Given what happened last week in Virginia, the events described in this post might seem trivial, but I feel quite strongly that they are not. What’s at issue is a fundamental question of civil rights — the right to live one’s life without being harrassed, investigated, or needlessly spied on.
The Indian-American poet Kazim Ali teaches at Shippensburg University, which is a little west of Harrisburg, PA (and not too far from where I myself teach).
On his website, he recently described how his “suspicious” behavior led to his entire campus being shut down. The behavior in question? Recycling. He was doing nothing other than dropping off a stack of printouts of poems to be recycled when someone from the campus ROTC called the police:
A young man from ROTC was watching me as I got into my car and drove away. I thought he was looking at my car which has black flower decals and sometimes inspires strange looks. I later discovered that I, in my dark skin, am sometimes not even a person to the people who look at me. Instead, in spite of my peacefulness, my committed opposition to all aggression and war, I am a threat by my very existence, a threat just living in the world as a Muslim body.
Upon my departure, he called the local police department and told them a man of Middle Eastern descent driving a heavily decaled white Beetle with out of state plates and no campus parking sticker had just placed a box next to the trash can. My car has New York plates, but he got the rest of it wrong. I have two stickers on my car. One is my highly visible faculty parking sticker and the other, which I just don’t have the heart to take off these days, says “Kerry/Edwards: For a Stronger America.”
Because of my recycling the bomb squad came, the state police came. Because of my recycling buildings were evacuated, classes were canceled, campus was closed. No. Not because of my recycling. Because of my dark body. No. Not because of my dark body. Because of his fear. Because of the way he saw me. Because of the culture of fear, mistrust, hatred, and suspicion that is carefully cultivated in the media, by the government, by people who claim to want to keep us safe. […]
One of my colleagues was in the gathering crowd, trying to figure out what had happened. She heard my description–a Middle Eastern man driving a white beetle with out of state plates–and knew immediately they were talking about me and realized that the box must have been manuscripts I was discarding. She approached them and told them I was a professor on the faculty there. Immediately the campus police officer said, “What country is he from?”
“What country is he from?!” she yelled, indignant. (link)
Now, I normally try and avoid the “rant” voice, but I must say, I’ve had just about enough of these incidents. Don’t the campus police at Shippensburg U. have a minimum criterion for “suspicious”? Was it necessary to call the state police and the bomb squad? A faculty member dropping off a box of papers by a recycling bin at a semi-rural university simply ought not to have to deal with this kind of nonsense. It’s just insane.It must have been a harrowing experience, but fortunately it ended without further incident.
The University wrote a statement to Ali following this incident, but Kazim Ali isn’t at all satisfied with it, presumably because the university wouldn’t want to acknowledge that Ali’s race was a factor in an incident where his civil rights may have been violated:
The university’s bizarrely minimal statement lets everyone know that the “suspicious package” beside the trashcan ended up being, indeed, trash. It goes on to say, “We appreciate your cooperation during the incident and remind everyone that safety is a joint effort by all members of the campus community.”
What does that community mean to me, a person who has to walk by the ROTC offices every day on my way to my own office just down the hall–who was watched, noted, and reported, all in a days work? Today we gave in willingly and whole-heartedly to a culture of fear and blaming and profiling. It is deemed perfectly appropriate behavior to spy on one another and police one another and report on one another. Such behaviors exist most strongly in closed and undemocratic and fascist societies.
The university report does not mention the root cause of the alarm. That package became “suspicious” because of who was holding it, who put it down, who drove away. Me.
It was poetry, I kept insisting to the state policeman who was questioning me on the phone. It was poetry I was putting out to be recycled. (link)
“Fascism” is a strong word, but sometimes you need to go there. Perhaps the key difference is, at least here the police have to adhere to basic concepts of due process. In a truly fascist society, none of that would apply. (We could, of course, debate matters such as Guantanamo Bay, CIA secret detention facilities, the practice of “rendition,” and the currently blurry line between “interrogation techniques” and torture. Those practices by themselves certainly don’t make the U.S. a “fascist” society, but they do force us to consider the troubling gap between the rhetoric of democracy and its actual practice in the U.S. under the present administration.)
As a side note, the “—- while brown” meme seems to be one that has legs. Here are some other posts at SM that use the term:
Flying While Brown (Actually, quite a number of posts use this phrase.)
Shopkeeping while brown (Admittedly a more complicated incident — Operation Meth Merchant)
Camping While Brown (a post from Manish from before Sepia Mutiny; not sure what the title is about)
Amardeep, strange that you happen to post this on Earth Day.
Sad that recycling is now being added to the “while brown” list.
That being said… Today is Earth Day and I want to encourage the mutineers to figure out what their ecological footprints are. Check out http://www.myfootprint.org to find out what your eco-footprint is.
Happy Earth Day & Don’t let the man (however stupid he may be) get you down!
So wait, how did he know that the guy from the ROTC building called him in?
Happy f*cking Earth Day, Shippensburg University.
The “John Doe” movement has legs.
as long as conservatives continue to blame the victims of flight 93 for the crash, continue to second-guess people placed in situations so alien as to constitute a martian landscape (like a lone gunman on the loose) and continue to believe that existential danger trumps common sense and good judgement, we will continue to see cases like these.
At what point do sane people realize that this hypervigilancy that has been promoted since 9/11 is only giving them a false sense of safety, and only promotes to increase fear?
I’d love to see statistics on what percentage of money going to Homeland Security (or airline/campus security, in general) is wasted on false alarms like these (where of course race had nothing to do with it). Anybody know if this information is out there or how to find it?
Totally agree with Prof. Ali on the above. Right wing radio talk show hosts are a huge part of creation of this culture of fear. These merchants of fear make their living by keeping the people constantly on edge.
The idiot(s) who reported the poet recycling have zero common sense and need a little education. Why on earth would a “terrorist” recycle papers? Although I could be mistaken, I am pretty sure the average terrorist could care less about saving the earth.
Ugh!! I wish you had given a warning that that was that god-awful Michelle Malkin’s blog (or I guess I should’ve paid attention to where the link was taking me;)
It’s easier to blame the victim, I guess – gives you a sense that it won’t happen to you if you just report that suspicious looking brown guy..
Doesn’t sound much different from Debbie Schlussel’s opinions about Arab Americans and Arab people in general. I guess Indians too are sometimes confused with Middle Easterners, and hence this treatment.
When fear predominates, the fluidity of existence becomes congealed. Language contracts, assumptions are facts. In public, we are all at risk to varying degrees. And thus become slaves to mass hysteria, to other people’s / institution’s definitions. I do not assume the ethereal theories of political equality will win battles against the sweat of animal fears. I do greatly sympathize with what happened. However, I am not surprised.
In terms of constructive actions, consciousness raising in all its forms is all you can do. In less diverse areas, the task will always be more difficult. Go spread the Bad News.
People would prefer self security over fluidity. No democracy is safe once hysteria sets in. Democracy in itself is a fiction dependent on our unconscious and perhaps conscious desires to trust believe and imagine. When the propaganda of fear metastasizes, this fiction is made more obvious. Institutions, leaders political and not, artists, etc are the ones who can motivate the most people, who are not capable of thinking beyond their contracted world, to continue to believe in the fiction of democracy and equality.
You are either for them or against me. Thank you GWB.
I am speechless at the ignorance that continues to pervade this land.
Don’t say that, after all freedom is on the march!
As unpopular as this may sound, I think the people who call the authorities in such instances should be held accountable to some extent. They don’t realize that these false accusations have serious ramifications with peoples’ lives – they just think they are being “hyper-vigilant” with no strings attached.
gm, #7:
I don’t understand why you feel the need to generalize about terrorists like this. You must be unfamiliar with the infamous Symbianese Composting Army.
Apropos of nothing but today’s meetup, I wonder if Sunny Leone recycles?
And to gogol’s point above: then we should fall as a nation, because if reality is this malleable and our most treasured precepts can be shaken so thoroughly (by the death of a few thousand people! Tragic though those deaths are, I wonder if any one of the thousands of people who died in 9/11 would be happy with how the 350 million or so “survivors” have given up our most cherished ideals and allowed fucking morons to trample the Constitution in their name), then we as a civilization no longer deserve any form of the “supremacy” we think we hold.
I’m not afraid of terrorists. There! I’ve said it. I’m SO NOT FUCKING AFRAID OF TERRORISTS. I’m not even slightly afraid of them. They could set off a goddamn bomb in my apartment, and if I survived, I still wouldn’t be afraid of them. I’d be pissed that they blew up my HDTV and my goddamn XBox, but I wouldn’t be afraid. I don’t even understand what’s to be afraid of. Death by explosion? Is that somehow more dead than death by heart attack or death by car hitting you in the parking lot, or death by aneurysm brought on by ranting on the Mutiny overmuch?
This is what makes this situation tricky. What kind of ramifications do you have in mind ?
Things would be so much easy for brown people in the United States, if it were not for those 19 losers on that one september day of 2001.
I just wish some people here, would blame them somewhat for what brown people face after that day in 2001.
Regarding ramifications, a simple solution is possible. The Dept of Homeland Security should maintain a public list of frequent complainants, then discount the warnings of those who keep crying wolf by some suitable manner. If the issue at hand is to remove the prejudice from the minds of paranoid freaks like the ROTC dude there, then, a warning like this from the DHS will check repeat offenders. After the first couple of times, you are just the douchebag who we won’t listen to. I suppose, the fear itself, of losing credibility as a complainant should keep guys like the ROTC man there from thinking twice before making his accusations.
Clueless, not only have I blamed them, but I have gone so far as to distance myself from the criminal hatred that breeds terrorists like the ones in that September day in 2001. I have readily denounced their wanton cruelty and grieved with the victims and their families for their tragic loss. While I don’t presume to know how others have reacted, I happen to think almost everyone here has acted similarly.
The issue is not that terrorism is not denounced sufficiently. In the post 9/11 world, it is so obvious to any rational being, that it doesn’t bear repeating. The issue here is the culture of fear and paranoia, and the futility of racial profiling that stems from such irrational fear.
Yes, this certainly is tricky. Perhaps having very detailed and poignant questions asked by the authorities. For example, the numerous times I’ve called 911 when seeing an accident, etc., on the road, I think the operators have kept me on the phone for 30secs-1 min max. I would hope that someone calling in a suspicious package would hopefully be quizzed at considerably greater length. Perhaps even being forced to give their names (instead of remaining anonymous) or other identifying info and explicitly told by the operator that this is a serious issue and not to be mistaken by pranks, etc. – basically emphasizing the enormity of the situation. For example, several times either family members or friend have called the police to file a missing persons report or report a theft, etc. On each occasion, they weren’t treated very seriously – the officers expressed doubts, etc. (I imagine this is to sift through the B.S. cases from valid ones).
If a similar tactic would be utilized presently, that would perhaps help. Knowing that making a phone call wasn’t a fire and forget thing, but something that placed you in a registry, etc., would make people think twice. Also increased public awareness by the media, etc., about peoples’ lives who have been ruined by such claims. I would be willing to bet that Mr. Ali’s name will be placed on a list.
Just to be clear, I was never sympathetic in the first place. But after 9/11, I went to vigils to remember the victims and so on to publicly decry terrorism.
Spurious logic. If we frame it like that, then can’t we also say that things would be a lot easier for Americans if the American government didn’t piss off the Arab world by its blindsided support of Israel and choppy foreign policy in the Middle East? Because you can take it back way before 9/11, and the terrorists are pissed off about something.
And it’s not as if harassment of brown people began with 9/11. Iran/Contra anyone? The first Gulf War? The Oklahoma bombings? You want to cut off all the hydra’s heads, but where do you start?
While I am vehemently angry at the terrorists who destroyed the World Trade Center buildings, it’s much more difficult to reason with a terrorist group than it is to expect officials on every level – including the university – to uphold due process. There was a proper way to deal with Kazim Ali’s laughably suspicious activities; I’m sure the ROTC training manual has codified its best practices in how to deal with such situations. If they haven’t, well here’s a golden opportunity.
Your statement is basically normalizing the irrational fears that have entered the American psyche. It’s almost like saying, “Well, it sucks that innocent brown people are being harassed, attacked and killed, but the fear is understandable.” The day that anti-brown backlash becomes “understandable” because “they attacked us first” will be dark indeed. Oh wait, it’s already happened.
This happened on April 19th, 3 days after the virgina tech shooting. Maybe the ROTC were being extra carefull.
What happened to Mr Ali is a minor inconvenience compared to what happened to the Asian victims of riots in Uganda. This blog’s intimate friends like Msichana and Kali Billi have in no uncertain terms blamed the riot victims for their own lynchings and the bloggers seem to have accepted the ‘ root cause ‘ offered by the aforementioned commenters ( why else won’t they condemn those comments and instead invite Msichana to the latest SM meetup? )
Given that almost every terrorist these days commits terror in the name of Islam and looks brown, there’s much less deviant logic in accepting Mr Ali’s inconvenience. Newsweek’s recent censure of SM’s tolerance of stupid but dangerous comments was right on. They were wrong only in accusing SM of the opposite ideology.
LOL. You guys at SM are just a bunch of muck-rakers who really really need to stop raising a ruckus about stuff. In the country of your birth (or your parents’, or your grandparents’) they hack and burn and rape people based on the color of their skin or (fore)skins, and it barely makes the news. You should thank your stars for this country.
Poor Prof Ali might be shaken by his experience (I would be too) but WTF…they didnt hit him or touch him or even abuse him (things which police in the country of your birth -or your parents’ or your grandparents’- do as matter or routine based on mere suspicion)…and the college even said sorry. WTF do you expect them to do? Grovel on the floor and kiss his feet for trying to prevent a tragedy? Get a life, SM.
Expressing frustration does not need to be a zero-sum game. We can be irked/frustrated/outraged at both situations. There will always be a more horrific incident to one up another horrific incident. I haven’t been following the Uganda thread, but you’ve piqued my interest. In the meantime, let’s not belittle Kazam Ali’s experience as an “inconvenience” simply because he happened to share the same skin tone and religion as most Islamic terrorists. You know, most people are capable of discerning how much outrage is appropriate according to various fucked up situations.
While Randhir continues to sip on the Kool Aid, here’s the AP article on the Kazam Ali incident (no mention of Ali and the ROTC’s tactics):
http://www.yorkdispatch.com/pennsylvania/ci_5713095
Paper box triggers a false alarm at Shippensburg University THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Article Last Updated: 04/20/2007 11:14:53 AM EDT
SHIPPENSBURG — A state university canceled classes after a suspicious box was found outside an academic building, but an investigation confirmed it was no cause for alarm.
Shippensburg University announced the cancellation in e-mails to its 7,500 students and 800 employees Thursday after campus police were notified about the box around 3:45 p.m., school spokesman Peter Gigliotti said.
Police later determined the box contained used paper and had been placed next to a trash can outside the building by a university employee, Gigliotti said. Classes resumed today.
“It was an honest mistake,” Gigliotti said.
The school’s policy requires authorities to investigate any suspicious packages found on campus. Everyone’s vigilance has been heightened following a shooting attack earlier this week at Virginia Tech, where a gunman killed 32 people and himself, Gigliotti said.
“We told (students and employees) that if something doesn’t feel right, call university police,” he said.
Talk about spurious! Iran/Contra had to do with “harrassment” of “brown” people? Oklahoma City was meant to target “brown” people? Much ado about nothing. The supreme irony, of course, is that our upstanding ROTC hero (assumed to be white, though that is often not the case) could end up in the Army working for a turbaned, bearded Colonel named Singh, serving under a general named Abu Zaid.
Do you not know how to read? My point was that innocent Americans who looked brown/Middle Eastern were often the targets of xenophobic backlash after those incidents occurred. Learn to read before posting such bullshit.
Seriously though, did I miss it in the actual writing? How did he know that the ROTC guy called him in?
I fail to grasp the supreme irony. I think it would be well served if the upstanding ROTC hero actually did work for a South Asian supervisor. It would drill some perspective into his head.
If the color of your foreskin is pushing the general populace towards rape and violence, you should either cover up more often or just stop being stubborn and have your thing checked out by a doctor.
Haha totally! Except for the fact that Colonel Singh is a periodontist and Gen. Abizaid retired last month. Unless your “upstanding ROTC hero” ends up in the Dental Activity Command, he is just going to have accept the supremely unironic privilege of serving under an exotic white guy.
It could go both ways.
I understand the inconvenience and embarrassment that Mr. Ali must have experienced, but hasn’t anyone thought that maybe people taking action when they become suspicious could be a good thing? Look at all the warning signs that Seung-Hui was dangerous–stalking girls, no visitors the entire year, no friends, etc. and nobody really did anything. They did try to help him with some counseling, but even that didn’t help in the end.
It just seems like when something actually happens, we wonder why nobody said or did anything preemptively, and then when somebody does take preemptive action, we accuse them of being racist/prejudiced/whatever. I know that the ROTC guy (or whoever called him in) had suspicions, but think about it. If you saw a white guy (or a black guy, or whatever) leave a box somewhere (next to a recycling bin seems like a good idea because it’d be the last place someone would be suspicious about) and drive off, would you really not think twice about it? I think I might have my suspicions about that. I mean, why not just dump the papers into the recycling bin?
Realistically, however, I’m sure the caller was encouraged to take inform higher authorities because of the professor’s skin color. It’s a simple and unfair reality of the state of security in the US today.
Flowerly decals, poets, VW Beetle’s, all are understandably alarming and it’s wise to be vigilant. But Mr. ROTC guy, what really tripped you up? Be honest.
Was it the VW flower on the dashboard that set-off your inner terror alert system? Don’t mean to pry but did yours go up to Sparkling Salmon? It did? Like, oh my god, yesterday mine went to Sanguine Scarlet when I was at Blockbuster and I saw this DVD with this Arab guy on the cover until, like, I read it, and it was, like, Borat. LOL.
encouraged to inform sorry typo
Oh, and Randhir,
Please tell me you’re not subjecting the United States to the same standards that exist (or don’t exist) in South Asia. Hopefully the US can be expected to live up to the very “bar” which it had previously raised.
Hahaha….DJDP, thanks for the 3am laugh…what could be better!
Mine is currently set to “Hindu Brown.”
(Wait, are we talking about the terror alert system or colored foreskins? Come to think of it, “Hindu Brown” can be used to describe both.)
Sakshi – You’re welcome. @=)
I’ve had the argument about whether or not “John Does” should be held accountable for reporting “suspicious” people and activities with friends before, and it’s not an easy one. On the one hand you have the post 9/11 messages in American society about the need to be vigilant and report packages etc, and you can’t blame people for feeling a tad paranoid; but I think people underestimate the real hurt and damage to reputations done to someone who is falsely “called out” as suspicious. People who repeatedly call in a “tip” based on little more than racial prejudice should be discounted by any law enforcement authorities, and authorities who pursue such tips should be held accountable too, like airline staff who give in to customer paranoia. Airlines don’t have much time to react and are under pressure to take any suspicions very seriously to avoid tragedies, but surely they can be more judicious in deciding which complaints matter and which don’t.
I feel like there’s nothing anyone could have done! ridiculous…
Okay, after much deliberation I have created a color coded Terror Alert System and Foreskin Health Matrix that uses the same scale to denote the appopriate sense of urgency.
Hindu Brown – | Low | Peaceful, but Oppressed by Abrahamic Brown
Wheatish – | Guarded | Warning: Matrimonial May Occur
Saffron* – | Elevated | *Only used to describe balls
Black as the Last Banana – | High | Eligible for Quotas at IIT
Midnight in a Coal Mine – | Severe | General Populace Begins Rape and Violence
First of all, ROTC is a great program, but the students in it are sometimes perfect assholes. (I remember doing a group project in college where we had a ROTC guy in our team, he did just about nothing but we couldn’t get him to shut the fuck up about leadership and shit. When we presented our thing, we almost had to drag his uniformed ass offstage, and he still wouldn’t shut up.) Problem is, ROTCs think they are the privileged (in a uber-human sort of way) gentlemen on campus, and their privates snap to attention at the slightest flutter … they really do believe they can stand in for cops. The irony is that they haven’t the faintest fucking clue.
Second, WOO-HOO to the faculty member who stood up for Mr. Ali.
Third, this fellow randhir who commented before is a fool.
WTF? I should thank my stars that I don’t get hacked or burnt in this country because of my skin? Missing the point! The hacking and burning may happen elsewhere but it ISN’T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN HERE. That’s the whole idea behind this country. Would you drink a bottle of Evian with a cockroach in it simply because you were drinking tap water before?
It’s the even that makes it art. I guess you want the cockroach to bite your ass and cause your ears turn green before you take notice.
No! They did not. Read his webpage. The president denied (lame fool) it had anything to do with Ali’s ethnicity. This is as stupid as it is untrue. The ROTC moron who squawked and the cops who flew down were all looking for someone of Middle Eastern descent.
Finally, here’s some food for thought.
All these terror outfits claiming to protect Islam and the Muslim world … they cause grevious damage not only to the dead (by their bombs) but even more so to the living Muslims who must eventually become and remain targets of profiling and harassment. This is the sad and practical consequence of perpetrating terror.
Terrorists must be perfect morons. They take out a hundred, but cause everlasting grief to the thousands of their brethren who are still alive.
I guess it’s because they have special idiot-inducing cockroaches in their water.
No, in this respect they’re not morons, because that’s what they want. People who fly planes into buildings or blow themselves up on buses and tubes and incinerate innocent people are not bothered about the backlash against Muslim (much less Sikh or Hindu) people in the West — on the contrary, it is factored into their acts as a bonus, as it will ‘wake up’ the ‘ummah’ to the ‘struggle’. Their violence begets hate against innocents which will in turn (they hope) beget hatred back and perpetuate a cycle of hatred that is fertile soil for them. When an innocent ten year old Pakistani girl is spat on in Scotland or wherever, that is part of their gleeful payoff.
The fear terrorists try to create has little to do with bodily harm, but more to do with damaging free and open societies where we expect things like civil rights and acceptance.
I agree that what happened to the prof really sucked, but as much as I hate GWB, profiling, Gitmo, Michelle Malkin, et al. This incident, and others like them all happen because of what those a-hole terrorists did. I’m not naive, I understand that America and other western countries have long had “an invisible hand” in funding and arming many of the world’s terrorists. So while they are not totally excused from culpability, the blame for this lies mostly with terrorists and the people that stay silent while this sort of extremism is permitted to fester.
Jordanians cheering the arrival Black September – Guilty. Palestinians cheering 9/11 – guilty. The Iranian shopkeeper who I thought was just way to happy on 9/11 – guilty. These people and many more like them are the people to blame for what happened to Kazim. The Pakistanis held a huge rally against the extremist Red Mosque. They should actually just burn it to the ground as it has already been ruled illegal and their members kidnap people for “indecency” and their mullahs issued fatwas for hugging. I am glad for the protests, but in this case, it is not enough.
Again Just what is the big effing deal. I am not a muslim but i have been detained after 9-11. It was a nuisance but not a big deal This is just bitching over nothing. How many times do people get pulled over after an amber alert when traveling with a child?
Sepia mutiny is turning into DeMacacarey lately.
Totally agree. He was definitely trying to prevent a tragedy, intentions were completely noble. It’s like after the Oklahoma city bombing, I logged onto a white-male frequented board, you might have heard of it, called, “WhiteyMcWhite.com”? I suggested that all white males should be prevented from renting trucks. But this strange thing happened… people said things like
“Just because Tim McVeigh was white, doesn’t mean all other white males are bad too” I couldn’t believe my eyes and ears. The shear idiocy of it.
I marvel at the stupidity of the guy notifying the cops. What terrorist would try to blow up a recycling bin? Maybe one against environmentalism? Again, I laugh in his general direction.
The terrorists hate the freedom to recycle. They also are supporters of John Kerry. And only terrorists write poetry.
This is a really sad incident. To put it all in some general context, I am tempted to reproduce a quote about Pennsylvania from Jim Carville, who was Bill Clinton’s campaign manager. He said “Pennsylvania is Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in between”. I don’t think he meant that as a compliment to Alabama. Really, the hill-and-valley ‘town and country’ of Central Pennsylvania has a rather insular culture.
Frankly, one of the most curious things about the story to me was that Shippensburg University had hired someone named Kazim Ali in their literature program! And when I think about it, it’s not really very curious at all that the literature department shared a building with the ROTC Program.
Most of central Pennsylvania is only a few hours drive from NJ, MD and NY (unlike the real Alabama) – yet it is a world away culturally and in terms of the degree of acceptance of the ‘racial other’. In places like that, the post-Sept 11 story is just a tiny blip on the general racial attitude, which has never been very friendly or accepting. A ‘racialized economic structure’ never really took hold in those parts, and so, not surprizingly, there aren’t very many non-whites there. The few that do exist are very visible, extremely strongly resented, and are objects of generalized xenophobic suspicion.