Culture of Fear
When I was in college, I took a poetry class taught by a guy of Indian descent named Kazim Ali. A few days ago, in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shooting, Kazim was reading some poetry manuscripts for a contest he was judging. After he was finished, he packed the manuscripts into a heavy box and brought it to the outside of Wright Hall and placed it besides the trashcan to be recycled– something he’s done dozens of times.
A member of the ROTC saw him place the box there. Or rather, what the person saw was a man who he thought to be an Arab placing a suspicious-looking box next to the building. He immediately called the police, reported that a man of “middle-eastern descent” had placed a box outside of Wright Hall, and within the hour the campus was shut down and a SWAT team was called in.
After it became apparent that the person who had left the box there was Kazim, he was called and put on the line with a police officer, who said that in the “current climate” he had to be careful what he did.
Since then, the university and the police have denied that this had anything to do with his dark skin. Kazim has been interviewed by several major news stations, and writes about his experience over here.
I heard from a friend who still attends the university that Kazim has already accepted a job to teach elsewhere. Thank god for that. What an embarrassment this must be for Shippensburg University.
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Not that it’s any excuse, but with recent events, officials are being pressured to act on even remote suspicions. Put yourself in their shoes for a moment. If you act on it, you could offend someone for racial profiling. If you fail to act on it and something happens, your job will be on the line for professional negligence. Critics will come along and shout, “All the warning signs were there! Why didn’t you act on them?”
Again, it’s no justification for racial profiling, but I have some pity for officials who are essentially caught between a rock and a hard place.
Stephen,
I don’t completely agree. For one, Kazim has an office in that very building. He works there every day — right along all the ROTC members.
Secondly, the university has not handled it very well in the aftermath. The police officers were assholes to him and basically told him that it was his fault — for recycling. They’re denying that racial profiling had anything to do with it. And when Kazim called the university president, the man was extremely rude to him.
Kazim is somewhat of a celebrity on the campus. He’s been featured on the front page of the newspaper twice. He’s been interviewed on the radio station. He was even on an episode of Jeopardy. He’s also the resident poet, which is kind of a celebrity position in the university.
The car the ROTC guy saw him drive away in had a faculty sticker on its back as well.
I dunno, there’s just a whole bunch wrong with this situation on many levels.
My gosh that is embarrasing and so stupid too…
things like that normally happens in N.Z too but its normally islanders who are the supposed bad guys who didn’t even do anything wrong…