All The Good Names Were Taken: Missing the obvious
"What turned a person described by the neighbors as an "ordinary kid" into someone buying bomb components through Ebay was a whole lot of little incidents that eventually hit some trigger point. And it wasn't stuff happening in some Arab country -- it was what was happening in New Jersey. It was day after day, week after week, month after month of Islamaphobic neighbors calling in bullshit noise complaints, it was the city hassling his family's restaurant if it stayed open one minute too late but ignoring other restaurants in the same neighborhood doing the same thing, it was being repeatedly being accused of being a jihadi or called a raghead simply for looking Arab -- although Afghanis aren't Arabs, but most Americans are too dumb to know that."
An excellent and thought provoking post. Please read it all.
I have no doubt that racism is a contributing factor to radicalization but lots of people face racism or other forms of oppression and don't become terrorists. Other factors must be at play as well. I agree though that, as a society, we all bear the responsibility of trying to reduce or neutralize those factors to the extent that we can.
ReplyDeleteDepends on how the racism is expressed. With blacks, they are lazy sub-human criminals, With Muslims, they are all terrorists. If you have the name. . .
DeleteI can't understand peoples hatred..everyone should be a pagan.
ReplyDeleteSorry, JackieSue. Tribalism is hard wired into the human race. We would simply find another set of reasons to hate and kill. Whether these reasons would be as effective as religion is hard to tell, but look at Democrats and Republicans.
DeleteConsidering that all people land somewhere on the continuum between "will commit acts of violence regardless of mitigating factors" and "will never commit an act of violence regardless of provocation", there are likely a significant number that fall into the middle "could be incited to violence" category. So it makes sense not to antagonize this segment with prejudice and marginalization.
ReplyDeleteMore to the point, though, existing in fear and anger because of one's own prejudices is no way to live, either. Regardless of whether inclusiveness and tolerance would eliminate radicalization or not, it's still better for everybody.
It is more than a significant number who could be incited. For examples, see Turkey, Cambodia, Germany, Russia and China. America cannot be excluded nor can any other country.
Delete"existing in fear and anger because of one's own prejudices" describes everyone from anti-Muslim to anti-GMO. People are impervious to facts and reason but we must keep trying.
Thank you for the kind words.
ReplyDeleteThank YOU for a great post.
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