Results tagged “prejudice” from The Morning After

On September 12, 2001, I remember speaking with a few of my neighbors about the previous day's tragedies. Some of us were sad, some of us were angry, all of us were appalled. "I know it's not their fault," a middle-aged woman named Liz said, "but if one of those Muslims wants to move here, don't expect me to welcome them."

We were all still in the heat of the moment. In our New York City suburb, many of us had lost a friend or a family member. People act irrationally when they're experiencing that level of emotional trauma. It's common, it's expected and it's forgiven.

But now it's 2009. All rashness should have faded away over the seven years and change that have passed. Why, then, was a Muslim family kicked off an airplane in a situation where no white family would?

Atif Irfan and seven of his extended family members were booted from an AirTran Airlines flight on New Year's Day because passengers reported overhearing a conversation that raised security concerns. But the family didn't use any words that would raise a red flag (like bomb, explosion or terror). No, they just discussed which seats would be safest.

It was just a general safety discussion, Irfan told CNN's Mike M. Ahlers.

The FBI cleared the family of all wrongdoing, but it shouldn't take a national intelligence organization to realize that. "Do you think it would be safest to sit by the wing?" isn't code for "Which seat gives us the best chance of survival if we blow this thing up?"

And when the FBI told the airline that the safety concerns lacked merit, the airline refused to rebook the family for another flight. "They told us that we can't fly their airline," Irfan told CNN.

Here comes the truly revolting part: Although 75% of respondents in an AOL webpoll agree that the family was treated differently because of their religion, 55% still say that AirTran acted appropriately. Essentially, respondents said, "This was an act of bigotry, and we applaud that."

Where does our nation stand when we accept this type of discrimination based on religion and ethnicity? Even the election of the first minority president doesn't cancel out the hatred that continues to flow through the veins of so many Americans.

"We are proud Americans," one of the family members said. "We decided to have our children and raise them here. We can very easily go anywhere we want in the world, but we love it here and we're not going to go away, no matter what."

Good. You shouldn't have to.

The ugly mask of prejudice can neutralize even the most beautiful person. Prejudice-based tensions are always getting better, Americans like to think, slowly but surely. Sexism is suffering; supporters have already thrown the names of Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton into the 2012 ring. Racial epithets are echoed mostly in whispers behind cupped hands. Public figures refrain from using anti-homosexual language or they must prepare to face a certain firestorm. But there is one minority that still endures open ostracizing. This minority remains, as Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts wrote last June, voiceless. The punching bag for the masses, the group everybody loves to hate, is the rural white poor.

You know them as rednecks. White trash. Trailer trash. Hillbillies. Bona fide hicks. Residents of Jesusland. And to northeast progressives living in a liberal Bubble, that's all they are. Making fun of African Americans? Making fun of homosexuals? Off limits, as they should be. They get this right in the Bubble.

But redneck jokes? More, please! More about the freak who is shacking up with his sister, who has got no teeth, who has got no college education, who likes huntin', whose favorite sport is driving in circles. More misapplication of the grotesque stereotype portrayed on shows hosted by the likes of Jerry Springer and Maury Povich. The rural white poor are people too? Nope, the bounds of tolerance in the Bubble don't stretch this far. But the worst part is the failure of Bubble-dwellers to recognize this for what it is: unabashed, unapologetic prejudice.

A glance at the prevalence of this brand of bigotry, and it's easy to understand how racism flowed so freely in white-dominated states. In a bubble, people face the disadvantage of one-sided information. They are fed lies and stereotypes about people not like them, people not in the Bubble. And because the targets of the prejudice are on the outside, denizens of the Bubble have limited interaction with anyone who could rebut what the agents of hate say.

It matters not that people outside the Bubble know these people and their souls. They know that the rural white poor, many of whom proudly call themselves rednecks, are just as good-hearted as anyone else. They bleed just as red when you cut them. They put their pants on one leg at a time, even if it's Wranglers instead of Dockers. And they are just as much victims of prejudice as any minority, only with more openness than most.

But inside the Bubble, people say they're bona fide hicks, so they can't possibly have a college education. They don't have a college education, so they can't possibly think for themselves. They were force-fed their narrow-minded ideas with which they are "perfectly happy."

And the funniest part of it all? Self-professed tolerant people run around repeating this force-fed, unchallenged, narrow-minded idea.