Arab Americans disassociation would not be so evident if we weren’t “ruthlessly trying to move up the racial hierarchy so that we can be closer to Whiteness.” In the United States, unfortunately every non-Black immigrant group over an extended period of time, such as Asians, Italians, Hispanics, and more have worked hard to secure a so called respectable place above African Americans on the racial hierarchy.

Stereotypes against Arab Americans have never been powerful enough to enslave them as a ethnicity. An international event or incident had to take place for the eyes and the lens of Whiteness to look down upon the United States, whereas those very eyes have been obsessively watching Blackness despite the African American people having done nothing to anyone over history. “It took the worst terrorist attack on American soil for Arab Americans to be mistreated, whereas all it took for African Americans to be mistreated was to be on American soil.”

The definition of a minority is “the smaller part or number; a number, part, or amount forming less than half of the whole.” In reality, There are no real physical minority groups in our society. Being a minority has less to do with what we look like and more to do with how we think. A real minority means someone “who sells out and destroys the power of Whiteness.” Since African Americans have done this more than any other race often without choice they produce more minorities than other ethnic group of color. Arab Americans can never be real or defined minorities as long as they regularly switch racial allegiances to the side that best serves their accommodations at the moment.

Sources:

“The Racial Lesson of 9/11.” The Racial Lesson of 9/11. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2016.

“Attitudes Toward Muslim Americans Post-9/11.” Khan, Mussarat. Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library, n.d. Web. 22 Nov. 2016.