Believe it or not, the uptick in hate crimes against American Muslims after the Paris attacks has little to do with Islamophobia. The US’s obsession with the “other” goes back centuries, even as it morphed into a global melting pot. It is an obsession birthed from the white, Christian heritage of the country’s founding fathers and their occupation as plantation and slave owners.
Moreover, those pushing the “clash of civilizations” narrative explain Islamophobia as a gut reaction. Meaning one driven by the average American’s love of freedom and liberty, not antipathy to certain ethnic groups. To them, I point to the many attacks on American Sikhs since 2001 who are obviously not Muslims. Sadly they too have become part of a fear-driven racial profile that includes brown skin, a beard and some form of …show more content…
Not long ago, in 2003, the US Congress so loathed French President Jacques Chirac’s dissent on the Iraq War that it renamed French fries and French toast in its cafeterias to “freedom fries” and “freedom toast” as a firm token of its displeasure.
Although the American constitution is a stellar example of secular lawmaking, not least for its fourteenth amendment safeguards of minority rights, racism is endemic, institutionalized and easily confirmed by a simple google search. Islamophobia in the US, then, is merely a sideshow to the wider racial fault-lines grinding against each other.
Before American Muslims as the national bogey, there was the “Red Scare” in the Cold War era, Japanese Americans in World War II and Jewish Americans during the Civil War. Most appalling was the state-sanctioned treatment of Chinese settlers from 1882 to 1943. The US Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, effectively banning all Chinese immigration to the
Moreover, those pushing the “clash of civilizations” narrative explain Islamophobia as a gut reaction. Meaning one driven by the average American’s love of freedom and liberty, not antipathy to certain ethnic groups. To them, I point to the many attacks on American Sikhs since 2001 who are obviously not Muslims. Sadly they too have become part of a fear-driven racial profile that includes brown skin, a beard and some form of …show more content…
Not long ago, in 2003, the US Congress so loathed French President Jacques Chirac’s dissent on the Iraq War that it renamed French fries and French toast in its cafeterias to “freedom fries” and “freedom toast” as a firm token of its displeasure.
Although the American constitution is a stellar example of secular lawmaking, not least for its fourteenth amendment safeguards of minority rights, racism is endemic, institutionalized and easily confirmed by a simple google search. Islamophobia in the US, then, is merely a sideshow to the wider racial fault-lines grinding against each other.
Before American Muslims as the national bogey, there was the “Red Scare” in the Cold War era, Japanese Americans in World War II and Jewish Americans during the Civil War. Most appalling was the state-sanctioned treatment of Chinese settlers from 1882 to 1943. The US Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, effectively banning all Chinese immigration to the