When I was young, I used to get peculiar looks from people who couldn’t decide if I was Indian or Chinese. They’d frown and squint at me, viewing my profile from several angles just to decide if I was something familiar. Then they’d say “Oh, he’s chinese,” or “Oh, he’s indian,” or better yet, “He’s eurasian”. I’d feel a mixture of amusement and irritation at all the guessing, pointing and scrutiny.
Amusement because of this fundamental need to classify you, to typify you and irritation for the very same reasons. It’s as if people immediately shift points of reference or relation to you once they’ve made up their minds. The negative consequence, of course, is outright dismissal; if they classify you as something they don’t like or prefer, the barriers shoot up and won’t come down.
The most amusing reaction I’ve had so far to my mixed parentage is a nervous sort of solicitude; they can’t decide what you are, you speaka da engrish and therefore you must be some foreign devil, OR, and this is where it gets slightly funny, they treat you delicately. Why is it funny? Well because they view your (or, that is, my) mixed parentage as a sort of dysfunction, a handicap for which I am to be held blameless.
Ok, so it’s not that funny, but I’m sure you can see how sometimes you just have to laugh at the absurdity of it all.
I guess it might seem different for people who do not have the “problem” that I have, I guess it must be worse — or at the very least, very straightforward. If you’re Indian, Middle Eastern, Eastern European, Chinese, etc. it’s easy for people to typify you, to classify you. In an instant, a stranger will force on you, another stranger, a template of wants, desires, aspirations, bad habits, opinions and such. Suddenly you’re not who you are anymore, but a representative, a subset of an ethnicity.
And it’s not just about ethnicity, is it? What about beliefs? I’m sure it’s just as easy to typify a Protestant, a Muslim or a Buddhist; what they are supposed to be like, why you think they belief such and such, etc. I suppose that’s the worst sort of tyranny to impose on another person. If you’re a Muslim and if I immediately assume you agree with the aspirations of all terrorists, I have therefore imprisoned you in the image of my views.
In that same regard, I don’t know how the other “ethnic groups” in the UK are handling it. This evening, I came across this newsbit: “Ethnic groups ‘accept searches’”. To quote,
People of ethnic origin will understand police stopping them on London’s transport system after the attacks, a senior black officer has said.
The National Black Police Association’s Ch Supt Ali Dizaei said this would be true as long as people were treated courteously and given an explanation.
I don’t know what would inspire a statement like this. Are “Other ethnicities” in the UK “feeling the heat”? I can’t speak for them, certainly, but I get the feeling that there is an anxious desire to present a cooperative face forward, a willingness to identify with Britons, a willingness to do the ‘right’ thing.
What I wonder is if there is a realization that this has made an unconscious appeal to the imaginary fact that “Other ethnic group” is either:
a) A subset of “Muslim”, or more likely
b) Is identical to “Muslim”
I can just imagine my dear cousin, a very Catholic doctor, screaming at the thought of being labeled, with that one brushstroke, a Muslim; and she lives in Leeds, what’s more. Just so we’re clear, I’m assuming the authorities are assuming that all terrorists are Muslims (or radicalized Muslims, if you prefer).
On a more rational level, I can’t help but sympathize with the authorities; their casebooks are probably full of profiles of possible terrorists, and recent experience (except for Richard Reed) has borne out the fact that most if not all terrorists have been “Muslims” and of “Other ethnic groups”. Richard Reed apparently is the exception to this rule. This is how it’s described in that article:
But a British Transport Police (BTP) spokesman told the BBC News website that the force did not intend to ’single out’ any particular community.
“Clearly if we are looking for people and being operationally efficient, we have got to target the people who we think are maybe involved,” he said.
“It is going to be disproportionate. It is going to be young men, not exclusively, but it may be disproportionate when it comes to ethnic groups.”
Shami Chakrabarti, chief executive if civil rights group Liberty, said the move played into the hands of bombers.
She said: “If you search people of a particular race or description while letting others through, it doesn’t take long for a terrorist group to learn ways of placing their lethal cargo with those who don’t meet the profile.”
It’s the Richard Reeds they may have to look out for. When identifying an enemy, you try to present it with a face. If a face is not forthcoming, if you didn’t have the face of Osama Bin Laden as terrorism’s poster boy, you grind down to the qualities that typify your usual terrorist. You know terrorists are usually radicalized Muslims. Therefore you narrow the field further. Then you also know that terrorists are of a certain age group; you narrow it still further. You realize that terrorists are mostly, say, Pakistani nationals; so you narrow it down to Pakistani nationals who are muslims and of a certain age group. There, you have your population of suspects. You interrogate, incarcerate and bully all, you “shake the tree” till something drops.
The million dollar question is: how else can this be done? If another Richard Reed pops up, it’ll be another variable to consider and, if said variable does not make an impact on the overall gathered data of terrorist profiles, it will be filed away as an anomaly yet again.
I wonder if “other ethnic groups” see the absurd humour of all this. Maybe not, because while I have the luxury of being in a country least likely to be targeted by terrorists, they’ve already had people pay with their lives. Unfortunately, the “solution” is race-based, religion-based profilling, one legitimized step towards legitimized bigotry.
