EVERYONE from President Bush to the editorial staff of this newspaper has addressed the issue. That doesn't seem to have mattered, because all over the country, Americans have ignored the calls for clear thinking, for understanding, for the ability to see beyond dark skin and unfamiliar names.
Balbir Singh Sodhi, an Indian Sikh, was fatally shot in Phoenix, Arizona. Adel Karas, an Egyptian Christian, was killed in San Gabriel, California. The same day, Waqar Hasan, a Pakistani Muslim, was found shot dead at his store in the Pleasant Grove section of Dallas. Middle School students in Forth Worth threatened an Indian classmate. People in North Texas have vandalized mosques; in New Jersey, a Hindu temple was firebombed. Closer to home, a Muslim in Fairfax was nearly run off the road as he was driving to donate blood. Mike Johnson beat Mustafa Nazary, an Afghan expatriate and American citizen, in a Falls Church parking lot.
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The list continues. The FBI has launched 40 hate crime investigations after reported attacks against Arab-American citizens and institutions. All this in only a week. As the United States looks for adversaries abroad, some Americans also see enemies in the faces of their own neighbors. Television news, in its need to fill the empty, waiting hours, has not helped. Reports on Osama bin Laden and the Taliban include pictures of bearded, turbaned men and women with head coverings kneeling in prayer at mosques -- people looking just like the gas station owner who gives candy to children, like the delivery man who loves talking to strangers.
In a way, these attacks are more saddening than last Tuesday's tragedy. That only proved the intensity of the hijackers' abhorrence for the United States and its people. The events following the destruction in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington hit harder at America's foundation, because they damage our faith in each other and ourselves as good people who are better than the blindly hate-filled terrorists.
One can see the impetus behind the violence. Here we are, all geared up for battle, ready to struggle with ... someone. The adrenaline is pumping, but after donating to the Red Cross, giving blood, and watching the fall of the second World Trade Center tower for the hundredth time on CNN, there isn't much we can do to expend our fighting blood. Despite the rhetoric about Pearl Harbor, we haven't found anyone to be our enemy.
Bush says, "It's going to take a long time to win this war," but it also appears to be taking a long time to start this war. No reasonable person can criticize the government's hesitation to begin a war without being completely certain that it will be a just war. However, many of us do not feel particularly reasonable at the moment. We want to get back at the cause of our hurt, and the longer our officials take on formal revenge, the more some people will look right around this country for a plausible target for their fury.
Mike Johnson's attempts to explain why he repeatedly punched a man less than half his weight resound with this feeling. "I was somber and ... angry, I guess. I was looking for vengeance ... I just wanted the country to get whoever was responsible for doing this."
The search for an enemy among us is not entirely irrational. After all, we know that the terrorists didn't make their attacks from another country. Somehow they walked right through our airports, got on our commercial jets -- they may have even attended our flight schools. None of this makes attacking Arab-Americans excusable. After we knew that Timothy McVeigh had bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City, there was no backlash against white boys from New York. Racial profiling, whether we are seeking drug dealers or terrorists, inevitably injures people who have never committed a criminal act.
Still, with the vague image of bin Laden constantly before us, it may be a mercy to people who look at all like him if the government started issuing Osama Punching Bags. Perfect for releasing your feelings of grief and rage, so you can treat the Pakistani woman next to you at the bank as another human being instead of the embodiment of misguided Islamic fundamentalism.
Perhaps the most frightening aspect of these hate crimes is the series of warnings South Asian and Middle Eastern people receive, by e-mail and from friends of the same background, to be careful. Speak English in public; stay away from the mosque; don't walk alone. While well meant and heart-warming in their message of concern, they increase one's feelings of vulnerability and separation from everyone else. With the information we have right now, fighting the threat of disintegration inside the American community is the best war we can wage.
(Pallavi Guniganti's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. She can be reached at pguniganti@cavalierdaily.com.)
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