Can You Take an Insult?
AGE 7: Nancy complains to the P.E. teacher about having me on her kickball team, stating that “Nizar always misses. He’s worse than Tracey (a student with a physical disability who used a personal mobility vehicle). I bet he doesn’t even have kickball back where he came from.”
She wasn’t incorrect.
Kicking the ball perfectly required a certain grace and rhythm, something I clearly lacked. But with the burning frustration of a hundred obviously terrible kick attempts behind me, I kicked that ball with more force than I had ever before. And although a foul ball, I did prove her wrong, kicking it far over the fence that separated our field from a heavily forested area where we sometimes spotted homeless people.
Nancy only ever made fun of my aim after that.
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AGE 12: Having hit puberty earlier than others, kids on my school bus begin teasing me about my now-visible, awkwardly growing, mustache. I beg my older brother and father to let me start shaving, but they’re reluctant to let me take up this delicate tradition, cautioning me that it’s a painful and annoying daily chore, an experience that they’d rather save me from for a year or two longer.
So, I bear all the ridiculing and name-calling. I become friends with several kids on the bus, the same ones by whom I’m mocked. I am included in Uno games and in-jokes, but must sometimes respond when being called “Haji.”
In the months that follow, I continue to ask my father about when I can shave, but he continues to blow me off, responding with some variation of how I’m not ready or how it isn’t time yet.
This particular type of reply always confused me because it led me to think there was some document or rubric somewhere that proclaimed the rules of when a boy could begin shaving. Either that or the act of shaving was inherently dangerous, like mountaineering or storm-chasing, requiring me to undergo proper training or preparation before putting a blade to my face. With all this misconstrued understanding, I took it upon myself to handle the mustache situation myself. I applied shaving gel to the patch of hair under my noise one morning before school and then promptly erased it and the hair below with a razor I’d hidden in my room weeks ago for just this day. I wiped away the remaining gel from my face to behold my face.
The removal of just the mustache on my previously unshaven face made it look like someone had gone over it with the Erase tool.
I proceeded to shave the rest of my face and went to school that day a new Nizar, a new man. Of course, I was still made fun of for the rest of the school year, but I became the first kid I knew to shave and that meant something to me.
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AGE 28: In the run-up to the 2016 U.S. Presidential elections, some of the most prejudiced, uninformed, reprehensible, and hateful words have been spoken about Muslims. I’ve listened in disgust as those who are seeking to one day become my country’s commander-in-chief have called out American Muslims and Muslim refugees for secretly harboring “true hatred” for America. Let’s remember, these Muslim refugees who are fleeing Syria have directly suffered at the hand of their government and the self-proclaimed “Islamic State.”
Boiled down to its simplest reasoning, this speech can be labeled fear-mongering.
noun:
1. the action of deliberately arousing public fear or alarm about a particular issue.
It’s nothing the world hasn’t seen and experienced before, yet we are a people who easily forget our own histories. It’s almost as if we’ve forgotten what we vowed to “never forget.” Supporters cheer and chant along as candidates propose to create databases and ID-tag an entire population of people because we “can’t be entirely sure what viewpoint is towards America.” Of course, letting refugees into our country without first vetting them is irresponsible, but that’s why we have a vetting process.
On this week’s episode of Comatose, Rich Jones talks about casual racism and how easy it can be to fly under our radar because it’s essentially a stereotype that’s grown to become socially accepted.
It’s sad.
It’s sad that it’s such a prevalent form of racism.
It’s sad that it also doesn’t exempt any one race or group of people.
It’s sad that this casual racism is what can lead to a great misunderstanding and fear of a group of people which is what these candidates are playing off of.
I’m not saying I have a remedy for this massive insult to me and the faith I follow- a faith of 23% of our world’s 7.1 billion human beings. I’m saying I can take it.
I can take it, but I shouldn’t have to.
Listen to this week’s episode, Racism, Enlightenment, and Happiness.
Written by Nizar Babul of Comatose.
Comatose is a weekly series of amusing anecdotes, insightful commentary, and pithy stories. Every week three contributors are featured in short segments. The segments, though often unrelated, are tied together using music and narration to set the scene. Relax and enjoy the ride while listening to topics as varied as love, birthdays, and reciprocity.
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