While walking to class last Friday, I overheard two people talking about a table in the Campus Center urging students to steer away from racism. The two men talked about how this wasn’t an appropriate time for Arab and Muslim students to set up a table in the Campus Center because of the wrongs “their people” had committed. Hearing that conversation even take place here at UMass made me so angry. As our grieving continues, many people have sadly turned their sorrow into hate. Violence against people who are Middle-Eastern has been happening across the U.S. Pig’s blood was splattered across the doorstep of an Islamic community center. College-aged men holding an American flag were throwing rocks at a mosque. These images cut deep into my heart.

I can’t claim to know what Muslim and Arab students are going through right now. I imagine it is fear for the safety of their friends and loved ones. It also must be intense confusion since skin color becomes the

sole factor determining whether they are American or not. The only feelings I can talk about are my own personal experience of racism and profiling, specifically when the Chinese spy plane incident took place last spring. For the record, I am a naturalized U.S. citizen and just as American as anyone else. There was a lot of anti-Chinese sentiment in the U.S. surrounding the incident, which made me nervous. I received a lot of dirty looks from people on campus, but nothing that was too alarming to be concerned about my safety. Whenever I picked up a newspaper there were political cartoons depicting the “evil Chinese,” with slanted eyes and buckteeth. One of the many cartoons I still remember is a cartoon showing the plane being lowered into a giant take-out box, with a man standing next to it saying, “Well, that’s how they want it to go back to the U.S.” What was even better was seeing the media’s attempts on television and newspapers at interpreting

Chinese culture to explain what was going on. I watched white commentators butcher the ideal of honor and “giving face,” using colorful Asian terminology such as saber, firecrackers, and martial arts terms.

I read an article from The Washington Post which included a poll that was supposedly conducted before the incident on how regular Americans view

Chinese-Americans. The poll found that 45% of Americans believe Chinese-Americans are spies.

Spies?

I wonder if my fellow classmates at this university, people who don’t even know me, look at me and think I’m a spy. I am ashamed to say that my Chinese proficiency stinks. How can I be a spy for China when I barely speak the language?

And then there is Pearl Harbor. Though Pearl Harbor

is something from our grandparents time, I still get comments. These comments stem not just from people our grandparents’ age but other college- aged people and people my parents’ age, who weren’t born yet either. The only true crime I have committed is that I was due to be born in July, but instead was born in August, the anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki,

three days after the bombing of Hiroshima. And that was a crime against humanity the U.S. inflicted on Japanese civilians, not the other way around.

At times I’ve feared for my safety because of Pearl Harbor. One time while out late with my friends I received a comment from a rather large, threatening man. We waited until he got into his RV, which had a POW sticker, a small American flag, and a Confederate flag flying off the back, before we pulled out of the parking lot. Unfortunately, he was waiting around the corner. Luckily, I knew the area and avoided streets with stoplights and managed to get through a few yellow lights but he followed. He tailgated me for some time before disappearing completely. It was

around 2 a.m., and if anything happened the only people that probably would have been around would be my friends. I had just turned 18 a few days prior to this and was sick to my stomach that it happened. It really proved to me how deep racism can run, that a man, probably in his late forties to early fifties, would go out of his way to scare a teenage girl and her friends.

The friends I had with me that night were not Asian, and we have never really talked about what happened. They have said they were upset about what happened and wished they had said something before he got in his car, and yet a piece of me wonders if in some way they sympathize with the man. That somehow it’s ok for people to associate anyone of a certain ethnicity with the crimes “their people” have committed. When the movie Pearl Harbor came out last May, my automatic reaction was to hide. I didn’t even know the plot but just the words “Pearl Harbor” made me think of that man driving around the South Shore in his RV, possibly gunning for anyone Asian. There are people out there just like him right now. I still haven’t seen the movie nor I have received any more comments about Pearl Harbor since the movie was released. My friends wouldn’t let me stay at home but we did limit our outings so I could be home at midnight for about 2 weeks after the movie’s release.

Though I hid, a part of me questioned why I didn’t go and protest outside the movie theater or live my life normally. I have grown up saluting the flag, learning American history, and even in some ways forsaking my

skin color as the language of my parents slowly slips away in my memory. The first essay contest I won in high school was for an essay on democracy and freedom. I am American and this is my home. I should be able

to feel safe. Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. shouldn’t be afraid to live their lives normally, but their skin color will not allow them to right now. We are the ones at fault for this; other Americans who believe it is ok to take our anger out on them are responsible for this fear. Racism is a cycle and unless we change, the children and grandchildren of our Arab and Muslim classmates are going to have to live in the shadow of September 11, the way Asians my age still live Pearl Harbor. At this sensitive time we must remember that our Arab and Muslim classmates are just as deeply affected by this tragedy as we are. Icy stares and paranoia are not the American way. I did not bomb Pearl Harbor, I am not a spy and my fellow Arab and Muslim Americans should not be viewed as terrorists.