Notes on Race in the Wake of the Boston Marathon
First off, I’m an American. News of the bombing in Boston this past April made my heart alternately race and sink. People were hurt and suffering and then were forced to spend what must have been an interminable week in fear and uncertainty. News outlets turned less than five minutes’ worth of facts into a week’s worth of agonized mulling. As the question of who could have done such a thing surfaced, I felt an old concern arising: I hope whoever did this isn’t “brown.”
That brings me to what I am secondly, which is Arab. That is, I’m not now nor was I previously an Arab national but my race/ethnicity/heritage/whatever is Arab. Specifically, I was born in Los Angeles to my Iraqi mother and father, and spent most of my 33 years ingesting and embracing the culture of this nation. When I say “brown” I mean, in this case, Middle-Eastern (all due respect for those whose skin is shaded brown but who are not from nations that automatically make them persons of interest in cases of international terror.) This is confined even further Arabs (including UAE, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc.) and Persians (those from Iran).
If the perpetrators of the Boston Marathon bombing were Arab or Persian, it would present a significant liability to millions of innocent Arabs and Persians living in the United States. Not me, by the way. I live in the Bay Area and have since before 9/11. I grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles when the first Iraq War took place. I’m happy and thankful to say that I’ve never once been harmed, harassed or otherwise made uncomfortable because of my race, even at the height of these incidents.
In fact, I’m in something of a bubble about this phenomenon. In 2004, a friend I hadn’t spoken to in over five years called me out of the blue, late at night, asking me if “I was okay.” She sounded really concerned and even kind of panicked (I frankly could have asked her the same question.) Without explaining why she’d called, she went on to relate how her gay uncle had been the subject of harassment in San Francisco (I was living in SF at the time) a long time ago, “before it was okay to be gay there.” I flinched. Did she think I was gay and that suddenly San Francisco was not accommodating to gays? It was literally an entire year before I understood that she was calling because she thought I was in danger as an Arab living in America as the Second Gulf War was reaching its height.
Well, let’s cut to the chase here: the guys who did this weren’t brown—I should say, we’re nearly certain they aren’t. The two principal suspects at this point (and they’re still just suspects) are Chechen. One is already dead. After Boston spent nearly a long Friday on lock down, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was taken into custody. He is, resolutely, not brown. He is, however, Muslim, or at least identifies as one. Someone on NPR adopted a phrasing I had never heard before which was that he’d been “radicalized.”
That brings me to a third thing. I was raised Muslim. I am not presently Muslim. I didn’t have a violent break with it. And I am not an atheist though I won’t get into my own personal spiritual beliefs here. I am, like many Christians and Jews in this nation, lapsed. And like most of those Christians and Jews, I don’t have a first-hand awareness of what a radicalized form of my religion looks like. I grew up amongst practicing and non-practicing Muslims, who joke, drink, and swear, and who’ve never expressed the slightest desire to kill in the name of God. There were no radical elements to avoid. I don’t believe they don’t exist—I was just never near them.
There’s a dialogue in the air that perceives Islam as predisposed or more adaptable to radicalization…than other archaic forms of belief with violence and conquest in its history. Only by dint of my own experience, this has to be untrue. The idea that there’s a tension, a pressure, indeed an appetite for radicalism embedded within the framework of Islam is something that can be teased out of certain interpretations of translated passages in the Koran just as easily as it can be teased out of translated passages in the Bible. That critical passion, that “do-or-die” intensity that is implicit and sometimes explicit in religious teachings is something that can be applied to oneself, to engender change and make one aware of the preciousness of life. There’s a tendency to point that passion outwards that is, unfortunately, natural and common.
It still remains to be seen whether the boys were radical Muslims but the “see I told you so” response is already manifesting. Only now, in addition to calls to “wipe out” Muslims, there’s calls to eradicate Chechnya, Chechens, and—improbably—Czechs. That’s right: some are getting their jumbles of consonants mixed up and accusing Czechoslovakia of ill. This last one would be funny if it wasn’t true and ought to imply the ignorant company the hateful keep more than the radical company that so many Muslims DO NOT.
The boys’ uncle says they have shamed Chechnya, that any conversation about this nation will inevitably turn to their actions for the foreseeable future. He’s likely correct. It’s hard to dispel this kind of negative propaganda of an ethnicity or a religion. In this moment, it’s not possible or constructive to insist on silencing any voices, even negative ones. It is worthwhile, however, to set an example by remaining aware, keeping dialogues open and avoiding conclusions in the face of a paucity of evidence. That the forces terrorizing Boston have been defanged and contained is one small victory. Let’s laud those who’ve helped alleviate the pains of this tragedy and resist the urge to lob bile for the time being.
