Conveniently, the preceding letters to the editor concerning the increased security at airports — “Proponents of airport searches beware: surrendering rights has no end in sight” (ODE Nov. 22) and “TSA full body scans implemented just before holiday season begins” (ODE Nov. 23) — failed to confront the lurking imbalanced treatment that Arab- and Muslim-Americans routinely face in our nation’s airports and gateway centers.
The message is clear: It is appalling and intolerable for the majority of Americans to be subjected to “pat downs” and immensely powerful full-body scanners as a matter of policy, obstructing and inhibiting their rights as innocent members of society to go from A to B.
However, it’s taken for granted that those same rights have been consistently denied to Middle Eastern, Arab and Muslim-American men, women and children alike, as they are consistently “randomly searched” and/or detained, without probable cause or reasonable suspicion.
Muslim-American women passing through metal detectors without setting them off are selected for secondary screenings because they wear a hijab. These are not single, isolated instances.
The expectation of people of color to endure the presumption of guilt until proven innocent — where safety and security are a means to demonize them — is nothing short of institutionalized double standards and racism.
I do believe Americans’ rights are under attack, as the first letter articulates, “surrendering rights has no end in sight.”
Yet the one example cited, of Yasir Afifi in Santa Clara tracked by the FBI, failed to mention the student was Arab-American, or that he was targeted because of his heritage. And precisely because of that reason, it is acceptable in our American cultural climate, saying nothing of the countless examples of systematic targeting of innocent Arab-Americans, Muslim-Americans and activists.
The “War on Terror” hits home.
Yet our American moral compass goes whack only as the rest of Americans are now confronted with extended delays and searches (which Middle Eastern, Arab and Muslim Americans have suffered for years), with the associated feelings of insignificance and of being an outsider in your own country.
Just as instructive, the second letter highlights the stirring debates of how unhealthy these scanners are to humans.
The health and psychological effects of a humiliated child being singled out because his or her name put him under suspicion, and taken to a secret room and questioned, is relegated as insignificant. After all, media portrayals denigrating and victimizing Arabs and Islam for over a century justify such views.
Arab-American invisibility is therefore complete: punish “them,” shut out their stories and experiences from the American consciousness, but protest those same policies and tribulations which now pose an inconvenience to “innocent” Americans.
So where do we go from here? By all means protest, if you feel it violates your dignity and privacy. It’s your right.
Then demand the same standards you apply to yourselves for every American, resident and person. The stories and experiences of our society’s victims linger; can you see or hear them underneath the shrouds of misinformation and prejudice? I suggest you try.
Nelson Mandela was right: “Your freedom and mine cannot be separated.” Happy flying.
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