Sikh Americans After September 11

Another Sikh Man Shot in Arizona

May 2003—Valarie Kaur

Turbans and Terror: Racism after September 11
September 2002- Valarie Kaur

On September 15, 2001, I watched the collapsing twin towers – the smashing to the ground – people running for their lives – between mug shots of Osama bin Laden replaying on every television station. Suddenly the words: Sikh man killed in Mesa, AZ in hate crime scrolled across the bottom of the screen. This news stunned me nearly as much as the terrorist attacks. Thousands died on September 11 and now an American had killed a man from my own community because he had brown skin and wore a turban. Balbir Singh Sodhi’s death became the first killing in the explosion of hate crimes that targeted Sikh, Muslim, Arab, Afghan, and South Asian American communities after September 11. The national media spit out its stories, neglecting to acknowledge an important consequence of the terrorist attacks: the inflamed racism that still divides us.

I am a twenty year-old Sikh American woman studying International Relations and Religious Studies at Stanford University. As a third generation Sikh, I wanted to connect and grieve; as a student, I sought to comprehend the impact of changed international relations on religious communities in America. Both these motives inspired a project: to record the experiences of targeted communities. I received a research grant from Stanford to document how post-September 11 hate crimes impacted and changed American communities. Along with my cousin Amandeep Singh Gill, I planned to interview people around the nation and eventually develop these interviews into a documentary film and monograph.

Beginning in September 2001, we embarked on a four-month trek into the heart of America, up and down the Californian coast, through the Arizona desert, to the mass grave that replaces the World Trade Center, and finally traveled half way around the world to a small village in Punjab, Northern India. We interviewed Sikh, Muslim, Arab, Afghan, and South Asian Americans about their encounters with fear, suspicion, and hate. We spent the most time with Sikh Americans, a religious community originally from Punjab. Most people may not know that nearly all people with turbans in the United States are Sikh men (and sometimes women) who do not cut their hair in order to observe an article of Sikh faith. Given their resemblance to Osama bin Laden, many Sikh Americans faced particularly heavy violence in the first weeks of the backlash.

To date, over one thousand documented hate crimes have taken place, ranging from verbal abuse to racial profiling, battery to murder. Many people have been harassed, brutalized, or killed; others have lost their jobs or seen their temples burned. Every documented hate crime indicates an intensified atmosphere of fear and misperception that has divided and continues to divide people. As we commemorate the first anniversary of September 11, our discoveries may offer insights about the changes undergone in our society and help us look beyond present divisions. As a people, we are ignoring the voices behind the sensational headlines and images – the real stories that show that Americans need to know each other better. The events of September 11 attacked many minority communities twice: first with the terrorism that threatened all Americans and second with immediate fear and violence at home. And in the past, the American people reacted similarly in tense moments, such as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War Two. High-pitched emotions and patriotic fervor become tainted by xenophobic and exclusivist sentiments; these emotions often target different peoples and ways of life, and mostly based on appearances.

The terrorist attacks threatened many Americans’ sense of reality: a stable and secure world suddenly collapsed. As a result, intense emotions also exploded in our society. The mainstream media flooded the news with images of flaming buildings, declarations of war from the President, community meetings for solidarity and action, showing an overall sense of unity, patriotism, and dedication: the mayor of New York celebrated the resilience of the American people. While the media did discussed Arab, Muslim, and South Asian Americans views, overall coverage suffered.

In Phoenix, Arizona, where Balbir Singh Sodhi was the first to die in a post-9/11 hate crime, children who attend the local Sikh temple remember September 11as the day when planes smashed into buildings, killing innocent people – haunting events for which their parents had no answers. But when their Uncle Balbir was murdered a few days later, Chandani and Daman turned down the blinds and locked the doors in renewed fear: “We were freaking out upstairs, we got scared and started crying.”

Balbir Singh’s niece and nephews told me about their uncle in an interview. The morning Balbir Singh was killed, he had bought pots of flowers from Costco and made a donation to the September 11 Relief Fund in the checkout line. The shots came as he was kneeling down planting the flowers in front of his gas station. He was killed because he wore a turban: Osama Bin Ladin also wore a turban. He was killed because he was taken for a Muslim, and therefore, according to his killer, a terrorist. Frank Roque, the white man who pumped bullets into Balbir Singh Sodhi’s back, shouted when handcuffed: "I'm an American! I'm a damn American all the way! Arrest me! Let those terrorists run wild!” Months after Balbir Singh’s death, one of his nephews still dreams about the killing and begs his father not to wear his turban to work: “I don’t want what happened to Vaday Papa to happen to you.” A double sense of threat for minority communities has instilled deep fears; children suffer too.

Other communities, like Afghan Americans, live in tight situations, fearing hate crimes in their own neighborhoods, as well as terrorist attacks and bloodshed abroad. In Fremont, California, we visited an Afghan widow living with her three children. With the weight of grief in her eyes, she said that the Taliban had killed her husband; she escaped to the United States after 9/11. Upon arriving in America, uniformed officials surrounded her on the airplane; she was racially profiled. When recalling her experience, she sobbed and her children told her to quiet down: the Taliban might hear.

Terrorist attacks did not create hate crimes or suddenly push Sikhs and Muslims outside of American national identity. Rather, the 9/11 events increased pressure on a national culture that has historically attacked its minorities during times of intense strain. In other words, Sikhs, Muslims, and other immigrant communities had already existed on the margins in American society. Amrik Singh Chawla, a Manhattan financial consultant who wears a turban, grew up in Brooklyn. He told me that as he fled the collapsing towers alongside thousands, a group of men pointed at him and yelled, “Take off that turban, you Arab.” Amrik found himself running for his life for the second time in one morning.

Without knowing what or who caused the buildings to burn, or even turning on a television set, the men had pursued Amrik because he wore a turban. The hate crime that took place the morning of September 11, within minutes after the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, became the first of a wave of hate crimes to sweep the nation. This points to underlying misperceptions, prejudices. Who’s to blame for these attitudes?

The easy response is to blame mainstream Americans for their misperceptions. This brings us to the media, our nation’s main source of education. The media’s immediate coverage of the terrorist attacks included images and incomplete information that exacerbated tension and contributed to ignorance. Sher Singh, a turbaned Sikh businessman, told us his story at a dinner on Capital Hill. Police officials had pulled him off a Rhode Island train on September 12, cursing at him, alleging they had apprehended the first suspected terrorist. The national media broadcasted his picture and the video of his arrest for days and offered no official correction when the arrest was found illegitimate. When Balbir Singh Sodhi was murdered, the national media rarely showed his picture, his turban, the reason he was murdered.

The United States government has also taken actions that increase divisions and mistrust. In his initial public addresses, the President used terms like “crusade” and “infinite justice,” thereby supporting “us and them” mentalities. Congress’s counter-terrorist legislation, which reduced American civil liberties across the board, and the Justice Department’s extended detention and questioning of immigrants have all contributed to more suspicion and fear. Actions taken in the name of national security and national unity have increased exclusive and discriminatory policies within our borders, in both political and social spheres.

The government and media’s irresponsible behavior has supported misguided assumptions and exacerbated tension but has not caused the phenomenon of hate crimes. Hate crime take place in communities where individuals do not know or understand each other. Individuals commit crimes against others in communities who do not know each other. Immigrant communities share an equal burden of blame for the phenomenon of post-9/11 hate crimes, a conclusion we reached in Queens, New York. When we visited an elderly, turbaned man who looked like my grandfather and lay on a mattress on the floor, groaning and moaning in pain, saying, “Waheguru, Waheguru.” It had been three months since they beat him with baseball bats, and he still couldn’t move. He was attacked by an African American gang in front of the Sikh temple in Richmond Hills, a neighborhood where nearly every house belongs to a Sikh family from Punjab. Neighborhoods like these co-exist in America, but they do not know one another.

Immigrants come to the United States and build insulated communities, Chinatowns and Little Kabuls where they can feel safe and pursue their goals. However, self-imposed insulation allows these communities to exist, physically and psychologically, on the margins of American society. Today, it is important that minority communities stop building walls around themselves - walls that separate already marginalized communities from one another. In San Jose, California, a Muslim boy described how the kids at school call him Osama’s son. “If I see the bad guys, I’ll beat them up with my karate and kill them.” I asked him how he would know if they were the bad guys. “They’ll be wearing turbans on their head.” Walls will not resolve these growing misperceptions. Worse, I guarantee these attitudes will become ingrained. Muslims and Sikhs must begin to educate and dialogue with one another if they expect to reach the attention of mainstream America.

One year later, the number of hate crimes reported by South Asian and Middle Eastern communities have declined significantly, yet we can still feel the impact of post-9/11 fears and assumptions. This summer, waiting in my car at a red light on Fourth and Market Street in San Francisco, a man put his face on the window, so close that his nose almost touched. I jumped and locked the door. "What do we have here?" he said through the glass. He had red hair, a high forehead, and steel blue eyes that stared right at me. "Are you Muzzlum?" he asked with a slow drawl. All I could think of saying was “No.” Then he cursed at me. For almost one year, I have thought about hate crimes, interviewed victims, written essays, and given speeches. For all my research and analysis, I was rendered speechless. That face— the hatred in his eyes, the cruel way in which the words came out of his mouth— reduced to a mere perception everything human in me. His face did not change, no matter what I said. I think about how Frank Roque looked when he murdered Balbir Singh.

As a college student studying the consequences of September 11, I cannot box up my research and leave it in the ivory tower. My friends and family and community still tell me about the latest stares and verbal abuse; these days I find it myself on city streets. Even after a year of academic inquiry, the questions remain: How do we confront hatred? More importantly, how do we mend the spirits of people who live through these confrontations every day?

I look to the voices of the people who shared their stories. I remember my very last interview in Northern India, where Balbir Singh Sodhi’s widow lives in a house surrounded by fields, endless fields. I sat beside Joginder Kaur in her home half way around the world and cried with her. Her pain was so raw, so awful. “I have lost my world,” she said in Punjabi. “Everything is empty for me now.” I asked her only one question: What do you want to tell the people of America? I was expecting sadness, even anger. She said simply: “Thank you. Tell them thank you. When I came to America for his funeral, they showed me so much kindness and caring. Thank them for caring.”

Every act of hatred has been followed by acts of caring and compassion from neighbors and strangers of all colors, religions, and nations. This is important to realize in all this darkness. The Phoenix community reached out to the Sodhi family and learned about Balbir Singh; that he had immigrated to escape religious persecution, that he wore a turban as an article of faith and spirituality, that this turban marked him for hate and death, that his widow’s heart is broken. Through communication, we discover shared human suffering and experience. Education alone does not bring understanding: what good is learning if we don’t know how to use it? We must care, and care enough to want to communicate. Without communicating our sense of grief, our sympathy, our curiosity, and our questions, we will never change our assumptions of people, our attitudes towards others.

In the United States, we are not separated by brick walls or borders drawn on a map, yet the same hatred that divides the Middle East, Northern Ireland, and South Asia can, and may, easily divide us. The same suspicion, ignorance, hatred, and fear regenerate racism. However, the distinct American ethos values equality and tolerance; this commitment makes peace possible. We must begin by communicating our stories. In remembering the death and destruction of September 11, the world can move forward toward understanding. It begins with your story.

Another Sikh Man Shot in Arizona

May 20, 2003-- Valarie Kaur

On Monday night, May 19, 2001, Peter Jennings said that Americans were learning more about each other after September 11th. At the same moment, another Sikh man was shot in a hate crime in Arizona.

Last night, with other Stanford students, I attended a town-hall meeting, "Beyond the Headlines" with Peter Jennings, about media coverage in times of war (to air nationally on ABC on Saturday, May 24th, at 7pm). At the end of the segment, the panel discussed representations of Muslims and Arabs in the news. Barbara Simpson, KSFO radio talk-show host, said that it was not the media's job to represent every group in America. "It wouldn't matter whether or not we had an Arab on our staff," she said.

I raised my hand to point out that hate crimes and prejudice against Sikh Americans, largely driven by media representation of the "face of the enemy," provided enough grounds for the media to discuss the identities of targeted communities. There wasn't time for my comment, but afterward, I privately spoke with Peter Jennings about the Sikh experience.

"When Sher Singh was wrongly arrested as the first suspected terrorist on September 12th," I told him, "every major media outlet aired video of his arrest for days without apology. When Balbir Singh Sodhi was killed in Arizona in the first post-September 11 hate crime, national news did not air his photograph, his face, his beard and turban, the reason he was killed. In reporting hate crimes, the war on Afghanistan, the war on Iraq, detentions and deportations of Muslims and Arabs, and continued prejudice in America, why has the American media consistently humanized one side and not the other?"

Peter Jennings responded, "We're not out to get any one side. The media is trying to do a better job to raise awareness about different communities after September 11th. America as a whole has learned a lot more about Muslim Americans, Arab Americans, and Sikh Americans-- well, perhaps to a lesser extent Sikh Americans."

Minutes after this conversation took place in San Francisco, another Sikh man was shot in a hate crime in Phoenix. Around 9:15pm, two men pulled up to the turbaned truckdriver, who was waiting for his family to take him home. They yelled, "Go back to your country! This is what you get for leaving your country" and shot him twice in the stomach and thigh. (Associated Press, May 20th, see below).

Nearly two years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, isolated hate crimes against Sikhs, Muslims, and others continue. Although it's easy for most Americans to brush away these hate crimes as random acts of violence, they indicate a larger social climate of fear, stereotyping, and prejudice, partly sustained by American media representations. This month alone, Berkeley Professor Bharati Mukherjee generalized Sikhs as terrorists on the Bill Moyers show, nationally televised (May 2, 2003, http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript218_full.html), and talk-show host Barbara Simpson dismissed representation of targeted communities as unnecessary (May 19, 2003).

It's easy to feel tired. Many of us have struggled daily with the hardships of a changed world-- hate crimes, prejudice, loss of civil liberties, terror alerts, economic downturns, and two wars. But when the media largely fails to humanize our struggles, we-- Sikh, Muslim, Arab, Iraqi, and other targeted Americans-- must not let up efforts to reach out and educate others, even in the smallest ways.

Our faces and voices humanize our community's struggles.

Likewise, we ask our allies in the larger American community-- teachers, journalists, professors, writers, news anchors, lawyers, and politicians-- to stand in solidarity with us, help raise up our voices and make our stories real. We have much work ahead.

http://911prejudice.stanford.edu

For more information contact Valarie Kaur - valarie@stanfordalumni.org

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Another Sikh Man Shot in Arizona