Fear Makes Me Ignorant
When I was six years old, I feared losing my dolls to my neighbors so I began to hide them in secret spots. I would ultimately end up forgetting where I hid them and I would lose them anyway. When I was 10, I thought that having dark skin meant that you were bad so I began to distance myself from those with darker skin than mine out of fear that they would harm me. When I was 13 I thought that being a girl was somehow inferior to boys even though I had grown up doing and learning the same things as them my whole life. I begun to stay quiet out of fear of sounding stupid compared to the other boys. When I was 18 I realized that the fear made me ignorant.
Throughout my whole life there has always been something that I feared. This fear has pushed and motivated me to take actions that I would have never taken if not for that situation. I realized that the actions i had taken out of fear had ultimately been bad decisions with horrible consequences that not only affected me but those around me. Then I realized that the country which I call home had been there along with me guiding me through those decisions. I had subconsciously learned about the hegemony and patriarch of the US and adopted it as my own. I never realized that opposition to these had caused to United States to take actions out of fear
The United States have acted out of fear many times throughout its history. The US joined WWII not only because they were attacked but also because they were scared of being attacked again on their land. Not only have we gone to war with other countries because of fear but have also made decisions within the US out of fear. Japanese internment camps were set up out of fear that they were terrorists serving as spies. As time has gone on, the fear of terrorism is still very real it has just changed faces.
After the World Trade Center was attacked on September 11, 2001, the U.S. began to see all Muslims as terrorists instead of just Al Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the attack. Osama Bin Laden was seen as the leader of all the Muslims instead of just Al Qaeda. The U.S. increased their security especially within airports after the attacks. The heightened security allows for a more thorough security checks determined by “random selections” of passengers. Random selection meaning passengers who appear to be middle eastern. There are numerous personal accounts throughout social media of people who were “randomly selected” at airports and most of them are either middle eastern or look as if they were. Society within the U.S. associates being middle eastern with being a terrorist.
Jasbir K. Puar and Amit S. Rai explain that when the media begun describing Osama bin Laden as a monster they made monster synonymous with terrorist. Furthermore, they say that “American retaliation promises to emasculate bin Laden and turn him into a fag”. This becomes problematic on so many levels. Before discussing the language used, lets focus on the idea. America wanted to retaliate by using violence, violence is what caused bin Laden to be considered a terrorist in the first place. Wouldn’t using these violent tactics make the U.S. terrorists too? Further enforcing the patriarchy in place, the U.S. wants to emasculate bin Laden. Bin Laden getting his identity of a man taken away from him will not make him powerless. There are worse things that could happen than a man being emasculated The statement also says they want to turn him into a fag, being a fag is not a bad thing. However, it does challenge the heteronormativity in the United States which is considered an evil. This also makes it so emasculation is associated with being gay when that is not the case. The language used to attack Osama bin Laden further enforces the values of patriarchy and heteronormative males instilled in the U.S.. The statement which was meant to cause fear to Al Qaeda’s leader actually revealed the fear of things that are different than those that the U.S. believe to be important.
The U.S. adapts policies which target certain people out of fear. The language which the U.S. media utilized to describe Osama and how he should be punished demonstrated how ignorant the U.S. could be when dealing with something that challenged their values instilling in them a fear of the unknown. The fear of being unable to control things makes the U.S. ignorant as well as me by making us believe there is one solution and blinding us to the consequences of our actions.
