It's Time to Boycott Arizona

dreadgeek · 11-29-2010, 04:02 PM

I wanted to go back to something a couple of folks brought up yesterday which is the inherent danger of demonizing a group of people.

On Friday, I woke to find out that a 19 year old Somali immigrant had been arrested by the FBI because he had conspired to set off a bomb at the local X-mas tree lighting in downtown Portland. This young man is a naturalized citizen and has been here since he was very young. On the news site where I was following this story (Huffington Post) there were numerous comments of the 'arrest 'em all let God sort them out' variety. On Sunday, I woke to find out that this young man's mosque in Corvalis (just south of Portland) had been firebombed.

Now, this kid had not been radicalized in his mosque--he went and found radicalism on his own. No one was hurt this time but the key is this time. If you make Muslims 'The Problem' then burning mosques is the next logical step.

My concern with SB 1070 and a law in Oklahoma making Sharia law illegal (and no, NO jurisdiction in the United States does nor can it ever make Sharia law authoritative without a Constitutional amendment repealing the First Amendment--anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you) is that their purpose is to demonize the Other. SB 1070 isn't about making sure that Sven is on the first KLM flight back to the Hague the very hour his visa expires. It isn't about making certain that Bonnie from Sheffield isn't on the first boat back to England when her visa expires. SB 1070 is about making sure that Pablo, from Mexico, and Isabel, from El Salvador are made to know that they are not welcome here. No one looking like my wife is going to get picked up on suspicion of being in the country illegally--she has red hair and hazel eyes. No, they are going to be looking for someone with darker skin, darker hair and brown eyes. It may make us all feel better to pretend that it is otherwise but half-an-hour with just 20th century United States history will put the lie to that. (And yes, I'm quite aware that Irish, Poles and Italians all faced discrimination--keep in mind that with each group there was SOME phenotypic difference that made them easy to spot whether that was accent, name, skin color, religion.)

Now there is serious discussion about repealing or changing the 14th Amendment so that people born here are not automatically citizens. The 14th Amendment is written the way it was for a reason--to keep citizenship *away* from the vagaries of outrageous political fortune. We mess with it at our peril. NO person of color should look at any attempt to amend the 14th Amendment lightly (and yes, it is something that the effects would disproportionately fall upon people of color--despite all our feel good, kumbaya singing most people, when they hear the word "American" think of someone several shades lighter than my brown skinned self whether they want to or not).

Cheers
Aj

11-29-2010, 04:02 PM	#11
dreadgeek Power Femme How Do You Identify?: Cinnamon spiced, caramel colored, power-femme Preferred Pronoun?: She Relationship Status: Married to a wonderful horse girl Join Date: Oct 2009 Location: Lat: 45.60 Lon: -122.60 Posts: 1,733 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 1,132 Thanked 6,844 Times in 1,493 Posts Rep Power: 21474852	A Demon-haunted world I wanted to go back to something a couple of folks brought up yesterday which is the inherent danger of demonizing a group of people. On Friday, I woke to find out that a 19 year old Somali immigrant had been arrested by the FBI because he had conspired to set off a bomb at the local X-mas tree lighting in downtown Portland. This young man is a naturalized citizen and has been here since he was very young. On the news site where I was following this story (Huffington Post) there were numerous comments of the 'arrest 'em all let God sort them out' variety. On Sunday, I woke to find out that this young man's mosque in Corvalis (just south of Portland) had been firebombed. Now, this kid had not been radicalized in his mosque--he went and found radicalism on his own. No one was hurt this time but the key is this time. If you make Muslims 'The Problem' then burning mosques is the next logical step. My concern with SB 1070 and a law in Oklahoma making Sharia law illegal (and no, NO jurisdiction in the United States does nor can it ever make Sharia law authoritative without a Constitutional amendment repealing the First Amendment--anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you) is that their purpose is to demonize the Other. SB 1070 isn't about making sure that Sven is on the first KLM flight back to the Hague the very hour his visa expires. It isn't about making certain that Bonnie from Sheffield isn't on the first boat back to England when her visa expires. SB 1070 is about making sure that Pablo, from Mexico, and Isabel, from El Salvador are made to know that they are not welcome here. No one looking like my wife is going to get picked up on suspicion of being in the country illegally--she has red hair and hazel eyes. No, they are going to be looking for someone with darker skin, darker hair and brown eyes. It may make us all feel better to pretend that it is otherwise but half-an-hour with just 20th century United States history will put the lie to that. (And yes, I'm quite aware that Irish, Poles and Italians all faced discrimination--keep in mind that with each group there was SOME phenotypic difference that made them easy to spot whether that was accent, name, skin color, religion.) Now there is serious discussion about repealing or changing the 14th Amendment so that people born here are not automatically citizens. The 14th Amendment is written the way it was for a reason--to keep citizenship away from the vagaries of outrageous political fortune. We mess with it at our peril. NO person of color should look at any attempt to amend the 14th Amendment lightly (and yes, it is something that the effects would disproportionately fall upon people of color--despite all our feel good, kumbaya singing most people, when they hear the word "American" think of someone several shades lighter than my brown skinned self whether they want to or not). Cheers Aj __________________ Proud member of the reality-based community. "People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up." (Terry Pratchett)