Racism Against Middle Easterns for Terrorism

All throughout US history, there has been a problems among the public regarding race and discrimination. Most of the racism in American history were situations where African-Americans were the subjectsof the racist acts. That has since died down, though it hasn't gone away. Now it's more level that it has ever been, meaning that all races, are the subject of racism, from people of other races. Something that will always occur is discrimination, but rarely do ever we hear it being broadcasted. Some of the discrimination is acceptable but most of it is not.

Acceptable discrimination would be if seven Middle Eastern men tried to get on an American Airlines flight wearing Al-Quaida T-shirts, and they were forced to cover them up, for the comfort of other passengers on the plane. Anyone who thinks it should be okay for anyone, regardless of their ethnicity, to get away with something that must have been born after September 11, 2001. Flights and terrorism are obviously a soft subject in the United States, so common sense should tell a person not to do such a thing. What Americans really do need to realize is that Middle Eastern people are not terrorists. Islamic extremists are terrorists, and they are all over the world. With that said, some Americans have since mistaken ethnic Middle Eastern people as terrorists or supporters of terrorism and have discriminated against them because of it.

In 2006 at New York's JFK airport, an airline passenger was forced to cover up the shirt he was wearing that displayed an Arabic script on it. Now that is an example of unacceptable discrimination. Some of us many feel that it was necessary to take action, especially because of September 11th, but just because a shirt had an Arabic script on it doesn't mean that it had anything to do with terrorism. Raed Jarrar, a United States resident, was told that wearing an Arabic inscribed shirt in an airport was like wearing a T-shirt in a bank that says I'm a robber! Jarrar's shirt said: "we will not be silent," in Arabic. Misjudgment of this kind should be punishable, and according to reports following this situation, it is punishable.

Raed Jarrar, sued and received a $240,000 pay out due to the misjudgment. Two US Transportation Security Authority officials and the Jet Blue Airways are the ones who ended up paying Mr. Raed Jarrar. This situation should help future freedom of speech problems but the problem is with our stereotypes. Before September 11th, American citizens considered all Middle Eastern men and women 7-Eleven and convenient store owners. After September 11th, American citizens are viewing Middle Eastern people as terrorists. When serial killers and rapists commit to their crimes, we don't go around discriminating against people who look like them. So we should not treat every person of a Middle Eastern background like they are Al-Quaida members.