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Is
the Incarnation of Profiling a Terrorist Weapon Today?
By
Sherman
N. Miller
Since following the terrorist attack in this country on September 11,
2001, we oftentimes find ourselves stopping to reassess what is creeping
into the United
States of America’s national culture.
Each generation seems to need a villain class. In the
U.S., Black Americans heretofore have
carried the dubious distinction of being the disdained class, and this
was encapsulated in the term, “nigger.”
Today the overwhelming use of this racial epithet by Black rap artists
has diminished some of its charge by the younger generations in America’s
culture. Nevertheless, Blacks over forty know of its yesteryear’s
demeaning label, and you can expect an adverse reaction when they hear
“nigger.”
However, the above scenario is losing its validity since September 11.
In a chat with a Black person who is a member of the “Black Talented
Tenth,” I shuddered when listening to this person espouse his belief.
This person expressed a strong fear of people of Arab descent, and is
now paying attention to Arab people or Middle Eastern people even at
work.
It is common knowledge that racial profiling devastated the image of
Black Americans in the economic mainstream. Hence, I challenged this
person to realize that Blacks profiling Arab and Middle Eastern people
was just as bad as White folks profiling Blacks. The person’s retort was
that Blacks commit crimes such as stealing, but not mass murder.
What came from our chat was that Black America no longer has a monopoly
on being the scourge of United States of America culture.
Furthermore, Black Americans must worry that they do not find themselves
vilifying other groups when we ourselves are still teetering on the
bottom rung of the upward mobility ladder.
America
is presently undergoing a paradigm shift where we must factor the fear
of terrorist actions into our everyday psyche. What is disquieting is
our nation is made up of many subcultures and religious believers thus
offering an opportunity for terrorists to put fissures in our national
unity by developing new “nigger” groups. Terrorists may attempt to
exploit using a particular ethnic or racial group to commit their
atrocities.
On the other hand, imagine what would happen to the national psyche if
we found out that a prominent U.S. ethnic group is behind the
present bio-terrorism scare that is exploiting Anthrax as a
psychological weapon?
Do we vilify all members of that group? No, that would be silly. Thus,
it is not okay to vilify all Muslins or Arab Americans because a few
terrorists exploited weaknesses in our system to destroy innocent
American lives.
The United States
cannot afford to broadcast to the world that we will start vilifying any
of our subclasses that share a common heritage with our adversaries at
the moment. Surely, if America does not utilize the strengths of its
present diverse population today, we might expect our enemies to turn
this strength into a weakness by precipitating the creation of an America
tomorrow where racial and cultural infighting leads to our downfall.
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