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opinion:
our view
Arabs scared:
rightly so
Arab students are
fearing for their lives. There are 40,000 Arab students nationwide.
Thirty of them are reportedly leaving Cal State Long Beach.
With hate crimes
against Muslims, Sikhs, Middle Easterners, Islamics, and any
others fitting the Taliban leader Osama bin Laden profile
increasing, Arab students have legitimate reason to be scared.
Flash back to Dec.
7, 1941. The Japanese pull a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii. Innocent, unprepared soldiers are killed.
New York and Washington,
D.C.: innocent civilians are demolished.
Post World War
II: Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, and Vietnamese-Americans are
ridiculed. Their slanted eyes and yellow-based skin are reason
enough for hatred.
September 2001:
Anyone with "Middle Eastern" characteristics is
looked upon with scorn. They are attacked, even killed.
Both situations,
although 60 years apart, are eerily similar.
Americans are frustrated.
They want to blame someone for what happened on Sept. 11.
Revenge is pumping alongside their red blood. They see someone
who vaguely resembles bin Laden and lash out.
Muslims are also
frustrated. So are Arabs. What people forget is that these
people are Americans too.
Japanese-Americans
sympathized with the victims of Pearl Harbor. Yet they were
denounced as Americans and put into internment camps, set
up on horserace tracks, and treated like animals. Their land,
their homes, their possessions, their lives were stolen, stolen
by a United States that proclaims to be "the land of
the free."
People scoff at
the idea that this could happen again. But who stopped Hitler
when he tortured millions of innocent Jews? Who tried to help
the Japanese-Americans whose only crime was having different
shaped eyes, darker hair, and darker skin than other Americans?
Today's hate crimes
are occurring for the same reasons. The Iranians, Muslims,
and Indians have committed no crime. They have darker skin,
perhaps a different style of dress, maybe even a different
language. But they are no less American than you or me.
Yet they fear for
their lives. They are abandoning their education, to get away
from the hatred. They want to spend time with their families,
because the supposed American people, who continue to tout,
"United we stand," are doing no such thing.
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