March 18, 2006
Same old storyNews
It is amazing to me that five years after 9/11 the airlines STILL don’t have their acts together in preventing racial discrimination by their aircraft crews. The latest comes from the Bay Area:
A Muslim father and son from Hayward filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Transportation this week, accusing airline attendants of booting them off a flight because of their appearance.
Fazal Khan, 59, and his son, Mohammed Khan, 28, boarded a United Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Oakland on Jan. 31 wearing traditional South Asian tunics, white skullcaps and loose trousers. Both men also have long beards…[Shirin Sinnar of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco] said the Khans do not know of anything, other than their attire, that could have agitated the female flight attendant, who apparently expressed concern to the terminal crew about their presence.
“When they got on the plane, she helped them with their bags. That was their only interaction,” Sinnar said.
Sinnar said the two men boarded the flight with no problems. They had been sitting on the plane for about an hour before they were ejected.
Mohammed Khan was sleeping and sometimes reading the Quran, she said, while the father was relaxing awake. They were heading back to Oakland International Airport from a trip visiting family members.
The plane eventually moved down the runway but returned to the terminal as airplane staff announced mechanical difficulties, Sinnar said.
An airline customer service representative walked onto the plane and asked the Khans to bring their carry-on handbags with them and return to the airport terminal, Sinnar said. [Link]
Next comes the most incomprehensible part. You would think that two people that aroused enough suspicion to be kicked off a flight would at least have their bags removed from cargo. Not so in this case. The Khans were placed on the next flight to San Francisco but their bags (minus carry-on) continued on to Oakland aboard the original aircraft:
After escorting them out, the representative was “sympathetic” but said they could not return because the flight attendant was not comfortable with them on board, Sinnar said…“The strange thing is no one took the bags off the first flight,” Sinnar said. “If there was any thought they were a security risk, certainly their bags should have been removed…” [Link]
Straight-up racial discrimination. The father and son say they were humiliated and will be suing Utah-based SkyWest who were responsible for staff on the aircraft.
See related post: Fear of flying
abhi on March 18, 2006 02:52 PM in Aviation, Issues, News · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
i'm sure most people on this thread will find this an irrelevant observation, but i'm going to add it in before the debate/conservation states, i don't think it is racial discrimination, it is religious discrimation, eg., "wearing traditional South Asian tunics, white skullcaps and loose trousers. Both men also have long beards "
Hrrm hrrm. I think it is something even more serious than either racial or religious discrimination.
I think this is a case of fashion discrimination.
This happens to me all the time. Once I was ejected by a male flight attendant who was jealous of the size of my labels. He kicked me down the gangway yelling "I am the most fabulous creatures on this plane!" Another time, a flight attendant told me I could fly, but only if I removed my specs. When I asked him why, he mumbled something about how they were a sacrilege against Elton John and would result in a fatwa soon. And you should have seen the tremendous mustache I had in my youth, that aroused much jealousy.
In this case, I think the flight attendant was threatened by the clear masculinity of these two men. A man has to be very comfortable to wear a dress on to a plane, and very well endowed to need to. [Notice she helped them with their "bags"] These men had long beards, another sign of virility and good looks (although a bit old school in the fashion department). Lastly, they were wearing skullcaps, and everybody knows the saying, "The bigger the beanie, the bigger the ... "
This was clearly sexual discrimination. I will offer my services as a friend of the court to make sure that this grievance is well dressed ...
Techinically, "ethnic profiling." David Cole talked about this in his book, Enemy Alien. They should be sued, if they made it through security, put them on another flight and their bags were still on the plane, they were obviously not a real security risk.
Who am I kidding, Fofatlal is right. fashion discrimination.
What is this flight attended didnt feel comfortable.
Isnt her job to make the passengers feel comfortable?
Looks like skywest is going to go bankrupt soon.
sorry bout the strong sentiments but i feel like finding out who the flight attendant was......."not comfortable" indeed!!
i wish she gets a heart attack and comes to me in the ER so that i can refuse to treat her because i am "not comfortable" with her moronic dumwit redneck presence
wearing traditional South Asian tunics, white skullcaps and loose trousers. Both men also have long beards
If I had a long beard, I would not wear white skullcaps and pajamas/shalwars while flying.
We live in sad times.
ITA nofixedaddress. I wish I supplied some necessary sevice, just so I could refuse people because I'm "not comfortable" with their stupidity.
This reminds me of the article written by Annie Jacobsen back in 2004 about sharing a plane with 14 Syrian muscians. She wrote 3,000 words on how terrified she felt, about the suspicious Mcdonalds bags they carried that were full, and then mysteriously...(gasp) empty. About bearded men who walked over to each other and, (terror!) talked in low voices. About their many, oddly-shaped, carry on bags...er, again, musicians.
Shouldn't airlines have taught cabin staff some sensistively training by now? Or at least administered IQ tests? hmmm....
*imagines planes packed with over-achieving asian staff, refusing to let aboard women with frosted bangs and bedazzled fannypacks. or men wearing beer hats and belt-buckles the size of dinner plates*
Or at least administered IQ tests?
hm...so you believe that IQ tests mean something? i'll store that way....
Before I get caught up in the charge of the righteous-indignation brigade, may i just say that I too am scared of fellow air passengers who have brown skin, wear skull caps, salwar kameez and read the Quran all at the same time. And I am a brown woman. I have an Indian passport but I've lived in Canada for the past seven years. Ever since sept 11, I have been subjected to the reassuring 'additional security screening' every time I fly into or out of the US because of my passport and skin colour. And its extremely humiliating, so be sure that I do not take sides with those who support racial profiling in any way.
I'll also say that it was pointless to get them off the flight and leave their bags on - that was shamelessly in-your-face religous/racial/fashion/whatever discrimination - and I can imagine to a small extent the humiliation that the two gentlemen were made to go through, so my sympathies are with them on that count. Also, ignorant white Americans who can't tell the different between South Asians and Arabs are nothing new. Moreso, considering that it was Skywest, based in Utah, where I had the misfortune of spending four days a few months ago, I'm not at all surprised that one of their flight attendants was squeamish seeing those two gentlemen.
HOWEVER, can we really blame them for being scared? Heck, I'm scared of people who dress that way and board a flight. Every time. And I was brought up in the Arabian Gulf, so more than most, I do understand the motivations and concerns of people from that part of the world.
I'm not arguing that the way they were treated was right. But I'm saying, America was one of the most hospitable and welcoming countries to all sorts of Muslims, Quran-carrying or not, before 9/11...can we really blame the average American for being scared? I don't think so.
yeah, i agree that this was discrimination, and professionals should be professional, but the comparisons to other groups are pretty lame. context matters, and psychologically this isn't really useful to evaluate the situation without the frame of the fact that a small group of muslims has declared 'war' on the west. it might be statistically fallacious to generalization from this group of muslims to other traditionalist muslims who dress in a particular manner, but, cognitive science tells us that the mind is really shitty at probability.
may i just say that I too am scared of fellow air passengers who have brown skin, wear skull caps, salwar kameez and read the Quran all at the same time
also, this is a pretty retarded modus if you are really a terrorist :) but so what? like i said, the human mind isn't really specialized at bayesian probability or game theory.
First thing,
Keywords: "Utah-based"
Second, although I agree that the woman was racist/religionist(?), this does remind me of Dave Chappelle's stand-up comedy:
Chappelle-pretending-to-be-a-woman: "-gasp- I am not a whore!"
Chappelle: "but you are wearing a whore's uniform"
what does skywest being utah-based have to do with anything? you trying to stereotype the good citizens of utah? :)
Fofatlal, you know what you need to be really comfortable with your masculinity to do? Board a plane without any pants.
Actually, the 9/11 terrorists were instructed not to look too religious because they wanted to fit in. Somebody who looks religious has probably already endured extra scrutiny and is less likely to be a terrorist.
Apropos of nothing, the ejected passengers were ethnic Indians who had immigrated from Fiji:
Of course, this makes total sense. The rational mind would suspect this, but what I'm talking about are gut reactions, the unnameables and unjustifiables that we associate with certain images without even being able to control our reactions...
addendum to my previous comment: If a person of South Asian origin/nationality would experience such a gut reaction, then it isnt a big leap for a Utah-based (!) female flight attendant, who probably watches mostly fox news and has traveled extensively in the midwest (ooh!).
Actually, the 9/11 terrorists were instructed not to look too religious because they wanted to fit in. Somebody who looks religious has probably already endured extra scrutiny and is less likely to be a terrorist.
what first settler of catan said. human rationality is bounded and constrained by a particular sort of tunnel vision. you can all construct the "logic" that quickly flashes through the minds of most people who see a bearded dude in a skull cap and are freaking out. i get nervous around these sorts. i know rationally than this is not the way a terrorist would really want to dress, but the heart feels what it feels, i know that terrorists often kill in the name of islam, and islam is the religion which is associated with beards and skull caps, and bingo, "heuristics we live by" starts firing.
in other words, some readers here are assuming that the sole reason behind this sort of behavior is social conditioning and racism. some of that is at play, but i think a lot of it is just cognitive biases in models of probability and overgeneralizations. it takes a lot of conscious reflective decision making to overwhelm our biases, and professionals should, but i've heard enough generalizations about "red necks" and their ilk around here to suspect that racism isn't the only reason that people tend to get irrational emotional responses.
ie, this is a problem rooted in the sort of mental issues that cause the muller-lyer illusion. you can crank out the bayes rule to people which suggests that skull cap and pajama bearded dude is less likely to blow up the plane than guy like me, of muslim familial origin but dressed "normal," but i think that in their guts people would feel safer around me, even if i do look a little too much like i have a vendetta :)
That's the same reasoning that caused fighter jets to scramble when people were unfortable (post 9/11) with two Orthodox jews on board - bearded, beanied, praying in a strange language, etc.
I want better from professionals, in part b/c there are opportunity costs. The more time they spend on false-positives, the less time they can spend making me actually safer. I also want better from professionals b/c they have power over me, and I don't want to spend the rest of my life shuffling, smiling broadly, and saying "Yes Massah" every time I board a plane.
I want better from professionals, in part b/c there are opportunity costs.
sure. kanhneman and tversky have demonstrated that even scientists have really bad intuitive reasoning in areas like probability outside their own field (the scariest shit is how bad medical doctors are at implementing bayes rule). my point is that the key is not to tell people not to be racist and everyone is the same, blah, blah, blah. you need hard math and hammer in the logic of probability over and over for people to overcome their own biases.
Sorry, I know you both may mean well but I say "crap." That is the diffrence between humans and animals. If we just go around saying the "heart feels what it feels" and go with our "gut reaction" I can use that as an excuse to committ just about any crime. Sure the gut reaction may be tied into our fight or flight response but this is really about FEAR and the inability of most regular people to even attempt to control it. Fear seems to rule everything around us nowadays and is used to justify all sorts of things from the War in Iraq to the Dubai Port fiasco to illegal wiretapping. If the heart feels what it feels then I say get a heart transplant (and a gut transplant while you are at it). I don't want to try and understand or sympathize with ignorance. I want to crush it with an iron fist and then stand above it laughing.
no, I don't. That where my comment took a turn towards the ridiculous, sorry for not clarifying. although I wouldn't turn down a Mensa membership. i'm all for cementing my nerd credentials;)
Why are you guys assuming that the flight attendant in question is a "redneck" or an "ignorant white american"?
For all we know, she could be desi or even, gasp, arab/muslim or african american or ...you get my drift..
It is not as if the "ignorant american" had cornered the market on racial profiling, is it?
How about firing those who act unprofessionally and fining their organization? That might work better than lectures in probability, which, as you've pointed out, even scientists are bad at in practice. You want to educate people in math. I just want to create the right incentives (I've worked long and hard to educate people already).
As for fear, the likelihood that I will be attacked by a white person is far greater than the likelihood that they will be attacked by somebody who looks like me, even if we concede the racists' position that I "look like" a terrorist. Why am I not going with my gut, given this sense of threat? Answer - b/c I know I'll be punished if I do.
We're Skinnerian creatures.
We're Skinnerian creatures.
i doubt that.
even scientists are bad at in practice
but they are much better in their own field. people are educable, it just isn't easy.
the likelihood that I will be attacked by a white person is far greater than the likelihood that they will be attacked by somebody who looks like me
yes, but knowing that someone is white prior doesn't really change the likelihood that you will get attacked.
Sure it does. Where I live, in my neighborhood, I am unlikely to be attacked by a minority person. However, I have been threatened multiple times by white people. If I see a young white male I am on guard.
Razib, skinner aside. Do you really think it is more practical to educate people in statistics or to simply change their incentives?
Do you really think it is more practical to educate people in statistics or to simply change their incentives?
this depends on the field. i don't think the "fire them" option is really viable in airlines, the extent of fear is pervasive, and the risk of false negative is psychologically very salient. we've all read that we are more likely to die in cars than on planes, but very few people i know are scared of driving though many are scared of planes.
anyway, not just statistics, but also differences between muslim and non-muslim browns. it isn't that hard to pick out muslims by name...some of the false positives are just retarded. but, like i said, if you fire retarded and biased people, you probably fire 75% of the workforce.
Abhi, I admire your highminded appeals for crushing ignorance with an iron fist, and even though in theory they are very pretty thoughts, I don't think that this incident can be considered in isolation of the larger context of things that its occuring in. Like it or not, there are worldviews that are clashing here, and I am not generalizing, but there are groups of people both in the US and in the Middle East, who do not have a vested interest in crushing ignorance with an iron fist. They are indifferent to its propagation - if that flight attendant ever knew any better, there is a higher opportunity cost for her to have done what was legally right by the gentlemen.
And I might be wrong on this, but I really don't think flight attendants are professionals in the security/social justice/whatever areas...Most of them are simply young girls/men from more or less conservative middle class backgrounds, who want to travel the world and make good money and have a decent life..except for perhaps Air Canada, who must have some unspoken corporate policy of not hiring anybody under the age of 55.
I don't just mean that midwestern Americans don't have much to gain from shedding their indifference and ignorance, the same is the case with many Middle Easterners. Since you mentioned the fear-based response to the DP World bid for US ports, let me relate an interesting offshoot of a story from that. And yes, I agree that it was an utter waste of a great opportunity to link a Gulf states' economic interests with that of the US ( a la Thomas Friedman, etc etc...). Anyway, shortly after (or during the time) DP world withdrew its bid, there was a International Rock Festival going on in Dubai for which bands had been invited from all over. Among these was an American band called Saxon (perhaps some of you know them? I don't). So some Emirati dude sitting in the Ministry of Information is surfing online and finds lyrics by Saxon along the lines of "put the saracens to the sword" and makes a massive hue and cry about inviting a band (who had written the lyrics years and years ago) with such designs upon the Arab peoples into the U.A.E. So the band was uninvited and there were several editorials about it in the local newspapers...Do you see what I mean by deeply institutionalized fear that has no reason to overcome itself?
Of course I'm not condoning any of these things, but I tend to take a more realistic view.
And yet, few people act like this. So either this means that people are not so scared or that they balance their fear with a fear of getting fired. BTW, firing is viable, the airlines probably will have to fire her if she's at fault. They got sued big time in the past and have spent money on educating. If they keep her on, then they're vulnerable to even more lawsuits.
My dentist is named Khan, but he's Jewish (it's Cohen).
You fire professionals who act retarded and biased, especially when your safety depends upon them.
My dentist is named Khan, but he's Jewish (it's Cohen).
99% of the time it will be spelled kahn. so even if a few jews spell their names khan, that doesn't mean you can't use the spelling to give you a really high rate of discernibility.
and yeah, perhaps the "fire them" option would work. i don't know enough about this topic....
Sorry, that was a typo, it is Kahn. Point is, he'd get screened ;)
Point is, he'd get screened
not if people are educated in the difference between the two names! people often ask me if i'm sephardic jewish actually....
re: my point about 'education.' the thing is that a lot of people are going to believe muslims are dangerous NO MATTER WHAT. the fact is, a subset of muslims is dangerous, to a greater degree than non-muslim browns (that is, hindu nutsos tend to kill people in brownland over their religious-nationalist beliefs, while muslims have a far greater international impact). one can posit the reasoning behind this (eg., selection bias in immigrant sampling in the UK resulting in lower SES for muslims vis-a-vis non-muslim browns, etc.). if you can explain how it is easy to detect non-muslim browns, that would be a boon for non-muslim browns. but this is a situation where context matters, i suspect that airline pilots and flight attendents have the requisite mental capacities and worldview to make this distinction relevant. on the other hand, this strategy isn't going to work for the typical street thug because the street thug is looking to beat the shit out of you, no matter the reasoning offered. one could argue as a practical matter that the big picture implies that browns shouldn't allow any distinctions to be made.
Continuing with Ennis's point,
That's the same reasoning that caused fighter jets to scramble when people were uncomfortable... when a group of Indian women were on a flight and pointing out the window. They were an Indian movie star and her family, including younger sisters. The sisters had never been to NYC and were chatting about the view.
Think about it- if a group of white people chatting in a European language were excitedly pointing out the window, isn't it likely that people nearby will start asking them friendly questions. "Is it your first time in America, in NYC?" "Really, where are you from? ... Oh, that's nice. You'll have a great vacation here."
i.e. the behavior isn't at all suspicious. Its what almost everyone young will do when seeing an interesting landmark or city for the first time. But because the women were 'brown' the plane was in a fighter jet's crosshairs.
If the freaked out passenger(s) has just spoken to the women-- they also spoke English-- they'd have found out who they were. Instead their cowardice condemned the movie star and family to a 10 hour airport jailing (well, a holding cell where they're being questioned and not allowed to leave. It seems like "jailing" to me).
Do you feel safer knowing that anytime a passenger gets tweaked out by skin color your jet could be followed by fighter jets? That anytime a passenger or flight attendent is too cowardly to just ask someone about who they are and what they're doing, those 'brown' people will be held for questioning for hours by the police (and, to be selfish, your flight might be delayed by an hour or two)?
I think these questions are besides the point. The more important question, as Ennis raised earlier, is how do we change the incentives/opportunity costs (for the homoeconomicus out there) so that people will stop acting out of strong fear of coloured skins/turbans/skullcaps/qurans and so on...
I hope this two father-son dont settle for A letter of Apology from the Airline . I am referring to Satnam Dhillon, a Sikh who was kicked out of a plane just because how he looked like.
Because an Apology isnt going to change anybody's mind and they are NOT SINCERE in the apolgy anyways.
This is a case of a small group of people, particularly the 'uncomfortable' flight attendant openly showing their inexcusable ignorance and fear (in this case, Islamophobia). While this situation is quite pathetic, it's hardly unique. There have been numerous times I (a startlingly white woman) have been hauled out of line at US both and European airports, my carry-on luggage searched, and my person frisked/groped in order to prove that the Dell laptop I was carrying onto the plane wasn't going to detonate the WMD contained inside my bra.
I have been unceremoniously thrown out of an ashram in Southern India for failing to wear a dupatta with my incredibly modest Indo-western salwar (long sleeves, up to my neck, loose pants covering every inch of skin to my feet). I suppose the women at the ashram thought that because I was a Western woman, my aim was to seduce the men from across an area the size of a football field. I was more modestly dressed than most of the women who quite rudely shooed me away.
What comes around goes around - I saw my first Pathan on a train station platform in Delhi and the very sight of him nearly gave me a heart attack. I just knew the moment he set eyes on me that he was going to walk over to me in his curled up shoes and behead me with his enormous sword before I had a chance to board the train.
There are terribly misinformed people in this world. All of us suffer this ignorance from time to time. So people moreso than others.
To first settler of catan
I do see your point. I don't justify it and like you, have been subject to humiliation at airports which frankly doesn't bother me and I do worry about some asshole having some kneejerk reaction to my father or brother or men I'm close to because they are brown. So by no means I justify what happened on this flight, but that gut instinct that punches you in the heart and makes you question your own sanity for feeling so...I've had it too.
I sat across from 2 middle eastern men on the LIRR a week ago. Despite all my might to block out the "stop being a ridiculous racist American" feelings I couldn't help but feel apprehensive about them. They had backpacks, were sweating up a storm and speaking in Arabic in hushed tones.
Of course there were probably a 100 other people with backpacks in the same car and they were probably sweating up a storm for the same reason I was as well, I raced 16 blocks to make the 6:13 and they were probably speaking in hushed tones because they were just being polite to their fellow passengers cause god knows loud people are obnoxious on the train.
But I tell you I couldn't shake the "what if" feeling out of my head the whole ride. I fought with myself to not stare and I kept telling myself I'm not a racist for feeling so. It was very conflicting and I'm brown and would like to believe I'm not a racist. 9/11 fucked me up in the head and it's hard to shake that.
Janeofalltrades: You might want to make sure whom you're actually responding to. It was not me who said that.
JOAT: but I can relate to your experience and glad that we are trying to move beyond simply justifying it, but rather finding explanations for why we act the way we do :)
Why don't we brown people do something about it? Why can't we organize ourselves and protest this kind of crap? We Indians are the richest and most educated ethnic group in the entire US (evidence=Time Magazine). If we could get our act together and organize ourselves like the Jewish groups in America have, just imagine what we could do.
Combine that with the sheer number of Arabs, pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Nepalis, other brown people, human rights groups, etc, we can certainly try to fix this problem. Not to mention, brown people in other countries would also support us.
this just makes my blood boil!
for all of u saying well, its a knee-jerk reaction, and the heart feels what it feels, and u can help but the fear, even though u may look the same, that other brown types instill in u in trains/planes/airports, wait till they haul ur ol gramps, coming to visit u from the ol country dressed comfortably in s.asian clothes and a comfy cap to keep the airplane chill off and sandles so his feet dont hurt when they swell due to sitting around and altitude..
then
maybe then, ur blood will also boil to where its not ok for this to happen to anyone, aywhere, and no matter for what reason.
i have been travelling on planes since i was 2 all over asia, europe and africa, and the one thing i have noticed in all those years, airline onboard staff are getting stupider by the decade. its not simply unprofessionalism, its down right stupidity and utter racism. the white staff on gulf air (many seem to be brits) treat passengers very differently than nonwhite (desi philipino etc) on the same flight dealing with same passengers.
i would venture to guess, just my guessing here, that masters degrees or college education in communication, psychology or some sort of service related field is not a pre-req. its simply not ok. 9/11 had nothing to do with the fact these people probably thought like this before, now its ok for them to act out. people generally dont become racist overnight.
this all-inclusive excuse for just about everything is getting tiring.
i 100% agree, we need to stop sitting on our butts and take this sort of crap for all u drs out there, maybe u should as someone mentioned, refuse to perform surgery on the grounds someone looks racist, or has a southern accent. or how about u lawyers, take clients cases, but refuse to handle it the last minute due to their dixie tie clip. heck, why not u wall-street types, just plain ol refuse to deal with ipo of companies, cause they sound american. all this sound stupeed to some of u, maybe u need to ask around. evil happens cause good people sit on their toushes and say, yeah, me too, sometimes i am afraid of my own father, cause u know, he looks like he.. well, u know.. a south of the equaterer..
ps: i would totally make by gramps wear jeans, i love soccer cap, a gap t-shirt, and brikenstocks, with a ipod full of tony benett and sinatra, and the newest ann rice.. i dont care if he doesnt like it, atleast they wouldnt hassle the guy...
pps: if the man were still around
@ tybbick #43
I agree we should do something. But I am no fan of Indians ganging up with the "sheer numbers of arabs". There is nothing in common there with South Asia. If you do not want others to see you as "brown-and-everything-else-be-damned", you should first stop yourself from doing so. And please, no human rights orgs necessary. ACLU will suffice.
Before you rile against my political non-correctness, my point is this: you will get around prejudices by *standing out*. Not by amorphously blending with other "browns". South Asia is a big enough and diverse region with enough clout to stand up for itself, you do not need to bring in arabs for this. Trust me, a lot of arabs have more contempt for desis than the worst flight attendant you have met.
bytewords, right on!!
actually, maybe i am limited in my experience, but, my experience has been, that most arabs DO for some absurd reason, think they are one, or perhaps two, steps above than s.asians in the totem pole. in college the KSA exchange students (there for 9-12 week english courses) were the most narrow minded absurdly racist unsuffisticated people i have ever met, and heck, that includes living in the south for 14 yrs.
enough people bung us together, no need for us to do the same.
In my limited experience since 9-11 of working with civil rights advocacy groups, most of the discriminatory shit has been directed towards Non Muslim South Asian males and not Muslims or Arab males. I am not talking about government action of deportation etc. here. I am talking about discrimination by private actors like the airline in this story.
In fact if you are a turbaned Sikh, you have the highest probability of having something bigoted said or happen to you. The number of cases where there has been discriminatory behavior towards turbaned Sikhs is staggering.
The reality is that a lot of Arabs dont look all that 'Arab'. Its the brown man from South Asia who looks like the stereotypical Arab. There are way more Non Muslim South Asians than Muslim South Asians.
I think a lot of discrimination by private actors is made on the basis of split second visual identifications. So educating them about Muslim names versus Non Muslim names is not going to make that much of a difference.
Also if you look at cases where Non Muslim politicians of Indian origin are maligned for their purported connections to terrorists or city councils not allowing temples to be built, I really wonder whether some people even care about the distinction between a South Asian Hindu and a Sikh or a Muslim. Some of this, surely is a result of racial unease.
that most arabs DO for some absurd reason, think they are one, or perhaps two, steps above than s.asians in the totem pole. in college the KSA exchange students (there for 9-12 week english courses) were the most narrow minded absurdly racist unsuffisticated people i have ever met, and heck, that includes living in the south for 14 yrs.
Thats probably because all they have seen is South Asians doing menial work and almost always working under Saudis in Saudi Arabia. Some of the people from Saudi Arabia/Kuwait/UAE are kinda racist both towards South Asians and other Arabs as well. The Saudis, Kuwaitis and Emiratis are especially racist towards other Arabs from Palestine, Jordan, Morocco or Lebanon because the latter are taller on average and lighter in skin color (look more white) while the former have all the money. The Saudis/Kuwaitis/Emiratis actually look a little more desi than other Arabs but we dont see a lot of them in the US.
I can’t speak for the Arab population in the US, but it is correct that many Arabs in KSA and the Gulf States have little regard for desis regardless of the latter’s religious background. To state that South Asians are viewed as “one or two rungs further down the totem pole” is putting it mildly. It’s a different matter if the other party is white.
Anyway, with regards to people instinctively reacting with prejudice: Some people will have racist tendencies anyway and these situations just give them an outlet/excuse for their prejudices; however, in other cases it is an understandable – but still unacceptable – response to major traumatic events. 9/11 and 7/7 are examples of this. Ordinary people who would otherwise have been neutral or even sympathetic towards the religious/ethnic backgrounds of the minority groups concerned would be “pushed over the edge” as a result of seeing other people with a common religious affiliation and “uniform” espousing a hostile ideology. In the case of the US, as far as I know the “hostiles” are predominantly overseas, and you are lucky that, unlike those of us living on the other side of the Atlantic, you are not repeatedly exposed in the public domain and in the media to fellow citizens who loudly and consistently voice their support for the very ideology and terrorist groups which are so antagonistic to the West. And yes, these guys have the “full works” – shalwaar-kameez/kurta-pyjamas, skullcaps, beards, Quran, and so on. After a while, people form a knee-jerk connection between an individual’s outer appearance and the ideology their appearance is perceived to represent; at least until the prejudiced parties “educate” themselves and/or sufficient numbers of the shalwaar/skullcap crowd are seen to be taking action/speaking up against the jihadis. .
Let me give you a personal anecdote of my own. Late last year I was collecting some of my relatives from the arrivals lounge in one of the terminals at Heathrow Airport here in London. Apparently the flight preceding their arrival from India was from Pakistan or one of the Gulf states (apologies, I can’t remember which). At least 15 Pathans, wearing the full Pathan ensemble and all unusually tall and heavily-built, were milling around and obviously waiting to collect someone too. To say that everyone else in the arrivals lounge had noticed them would be a something of an understatement. When their guest arrived, they all stood in a line and suddenly started chanting/singing at the top of their voices – I don’t know if they were chanting traditional Pathan songs or Quranic verses (which lasted about a minute), but you can imagine the immediate atmosphere in the lounge – it completely freaked everyone out. Nobody called security, but you could cut the tension with a knife until they all left.
I hate the fact that we live our daily lives in fear regardless of race, creed, ethnic origin, religious choice. It is this fear that makes us hate, makes us think of irrational stories, and then we move on those irrational thoughts and justify them as rational. Like Robert McNamara said in "The Fog of War", "A rational human's mind can only handle so much reasoning." When one's rational thoughts are clouded by fear, the actions/thoughts employed by that person don't seem rational to those rational beings not there at the time.
first settler # 30:
Most of them are simply young girls/men
I hope you meant young "women" and not "girls."
Jai,
Thanx for sharing the personal story. This is what I was talking about. It's very easy to shun people, call them racist and push aside any such behavior and I'm surprised that so far that seems to be what's happening here with very little room for an alternate view of why it's happening and an understanding of it.
I would have never noticed anyone before 9/11 period, white, brown, green, purple nobody. I feel like a Pavlovian dog some days for what 9/11 did to me. And I resent anyone implying that I was a bigot anyway and simply looking for excuses now to act it. I question my judgement every single time I have such an experience and feel guilty about it and don't ever really act on it. But it exists and I can't make it go away. And it DID NOT before 9/11.
If I a brown person can feel this way and I consider myself culturally aware and able to tell the difference between people imagine someone ignorant from the middle of nowhere America.
no way does a person not have the option of not being scared when its not rational. ok...maybe your heart races for a second, or you wonder. but after that it takes a concious decision to continue to enact out a prejudice against someone. often a person acting on a fear-based prejudice is having a bad day and is taking it out on the first viable candidate. think about how you have reacted to similiar situations. the fact that 9/10 people don't take several related steps to act out irrational fears in sequence means its a choice people make to make other people's lives just a little bit worse. lets not get all complex about a situation that isn't. The article I think Cic alluded to in Salon, there was a good rejoinder published by Salon's resident airline expert (why they have one I don't know). Read that.
Jai if you saw 15 Sikh men from Jullndher chilling in the airport and they all got in a line and said Kiddhaaa! to the person they were picking up, would you be freaked? Or would you wonder where the bhangra party was going to be later that night? A person can have fears about anyone, you can start to wonder about a cousin or friend. Is he trying to get with my girl? Does he really make more money than me? Lets not coddle basically irrational fears as if they have some grand meaning. Next thing you know we'll be saying, you know what....when I eat mexican food I always fear i'll have the runs, so now I just never, ever, ever step into a resteraunt selling fajitas without trembling in fear as to the integrity of my bowels
totally. I was in a bar with a group of my cousins. We're as "american" acting as could be, but as a mixed lot, some of us wear beards, some of us have afros. We were approached by as group of drunk people who called as afghanis. We explained we were all from the US, and born here, and from India. The fact was, these guys were drunk and wanted to be macho. No amount of convincing them we were not afghan was going to do a single thing. They had decided our two groups of people were going to fight the minute they called walked toward us. What was said after that was meaningless. You really think they had a "fear" of us? If so, they could have moved to another area. As a rule we don't really feel the need to make other people scared of us, as we're pretty happy with hanging out with each other.
We can talk all we want about how we live in a changed world, but that scenario was no different than what would have happened in 1994. Some people are ignorant on purpose
dudette,
same thing happened to my grandfather. he was told to open his suitcase. He was in his 80's with a lot of trouble walking
sorry to post so often. will stop now
Sahej,
I said the fears of other people were understandable, not acceptable or appropriate. I fully believe and support the concept of "innocent until proven guilty". With regards to your example above, I get your point, but if there was (hypothetically) a terrorist campaign underway against the West by some India-based Sikh group, there were militant Sikh groups here in the UK who had openly stated that their aim was to impose Sikhism on the rest of the population by force, Sikhs had crashed hijacked passenger jets into the World Trade Centre and had also blown up fellow British citizens on the London Underground.....And there were then 15 Sikhs dressed as Nihangs in Heathrow Airport who suddenly started singing "Raj Karega Khalsa" etc loudly and in unison while collecting some Sikh dignitary.....
Then yes, the freaked-out reaction of everyone else in the airport would be understandable. Not necessarily appropriate, of course, but certainly understandable considering both local and global (hypothetical) events.
And yet the 7/7 attackers weren't Arabs, they were Pakistanis and then Africans. Do you feel equally apprehensive when you see a bunch of desi men together speaking in Punjabi? Or how about the Africans on the train?
I'm not accusing you of being a bit. I am pointing out that your fears of a train attack are not triggered by the people who attack trains and I'm wondering why not?
What will change things for you, JOAT, is when you've been on the other side or known somebody who has. When you've had somebody call the police on you for completely innocuous behavior, and you realize that you're guilty until proven innocent, and that these days due process can be circumvented, and you can vanish without habeas corpus for an extended period of time.
I've been aware of terrorism for a while. I lost somebody in the Lockerbie bombing. I'm from NYC, and knew many people who worked in and around the WTC. A relative was recently injured in a bomb in a Delhi movie theater. Heck, if you want to go further back, my uncle in London was nearly caught in an IRA bomb ages ago. It's a very real thing to me. But for all that, I'm far more afraid of and at far greater threat from people's knee-jerk reactions to my appearance. That changes things.
sorry....
there's no reason to suggest a desi is any more or less able to be be prejudiced or not prejudiced compared to a midwestern born and bred person. i'm sure we all know many, many midwestern, western, eastern, and southern americans who are decent as the day is long. this whole affair speaks to baboon behavior. we can all throw crap at each other from zoo cages too if we all get the notion someday
Jai,
I get what you're saying, but thats not similiar to this scenario. Its the worst excess of PC-culture to deny that people have a range of different emotions, including irrational fear. I agree with you on that, and I think everyone has the capacity for such fear . But I think the frame here is limited. I don't know if we have to enter aiports or bus stations with the idea that violence is imminent. I wouldn't begrudge anyone who is scared. Its group think however, and as group-think, it matters what we think within a group.
I totally agree with you as to there are scenarios if anyone's mind that will make them scared. There is though a point at which there is the possibility of intervention so the response to that fear is modulated. Human societies have diverse ways of dealing with fear. And it seems to me the way of dealing with fear in this example is not one I'd like to see replicated.
First of all this is a sad incident, racial/ethnic profiling, case shut. Lets hope that flight attendant gets her ass fired.
Having said that, there's a parallel instance of racial profiling going on in some of these posts - the redneck remarks and all. Some of you are assuming that the flight attendant was white. I've seen other races show equal if not greater prejudice when it comes to Muslims, middle eastern looking and brown skinned people. So without knowing all the facts, lets not simply go off on the white people.
I wonder how many unreported incidents of discrimination such as this happen across the country. Couple of my friends were ejected from American Airlines because they were "sweating". Despicable to say the least. I would love to be in such a situation for the grim satisfaction of chewing someone's ass off.
Aaah, the pre-9/11 days; how free were we!! I *always* used to make it to the airport like 15 mins before flight departure (or less, i actually started timing it and my record was, like 8 mins before take off) then rush through checkin etc and get on the plane panting, heaving (and sweating, of course). The "worst" reaction ive had during all those times were the stewardess asking me if i needed some water...
Bah, I was interrogated for 4 hours at IAH in November, despite being a green card holder and a Canadian citizen. My crime apparently was that I had just spent 3 months in Pakistan. Apparently the alcohol on my breath and the Salman Rushdie book in my hand weren't enough to dismiss me as a terrorist suspect, and I had to endure whats called a "threat assessment". I was surprised because one of the officers was actually civil and was very knowledgeable of the different sects of Islam, when I was trying to explain that I came from the most liberal sect (Ismailis). After the interview he was very nice and even remarked "If you're ever at IAH and have a long stopover, just come on over and tell the front desk that you want to talk to the guys in the back - I'd love to just talk to you in general"
Oh yes, I forgot - I was also asked a very unexpected question - "have you ever considered working for the US government in an agency capacity?" That was a pleasant surprise.
Apparently the alcohol on my breath and the Salman Rushdie book in my hand weren't enough to dismiss me as a terrorist suspect, and I had to endure whats called a "threat assessment".
well, if they were smart, they know that drinking and reading rushdie what you would to slip under the radar! :)
though serioulsy, on my blog i posted something quick about this and one commentor noted that people are still scared of bats and snakes though squirrels are much higher public health risk. what we're dealing with are issues of bats and snakes. of course, many people have pet snakes now....
They were smart - some of the 9/11 hijackers were drinking at a strip club the night before. Like I said, using obvious proxies of islamic devotion would not have caught these guys, they were instructed to blend in and act secular.
a fellow human should not be compared to rats and snakes without some kind of qualification. you can't understand the motivation of a rat, you can't speak with it, you can't fully relate a rat's behavior with your own, and many people feel no qualms about killing rats with pesticides. the commentator may have some kind of point, but comparing the fear humans have of rats with the fear some people have of other human beings is not going to persuade many different minded people about that point. In fact it reinforces the idea that there is something deeply off about justifying fear as actionable
humans are animals. wutz offensive?
nothing dude, keep on truckin
btw, no one said nethin about it being offensive
um, but, maybe its just me, but all this talk of probablility and rational choices etc may have little to do with peoples everyday lives. i serously doubt that the air staff stood there, for the hour interim between when they got on the plane and when they got escorted off, and did a quick probablility model or analysis, and afetr talking over with the other phd holders on staff, decided it was worth chucking them, but not their luggage in the hold.
holy crap, this would have been the best way for any one to do harm, dress scary to the bigots, get urself, but not ur luggage thrown off, and heck, u dont even have to risk ur own hide.
my point is, this talk of probablilities have little to do with most peoples everyday lives.
we have nothing to fear but fear itself. which we should really fear. fear. i'm so afraid. help me, i'm afraid. daddy, save me
my point is, this talk of probablilities have little to do with most peoples everyday lives.
not true. the problem is that humans have intuitive probability which doesn't really gel with mathematical probability, eg., "the gambler's fallacy" and the "law of small numbers." see inevitable illusions: how mistakes of reason rule our minds or judgment under uncertainty : heuristics and biases. contrary to a previous poster, rats can tell us a lot of human ways of thinking, skinnerian behaviorism was in fact overthrown in large part via a series of surprising experiments with rats.
here is my issue, some people posit:
culture(individual) = set of behaviors
i think we benefit from:
culture(mind(individual)) = set of behaviors
in other words, culture operates upon the preexistent biases of the human mind to generate a set of probable behaviors. to scale a mountain or construct a bridge across a canyon you need to know the lay of the land and the general topography. viewing everything to a purely culturalist lens is like using a political map only, when you need a physical relief map as well, because the political boundaries tend to follow and be constrained by physical features.
razib,
you seem to be saying in that set-up -- culture(mind(individual)) -- that the reaction of fear is too strong to behave in a way other than how the airline stewardess in this story behaves. That's the issue I have with your statement, not that people don't act based on the most likely probabilities. That seems relatively not controversial.
Anyway, SM has been getting a bit harsh and I'd like to see the mood lighten
that the reaction of fear is too strong to behave in a way other than how the airline stewardess in this story behaves.
no. there is variance around the expectation (i'm not thinking deterministically).
Ennis with all due respect...
The guys on the trains were black arabs meaning they weren't desi looking brown arabs. I've traveled in and out of the middle east for 20 years and am aware that "potential" terrorists can be from anywhere. I understand the difference between African, middle eastern, far eastern and south asian muslims.
My fears were just general behavior I feel like I've been bombarded emotionally to believe as being suspicous. It isn't about planes or trains. I didn't act on it. I justified it as normal behavior but my first instinct was otherwise. I went thru Sept 11 and lost two friends and nearly lost my brother. It is what has shaped me. It isn't some excuse, it is simply the truth.
I have been slightly on the other side. I was attacked by two women on the LIRR as a matter of fact in the spring of 2002. They were acting out on spite and hate and prejudice and I was told to go back to my country and stop bombing America! My crime? I was speaking in gujarati with another friend on the train and I look about as non traditional as one can be. My ear was nearly torn off and I suffered a concussion. When the train pulled up at the next stop there were about 100 cops waiting for us. It was ugly and it freaked me out. I only didn't hit the woman back because she was as old as my mother and I believe very strongly that my anger was enough to have ended her in the hospital severely injured. I did not act on it. I defended myself, I did not attack her back.
Another friend's father was deported back to Ludhiana after living in this country for over a decade. He was at the immigration detention center for 3 months. His crime was that he was careless in renewing his GC and it had recently expired. He was treated as a terrorist. It was very painful for many of us.
My point is I didn't act on these fears and know better and I have not acted on it but I have experienced the initial apprehension that I feel upon seeing certain kinds of people. But if I a brown woman can feel this I can only imagine what it is like for someone culturally unaware. I am not trying to justify the behavior but trying to speak to the "dismissing it as biggotted behavior".
Applause for Razib on this thread.
I remember reading a 2002 news article that the highest number of Osama sightings had been reported in Utah...