By Veena Dubal, Staff Attorney, National Security and Civil Rights Program
Yesterday, was a difficult day for me.
I spent the morning “dialoguing” with a former Republican Senator, a conservative law professor, and the director of a non-profit that works against “big government” (among others) on issues of race in America. We debated everything for an educational television program: from the use of race in law enforcement to affirmative action.
During the course of this two hour program, I tried to maintain a countenance of civility while listening to a white man deploy narratives of “personal responsibility” while talking about black men and violence. After abstractly opining on “racism in America” for the taping, I walked back to our offices in Chinatown in the drizzly San Francisco rain and thought about my clients whose lives were plagued by the complexities and intersections of racism and imperialism.
My ruminations became concretely tangible by mid-afternoon. A low income Arab Muslim American couple came into our offices to see if we could help them fight the last two years of racist torment that they have endured. The husband had been unfairly discriminated against at work; their family was being surveilled by local police; they had been questioned by the FBI; they had their bank account closed suddenly and without explanation; and they had been stopped, interrogated, and searched when coming back “home” after international travel. When the wife asked why I thought all of this was happening to them even though they are innocent American citizens, I struggled to explain what she already knew: they are victims of institutionalized racism, a racism that begins with U.S. foreign policy and ends with their lives, a racism that terrorizes them everyday.
Later that evening, after an exhausting day of grappling theoretically and tangibly with some of the ugliest elements of humanity, I was eager to forget about the woes of the world and go home to my family. I turned off my monitor, took a deep breath, and began my walk out the door. On my way, I was stopped. “Did you hear about what happened at Fort Hood?” Begrudgingly, I backtracked to my desk and checked the news. The more I read, the more infuriated and hurt I felt.
Like many people who look like me, I was angry that I did not even have the space to grieve over the loss of life. I was too busy decrying the violence so as to defend myself, my family, and my community. Although no readily apparent motive for the senseless murders existed, the newspaper reports and investigators presumed one, and searched for facts to fulfill their prophecy. Nidal is Arab, Nidal is Muslim, Nidal is religious, Nidal wanted to marry a hijabi, Nidal was unhappy about U.S. occupation. Nidal Malik Hassan was not just an assassin; he quickly became a homegrown Muslim extremist.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that Fort Hood has seen senseless violence. Just a few months ago, a 21-year-old 1st Cavalry Division soldier shot dead his lieutenant and then killed himself. Did anyone hear about that? Did anyone call him a “suicide bomber”? Do we remember his race or religious identity? When, in 1991, George Hennard smashed his pickup truck through a window of Luby’s Cafeteria window in nearby Killeen, Texas, and fired on the lunchtime crowd killing 22 people and wounding at least 20 others, did anyone call him a terrorist or an extremist? Hennard was condemned as a sick and mentally ill man. His willingness to kill innocents was seen as criminal act that stemmed from a perverse criminal mind – not from one overcome by political or religious extremism.
Needless to say, I went home overcome and overwhelmed with grief – what a complex and scary world we live in.
Today, I have wanted to take a moment to mourn the lives that were lost yesterday. I have wanted to cry for the victims and their families. But there hasn’t been time. In between the deluge of post 9/11 civil rights cases I’m working on, I’m too worried about my family and my friends. I’m too worried about how they will become victims in the all-too-certain racist revenge backlash that we’ll see against people of color who are Muslim or perceived to be so (nevermind that we still don’t know why Nidal actually initiated the killing spree). I’m too worried about who we are as a nation that cannot mourn this tragedy without pointing an uncertain and uninformed finger at the “extremist heart” of its perpetrator and all who resemble him.
