short takes

[cellio]

Prior to receiving an invitation to one I had not heard the word "webinar", but I instantly understood what it meant. That's a good sign in new vocabulary. (Contrast with, for example, "blog".) Not that I'm eager to start talking about webinars (let alone holding them), but still.

This week's episode of 24 included a PSA saying, essentially, "not all muslims are terrorists". Well duh. If the show were one of those fake documentaries I could see something like that, but doesn't everyone understand that 24 is fiction? And anyway, it looks like that's going to become very, very obvious next week, unless the previews are very misleading.

Someone posted "flushing 101" posters in the restrooms at work. I first saw the poster in a stall where the previous occupant had not flushed. I hope that wasn't the person who posted the sign.

Comments

[cellio]

Yes. For better or for worse, nothing says "terrorist" to the average American more than "Arab Muslim". Others have attacked us (most notably, Americans), but when you have a large, recent attack in a country that's not used to terrorist attacks, you can't fault people for basing fiction on a similar demographic. As you said, you wouldn't get the necessary suspension of disbelief with Canadian terrorists. And last season we had American terrorists IIRC, so it's not like the show has been single-minded in this. But there's only so much you can do in a day. And most people are smart enough to know the difference between fiction and fact unless there's an attempt at deception, and I don't think anyone can make the deception case for 24.

[sekhmets-song.livejournal.com]

I do wish that there were more varied arabic characters on television. I think that would do a lot more to educate the ignorant among us than Kiefer doing a forced PSA. (You want racism, why didn't anyone complain at the racist depiction on the show Whoopie had a couple of seasons ago: Arabic equaled stupid, apparently, at least as for as the bits they showed in commercials. I admit to never watching the show -I am not a sitcom fan- but the bits in the ads for the show embarrassed the hell out of me!)
I think those of us in Metro Detroit have had an interesting view to the anti-arabic debates in this country, since 9/11. Metro Detroit has the highest arab population in the world for a city, other than Baghdad itself (and if Bush has his way...). After 9/11, there were so many comedians doing the "You know you'd get off the plane if you saw an arab sitting next to you." All anyone from Detroit could think was, Well, you never took a plane out of Metro, then, or you'd never fly anywhere.
Mainly, my point is that arabic faces are just so common here that you cannot spend your life running around thinking every one you do see is a terrorist. You'd never get anything done!
I do hope that sort of feeling on the subject can spread across the country a bit. I, for one, don't think that 24 is effecting the situation one way or another, with or without the PSA.

[cellio]

I do wish that there were more varied arabic characters on television.

Me too. There are Christian and secular Arabs, and probably lots of other religious affiliations, but all we ever see is strongly-committed Muslims. Heck, I'd assume that Islam, like all other religions with which I'm familiar, has its "unobsrvant" members too -- people who are nominally members but don't practice. Portrayals of Arabs in the media are focused on just this one type of Arab.

Metro Detroit has the highest arab population in the world for a city, other than Baghdad itself

Wow. I had no idea! Yes, I imagine your experiences in the last few years are rather different from those in other parts of the country, just as my experiences with regard to other races (black? Aisan? yeah, so what?) are different from some locations in the south.

[sekhmets-song.livejournal.com]

Yeah, from the comments I have heard, I do think it has been very different. I remember a news story, shortly after 9/11, when a white woman somewhere in the south (I don't remember where, other than it was a city along the I-75 corridor) called the cops because she saw two arabic guys having lunch at the diner she and her son were at. She said she heard them talking about "bringing something down" and assumed they were talking abut a plane or a building. So the state police chased these guys down, on nothing more sinister than that. CNN and FoxNews even carried the story as "breaking news." Once found, the two turned out to be medical students returning to school in Florida (mostly likely talking about bringing suitcases or some such down with them, if you even believe she didn't make that part up). The story was met with incredulity, here, and a lot of head shaking. No one would even take note of two arabic men in a diner, here, let alone assume that "bringing something down" had anything sinister in it. The arabic faces at the diner would just be one more variation in the incredible diversity that makes up the metro Detroit scene.
And that diversity is truly a marvelous thing. I wouldn't change it for the world! I went to a grade school, called Burton International, that allowed the students from bilingual households to spend some of their daily school time studying in their native tongues. Children from a wide array of backgrounds (Chinese, Singh, Arabic, Hispanic, Nigerian, to name the few I can remember off the top of my head) would, first, get involved in the program to ease their transition into an English speaking classes (assuming that they needed that particular help), but then were allowed to continue language studies in their own language. The result was that they were not required to be "homogenized" into some bland "Americanness," but could retain their native culture, while also being able to function within the dominant culture. It was viewed, by those of us from single-language homes, as something that added to the rich cultural environment of our school, enhancing the educational experiences for all of us there. I would say, from my experiences with other school districts, since, that this program was a thing unique to Detroit, one that the rest of the country's schools would benefit from!

[glenbarnett.livejournal.com]

Interesting. A lot of Australians, Britons, and even a few Americans were killed by Indonesian Muslim terrorists more recently than 9/11.

I would have thought the bombings would have made the US news.

Maybe it just doesn't penetrate the conscious.

[cellio]

That certainly made the news. But most Americans (perhaps most people?) don't think much about victims who aren't from their own group, sadly, and very real problems fall off the radar. It's all about what "they" did to "us", never mind that we're all human beings and nationalism is highly overrated in things like this. Why can't we judge individuals and not groups, and care about people who aren't "us"?

It would also be easy to come, incorrectly, to the conclusion that most Muslims are terrorists. Moderate Islam seems (from the outside) to be doing little to rein in the lunatic fringe.

[sekhmets-song.livejournal.com]

They were covered, but our American media certainly doesn't give them the air time that they gave to our "local" event. I do think that is too bad. Such stories told in passing don't have all that much impact, unfortunately.
I also think that part of the problem is that there hasn't been a single event of Indonesian terrorism with with the same high numbers of victims as 9/11. Due to that, it is easy for Americans to feel like it just isn't as bad, as it's only "one or two" (or a dozen or so), not bothering to understand the enormity of the terrorism over time. (We Americans love out statistics but just aren't really very good at fully understanding them.