At first glance: The profiling of Terrorists

On September 11^th, of 2001, the actions of the terrorist group, Al Qaeda, devastated America and shocked the world. Two planes hijacked by the terrorists were crashed into the Twin Towers killing thousands of people, Americans and peoples of other nationality from one of 80 different countries according to Michael Eidenmuller on “AmericanRhetoric.com” in his translation of George W. Bush’s speech regarding 9/11. In the speech following the attack given by former President George Bush, he addresses not only the America and its countrymen, but is addressing all countries across the world. He calls for the peoples to come together as one. Eidenmuller translates “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,” (4). George W. Bush, with support from such statement, has used the global ties from the attack on our nation to split the world. All nations that do not wish to pick a side seemingly have no other choice than to be considered a threat in the mind of George W. Bush. With the social status of race heavily expressed in the speech given by Bush, he justifies the support of America and justifies the hatred and prejudice against the Islamic Al Qaeda.

One example of speech that reflects the racial aspect of Bush’s speech is the quote “An attack on one is an attack on all. The civilized world is rallying to America’s side… Terror, unanswered, can not only bring down building, it can threaten the stability of legitimate governments,” (Eidenmuller 4). He calls Americans civilized, and Americans being a race of its own, while the terrorists being a separate race. What George W. Bush says allows you to picture the Americans from the terrorists, and by that I mean you can physically imagine the Americans, either white or black, and separately you can imagine the terrorists who are brown skinned. This is because of the implications that Bush has involved with his speech. George W. Bush frequently uses the word Islam and Muslims. He says this to show that we have identified the group of people that had done the heinous act against the United States of America, along with specifically identifying them as “Al Qaeda,” (Eidenmuller 3). The only trouble is that when Bush continuously repeats the terms Islam and Muslim, he brings attention to them in a negative manner even though he had no intent of doing so. By continuously saying those words, you continue to relate that race of people to Al Qaeda and relate them to terrorist activity. Then at this point any person that is seen that is Muslim is suspected of being a terrorist and commits acts of terror. With this ideal in play in the speech, it plays a larger role in differentiating the role of race in being American versus being Muslim, and further yet, you relate being Muslim and the skin color of brown with terrorism in general. When you picture American, you envision white primarily and black too. But the last thing you relate to being American is brown, or, being Muslim. This is due to the portrayal of terrorists in writings or speeches such as President Bush’s and the fact that the Muslim people don’t relate that well to Americans due to color or even religion, making the racial profile of Muslims become grouped together as one bad egg at first glance.

http://www.shoebat.com/blog/2012/01/25/identifying-terrorist-links-is-now-racist/

In a blog titled, “Identifying Terrorist links is now racist,” on the Walid Shoeboat Blog page, the discussion about racial profiling and whether it is truly a bad thing or not arises. In a quote about an airlines pilot, it is said that “The pilot, a Muslim, was judged a security risk because of his close links to two alleged extremists suspected of ‘planning to use an aircraft as part of a hostile or terrorist act’.” The pilot seemingly had links to alleged extremists, but the best question would be what kind of ties. The trouble the portrayal of people in the media is too vague. The man had links to two extremists sure, but that link could be something distant like the pilot is second cousins with one of the men but does not keep in touch. On the other hand it could be that two or all of them are best friends and the suspect was truly in cahoots with the extremists. Without specifics, people believe what they want to, and that is the point when people’s individual levels of racial ideals play in. People who follow media could only be getting half of the story but because they have heard that the terrorists that bombed the United States were Muslim, they have a racially influenced belief in the situation. Not all Muslims are terrorists, and not all terrorists are Muslim either, but the more they are used together in writing or in speech, even if it’s to try and tell that not all Muslims should be seen as terrorists, it still puts the thought of Muslim terrorists into the minds of people and they have been influenced into relating and molding the two separate aspects into a stereotype. Another quote from the Walid Shoeboat Blog site is “A British airline pilot arrested over an alleged terrorist plot is claiming racial and religious discrimination after losing his job.” This shows what could possibly be the other side of the argument. This states that the pilot was fired over an alleged terrorist plot, and if his involvement is verified and he is truly engaging in terrorist activities, then the stereotype truly was correct this time.

The Walid Shoeboat Blog claims that “Identifying terrorists as terrorists will one day be racist. With terrorism being related more and more related to simply being Muslim because of media and worried mind, people may be hesitant at first when they see a brown skinned person, but without racism and without stereotyping, you would have any idea regarding what a terrorist may look like. The terrorists in the world should be hated for the killings of innocent people and should face punishment, but unfortunately, the same stigma’s we use to identify the heinous murderers also complicates the lives of innocent people who share the same race as the terrorist.

Its hard to Relate: Black Social Stereotypes

Its hard to Relate: Black Social Stereotypes

Michael Omi in his writing, “In Living Color: Race and American Culture,” talks about racism in society, but he also speaks of how society supports it. He tells that the issue of race is not confined to popular culture, but the symbols that the social life creates. This means that the problem is not the race of the person, and the problem is not the people that are onlookers to the media. The problem is the few that make the spectacle of that race to start certain views about that race and the evils they commit. An example of this is seen back during the times when prohibition kicks in and the slaves are being freed. The white members of the Ku Klux Klan go around and start burning crosses in the yards of black folks and begin lynching them in claims that they raped their white daughters. The black men had done nothing wrong, but where killed and they did not receive justice because the white men made a claim against them that was not questioned because of the effects of discrimination. This is seen in the book, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” by Harper Lee. Tom Robinson, who happened to be a black field help in the town, was accused of rape by Bob Ewell of his teenage daughter. No Lynching had occurred, but a “fair trial” had taken place where the man was tried. The end result of this trial though was in the favor of Bob Ewell. The attorney, Atticus Finch, had proved that it could not have and that Tom Robinson did not rape and injure Bob Ewell’s daughter and give her the bruises she wore, and that it was her father that did it. The people though, still with post slavery and discrimination lying heavily in their hands, they felt that he was guilty still, and if not that they thought he was guilty, then that convicting him guilty was the right thing to do anyway. This being only a book, but it shows the true feelings of the white southerners at this time.

If not the book then, the movie “A Time To Kill,” shows more of the societal injustices that whites showed to blacks and still do today in one way or another. The aspect though is that “we utilize race to provide clues about who a person is and how we should relate to him or her. In the movie, a little girl black girl named Tanya was brutally raped and beaten by a couple of white southern men, and when they were going to court for their jail sentencing, Tanya’s father shot the two men to death. This put the man, Carl Lee Hailey on trial for the murder of two white men. The first job of the lawyer for the accusers was to remove all black males from the selection for jurors which he did. Without a black man in the juror box, there was nobody that he could relate to. With only white jurors making the judgments, Hailey’s lawyer had to try to relate the white jury to his black defendant, so he attempted this by telling the story of Tanya’s rape and assault. Without saying any names, the jury still knew it was Hailey’s daughter so insinuations of course were that she was black. But at the end of the gruesome story, he told the jury to imagine she was white. This put the jury in the black defendants shoes, it made them realize the pain that the man sitting before them had to feel and by thinking that the girl was white, they thought about their own families and children and finally could relate to the terrible grief and fury that put the man in front of them in such a situation. 

In Omi’s writing, he also talks about the stereotype of the black best friend. In a television show or movie with the black best friend, it seems that the majority of the attention is on the white friend and the black best friend is more for support. The black best friend is there to help the main character out of binds, to back him up, but it never seems that the black best friends has any problems of his own and does not ask for anything in return. This is very strong in the Television series, “Blue Mountain State,” where the main character, Thad Castle, gets in all sorts of shenanigans, from good to bad, and in the end, he needs help to fix a problem. The first person that always has his back is his black best friend, Larry, who does everything that he can to help out in the situation, but he himself never has a problem that he personally needs help with. Larry though, when he helps, at times makes Thad appear less intelligent and claims so of the courage. So although Larry himself asks for nothing in return for his help, he claims his own victory and feeling of achievement from providing assistance. The other main character, Alex Moran, is best friends with a white guy named Sammy, but both of them have problems that both help solve, and at the times of assistance, neither underscores the others intelligence or their courage. This myth is to show that black friends are submissive and will do anything that they are needed to help do, such as they had once done back during slavery. His act of racial equality in movies by trying to integrate the cast, if written in a certain way, contains an underlying form of discrimination. If you look hard enough, you will inevitably find discrimination of race in articles of todays culture, but that is because race is the views of people and that is what pop culture is.

http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&safe=off&biw=1366&bih=667&gbv=2&tbm=isch&tbnid=Pi4Kzei3d8SqkM:&imgrefurl=http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/article.php%3FIssueNum%3D11%26id%3D3204&docid=wr2I1MIrgRoIWM&imgurl=http://www.pasadenaweekly.com/site_images_upload/legacy/media/11/citybeat02.jpg&w=350&h=297&ei=4yhRT83iJaSN0QHXvJDBDQ&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=459&vpy=184&dur=192&hovh=207&hovw=244&tx=138&ty=133&sig=116302792573562964027&page=1&tbnh=144&tbnw=177&start=0&ndsp=24&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Time_to_Kill_(film)