Changing The Profile: Let's thank John Walker, American Taliban fighter, for broadening our horizons. If you're on the hunt for Al-Qaeda types, you'd better be able to look beyond skin deep. The suburban kid from Marin is making racial profiling a bit passé [...] John Walker proves you just can't do that anymore.
Since when?
It's utter idiocy to assume that just because ONE middle class white guy was caught with the Taliban, that means that you can't or won't use racial profiling any more. First, almost everyone will dismiss him as an aberration, a total fruitcake -- and he IS an aberration. I can't imagine that there are all that many white, middle class, Americans out there in Afghanistan, standing toe to toe with the remnants of the Taliban, being bombed into oblivion (or at least deafness). People will do what they always do when confronted with any such case: they'll say, "Oh, he's an exception," and they'll sail along, profiling merrily. Flying While Arab will be a crime for the foreseeable future. Driving While Black (or Hispanic, or sometimes Asian) will always be a crime.
Forget that Walker told Newsweek he supported the September 11 attacks that killed thousands of innocent civilians, Father Frank Lindh called Walker "a good boy," to whom he wanted to give a big hug and "maybe a little kick in the butt for not asking my permission to go to Afghanistan." Astonishingly, Walker's screw-up parents aren't his only defenders. The fatuous Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told CNN's Larry King that Walker is "an idealist who really believed in what he was doing." Worse, Hatch said: "I would like to go after those who corrupted this idealistic kid and I would like to give him a break if I can." Does Hatch have any idea how bad he makes America look?
Well, yes, I would imagine that Walker WAS an idealist; that's what he was doing there. And no, Hatch doesn't know how he makes America look -- nor does he care. If a middle class white boy supports the Taliban, he must have been deceived or brainwashed, and that's all there is to it in Orrin Hatch's America. (I must admit, I would dearly love to hear what he would have said had Mr Walker been from the Nation of Islam and been captured. Some nice, middle class black kid who believed as Farrakhan does, and who went over to support those whom he believed were like him. What would little Orrin Hatch say then, one wonders? One suspects the words "traitor" and "treason" and "immediate firing squad" would have been bandied about. One suspects.)
As one U.S. official reacted, "We are asking countries around the world to take actions against their citizens who are joining the Taliban and al Qaeda and trying to bring death and destruction elsewhere, and we're asking them to crack down on their people." [...] The official added, "Poor misguided youths with a religious bent? If that's good enough to get you off for an American, it ought to be good enough to get you off for an Afghan or a Saudi."
But of course, it wouldn't be.
Do African Americans view the events surrounding Sept. 11 the same as other segments of society? Should we? [...] While we share the majority's view of Sept. 11, African Americans have a different perspective on Sept. 12 and thereafter. We are not nearly as anxious to go bombing around the world in a macho attempt to restore our pride as the biggest, baddest player on the planet. [...] One word best describes the black perspective on this so-called war on terrorism: skepticism. There is great skepticism in black America that politicians are truly looking out for the best interests of the people. [...] We were fighting hard against racial profiling before Sept. 11. Now it seems to be the principal means by which the government will seek out potential terrorists.
We have reason to be especially concerned. A quick glance at the FBI's most- wanted terrorist list is revealing. Even though 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers were Saudi citizens (all of whom died in the attacks), of the 22 on the FBI's most-wanted terrorists list, 12 are Africans. They try to tell us the anti-terrorism provisions are aimed at noncitizens. But many of the brothers on the most-wanted list look like African Americans on any U.S. city street, and by the time the police figure out that you are from Cairo, Ga., and not Cairo, Egypt, you could be dead.
We fear that when the terrorist threat recedes, these laws will be used to prosecute and incarcerate black folks in even greater numbers. Civil libertarians are up in arms over the invasion of privacy these laws represent, but African Americans are concerned about the denial of personal freedom they may mean.
And can you imagine how difficult it would be for someone who was arrested (let us assume that the police will, for the hell of it, exercise enough restraint not to kill them out of hand) if they were a member of the Nation of Islam? I can't imagine that local law enforcement or local offices of the FBI are the least bit interested in distinguishing between domestic and foreign Muslims, at least not initially. (God forbid they're wearing that hat when they're arrested.)
That said, I would submit that invoking Hiroshima and Nagasaki as Shockley has done only produces false comparisons. When development on the bomb started, after all, it was being created to drop on Berlin, and has nothing to do with our experiences in this country as such.
(From a purely editorial point of view, that paragraph should have started with, "Black America has experienced terrorism in this country ...." It would have mostly true -- the powerless have few choices but nonviolence as a response, after all, if they want to avoid extermination. That said, studying black communities these days would not leave one sanguine that we are continuing to avoid violence, now would it? He should also definitely have chopped off everything after "But we are also intimately familiar with its faults." The rest is just fulsome baggage and compromises the rest of the article.)
Replies: 1 Comment
Shockley needs to get his facts straight. The deathtoll at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined was less than 120,000. It was nowhere near 360,000.
Posted by Steven Den Beste @ 12/12/2001 01:32 AM CST
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
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