Harvel Gill And Its Impact On The Asian American Community

“No one talked about the concept of cultural diversity as a mosaic or as a tapestry of multi-colored threads that when woven together created a vibrantly rich and textured fabric. “Real Americans” were white. “(147) Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston gives her audience an eye opening account of how The United States, a country which prides itself on its diversity, is filled with prejudice and discrimination wherever immigrants are concerned. Jeanne is a beast, she didn’t let anyone stop her from achieving her goals “Not even when I was told I should not continue with journalism major at San Jose State because I was ‘Oriental’ and a female. There were no jobs in the field. So I changed my major to social welfare. And when I was told again by the head of Juvenile Probation Services that they could not hire me as a probation officer because the community was not ‘ready’ for ‘Orientals,’ I did not protest”. Dealing with the same discrimination in my life I can fully relate to Jeanne, there really is nothing you can do but chalk it up and move on with life.

The “mold of a Muslim post 9/11 was anyone fitting the description of a Muslim, which was wearing a hijab for women and wearing a turban for men. If you went to a mosque, which was the Muslim house of worship, you were considered a Muslim. Anyone who fit that “mold” had a red flag put on them. For example, Rasha and her family were arrested and detained by the FBI in the middle of the night, “because they were being investigated for possible terrorism connections” (21). Due to the heightened level of security after the terrorist attacks of 9/11 committed by Muslim extremist; this family was targeted because of their religious beliefs. Ironically, the Muslim extremism that the terrorists of 9/11 depicted was a direct contrast of the true core Muslim values of honesty and compassion that Muslims are taught in their families. For instance, when she was young, Rasha’s parents taught her “the simple values of honesty, compassion and protecting her honor” (17). Readers can see that Rasha’s family valued their Muslim heritage and brought her up to value them as

It is obvious and no coincidence that violence and hate crimes have increased towards Sikhs following the events of 9/11, which is evident in the following excerpt of an article in Newsday. In the summer of 2004, Rajinder Singh Khalsa, a Sikh, was severely beaten by five men as they yelled anti-Muslim slurs. Today, he still has to go to the hospital several times a week and his injuries left him unable to work. His son, he said, was forced to leave college to work and care for him.(Friedman) Khalsa quickly insisted that legislation was needed to protect minorities who could be vulnerable after a terrorist attack or other types of racial or religious attacks. Khalsa and a friend were also attacked outside a Queens restaurant by five white men after they refused to remove their turbans, which is common bait for people who are looking to attack or harass "terrorists." The city responded to Khalsa's unfortunate experience by introducing a Backlash Mitigation bill, which is sponsored by Councilman David Weprin. This bill would allow the Office of Emergency Management to work with local city agencies including the police department to devise plans to protect potential victims of hate crimes. In

People from the Sikh religion are easily identifiable because they wear turbans for religious purposes. Often people outside the Sikh religion group Sikhs wearing turbans in the same category with the terrorists that caused 9/11. This misinformation has given rise to mistaken-identity related hate crimes against the Sikh people. For instance, the first anti-Muslim hate crime that occurred after 9/11 was actually against a Sikh man named Balbir Singh Sodhi. He managed a gas station in Mesa, Arizona and was gunned down by a man who wanted to kill “towel heads” for all the pain and suffering they caused the American people. This was only the first case of mistaken identity that would traumatize the Sikh community for years to

Sikhs, who follow Indian religions, were targeted because they wear turbans, stereotypically associated with Muslims. Balbir Singh Sodhi was fatally shot on September 15, 2001 in Mesa, Arizona. Like others, Sodhi, a Sikh, was mistaken for a Muslim. According to the FBI report, hate crime incidents targeting people and institutions that identified with the Islamic faith increased from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001. Mosques were attacked as well as other religious buildings, including a Hindu temple, which was hit with a firebomb.

Immediately affter 9/11, Muslim Americans were victims to more frequent hate crimes and bias incidents. According to the FBI (2002), hate crimes against Muslims rose 1,600 percent between the years of 2000 and 2001; going from 12 hate incidents in 2000 to 93 in 2001. A study conducted immediately after 9/11 showed that 40 percent of Americans felt that the attacks represented the “true teachings of Islam” and that between 2002 and 2003 the number of Americans that thought Islam promotes violence against non-Muslims rose by 14 percent (Panagopoulos, 2006). When Muslims themselves were surveyed, their feelings mirrored the findings in post 9/11 studies: 91 percent of Muslims surveyed believed that discrimination against Muslims in the United

Finally, 9/11 developed a lot of discrimination towards Muslims. Selby expressed in her research that negative stereotyping of Muslims or “Islamophobia” in Canada from media arguably became increasingly after 9/11. Not just that, fourteen focus groups across the country revealed a sense of horror at the terrorist attacks as well as distress about unfair negative stereotyping of Muslims and difficulties in travel (Sebly, 2015). The research tells us how the media instructed Canadians to portray Muslims as terrorists and be cautious around them. As a matter of fact, Canadians started to hate Muslims and tried to eliminate them from places as much as possible. Accordingly, most of the women who wore ‘hijab’ got negative comments from public and

I attended the event with the activist speaker named Deepa Iyer who wrote the book called We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future. During this event, I learned that in the South Asian, Arab, and Muslim communities have been affected by the 9/11 events. After the 9/11 attack, many individuals have been blaming people who come from the Middle East and those who practice Islam and believe that those people are all terrorists even though they have nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. There has also been an increase in hate violence towards the Middle Eastern communities. Several people from the South Asian, Arab, and Muslim communities have been discriminated at their work places, in schools,

The formation of pan-ethnic and pan-minority boundaries, as well as intermarriage, also has important implications for changing racial landscapes and race relations of the United States. On one hand, newly emerging racial order along the axes of socioeconomic status and interracial attitudes and relations suggests that Asian American pan-ethnic boundaries may be shifting or being redefined altogether. On the other hand, interracial marriage patterns and the ways in which intermarried individuals discuss their mixed unions reveal that black exceptionalism in the (inter)marriage market is likely to continue.

Mogahed, a Muslim woman living in America at the time of the terrorist attack on 9/11, speaks about her experience with white America after the attack. She talked about what made her attracted to the Islam religion and how her friends reacted when she started wearing the Hijab. Her young friends asked her why she would willingly subject herself to the oppression that Americans see in Islam, she told them that wearing the Hijab is actually a feminist act. After 9/11 she faced strange looks, profanity shouted at her on the street, and the fear of what might happen if she didn't listen to the news. Muslims were told to stay indoors and not

Overtime racial tension has subdued in America. However, the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center has caused Americans to be conscious of people who are or are suspected to be of South Asian descent. This has resulted in threats, brutal beatings, and sometimes murder. In an article titled Inderjit Singh Mukker, Chicago-Area Sikh, Allegedly Attacked And Called 'Terrorist,' 'Bin Laden' it says, ”...Inderjit Singh Mukker, an American citizen and father of two, was on his way to a grocery store when a driver began taunting him. He finally pulled over to the side of the road to let him pass, but the driver instead pulled up in front of his car, reached into the car and repeatedly punched Mukker in the face. Mukker lost consciousness, lost blood

September 11th holds many hard and upset feelings around the world today. The harsh actions of Muslim extremists unfortunately completely changed the way Muslims are treated, especially in the United States. These events, exacerbated islamophobia. Unfortunately, “the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, connect Muslims and Islam to terrorism within the geographical borders of the United States.” (Byng) Although it has been over a decade since the attack, many still feel racist and discriminatory attitudes towards Muslims. Muslims are the targeted minority in the United States, “the 9/11 terrorist attacks shifted the social and political context for Muslims in the United States. Terrorism within the geographical borders of the United States carried out by Muslims places an identity at the center of national and global politics.” (Byng) The blame of the horrible terrorist attacks, rather than be placed on terrorists or religious extremist, has been placed on Islam in America. After September 11th, hate crimes towards Muslims skyrocketed, “the most dramatic change noted by the report was a more than 1,600 percent increase in reported hate crimes against Muslims -- a jump from 28 hate incidents in 2000 to 481 last year.”

9/11 had affected both Americans as well as Muslims due to the Americans becoming “Islamophobic which causes fear, discriminating, and wanting to have more military troops.” Mogahed had been afraid to go out after 9/11 fearing that she'd be attacked so “sitting on the passenger's seat crouched down afraid of being a Muslim.” Not all Muslims are bad since the Americans want to get rid of the Muslims “there’s a problem in this country and it’s

People's beliefs can sometimes put them in several embarrassing situations. The girl's story in the article was an example. I believe that as long as people feel satisfied about themselves and their convictions, they should not worry about anything else. Self satisfaction should be their primary goal; therefore, pleasing others should be avoided. No matter what people do, others will criticize on one way or another. That is a part of humans' nature. Sikhs who practicing their beliefs in their home countries are considered lucky compared to those who live in the western countries. Even if several countries lately started to accommodate Sikhs' needs, Still there are a lot things to do. As an example, media should play a vital role to clarify

As this learner looks around she can see how the past, present and future has given our society so many questions about other races, their cultural, and racial inequality, which can affected us in one way or another. This leaner thinks that the best example for this would be 9/11. It made some of us afraid and fears a certain individuals and their culture, based on the ground shaking history and image it left behind. Before, we might not have thought or paid much about these induvial or their culture, but after that day they were judged by the county they come from and was placed in a buck with a label that said, “all individuals from Iran and there cultures cannot be trusted because they are terrorist”. So, once this bell was rung, it set everything in motion and a culture was and will always be look at as terrorist who dislike Americans and the American way of life.