A hoodie and a hijab.
A black teen and a young Iraqi.
My hopes that as time goes by, a certain sense of enlightenment has set in with respect to racial profiling and xenophobia.
Clearly I'm wrong and continue to be hopelessly naïve.
This past week the public outrage on the gunning down of an innocent Florida teen who was just making a Skittles run while watching an NBA game at his father's home in a gated community, dominated social media, cable news, and water cooler conversations. Sanford Police's incompetent handling of this case, solidifies the long running uneasiness that the Florida's African-American community has had with their town's police.
George Zimmerman was taken at his word right on the spot, that he was accosted by the young boy the night of February 26th and therefore practicing the state's "Stand Your Ground" law, he shot him in what he claimed to be "self defense."
Sanford Police ran drug tests on Martin, but none on Zimmerman, who was free to go home.
It wasn't until the 911 calls were released (and not out of the good heartedness of Sanford Police Department, but more due to public pressure), and the statement from the girlfriend that Martin was speaking to, just minutes before his fatal encounter, revealed that there was more to this story.
I appears that Zimmerman's self-defense claim seems to be falling apart. And the Sanford Police Department is now scrambling to save face.
Keep in mind this happened a month ago. It was headline news in Sanford the next day, and it made the major papers and broadcast cable news throughout Florida. But national (and even global attention) didn't take until news of this tragedy filtered through Facebook and Twitter.
Then on March 8th, it went national with CBS news breaking the story. That afternoon it was online at the Huffington Post and days later, the 24-hour cable world got it via CNN.
The global newsreel went into overdrive when the 911 calls were released, shedding even more disturbing light on to the tragic chain of events.
Zimmerman continues to be free, in hiding and not charged. If this was the other way around...well we'd all know where Trayvon would be right now. Exactly.
While hoodies were being donned in national protests across the United States, on Wednesday March 21st, in El Cajon (a suburb of San Diego) California, another 17 year old -- this time a girl -- found her mother brutally attacked and lying unconscious in a pool of blood on their home's dining room floor.
Next to her was a note which read, "Go back to your country, you terrorist."
Shaima Alwali, the 32-year-old mother of five children between the ages of 8 and 17, got a similar note just days before, but just like we all do now, she brushed it off as a child's prank. She didn't report it to the authorities. From personal experience, It's all part of the reality of being a Muslim today. Notes like these become so innocuous that it doesn't need much thought nor attention. Sadly, similar to the racial profiling that has become part of the lives of our black brothers and sisters, it happens. We just learn to live with it.
Little did Alwali know that on Wednesday morning, when she said goodbye to her husband and younger kids, whom he was dropping off to school on his way to work, it would only be just a couple of hours later that she would be on the receiving end of near-fatal blows by a tire iron.
All in the comfort of her own home. The home that she and her family only lived in for a few weeks, having just moved to San Diego from Michigan. Her husband used to work for the U.S. Army with private contractors serving as cultural advisors for soldiers who are to be deployed to the Middle East. So these "terrorists" were in fact helping the U.S. War on Terror.
The doctors had little hope for her survival, and they were right as Shaima was taken off life support this past Saturday.
And the police? As per San Diego Police Lieutenant, they are looking at the "possibility" of this being a hate crime and that they "don't want to focus on only one issue and miss something else."
Possibility? I'm sorry, but what else is there?
So now we have two tragic stories of a 17-year-old boy in a hoodie and a 17-year-old girl in a hijab. One is gunned down, while the other finds her dying mother brutally attacked at home.
And in both cases the police continue to lose the trust of those they are supposed to protect. And they wonder why notes similar to what Alwali received aren't reported?
If the police aren't going to say it, then I am. America, please stop the hate crimes.
And I know that I'm not being naive here.
Follow Hina P. Ansari on Twitter: www.twitter.com/hinapansari
"A California hate crime murder that sparked an international uproar may have been a killing within the family, as police turn their investigation to her husband and teen daughter.
"The Iraqi family was troubled by relationship issues before Shaima Alawadi, 32, a mother of five was beaten to death in her California home, according to newly released documents that contain little evidence the killing was a hate crime.
"Alawadi, 32, planned to divorce her husband and move to Texas, according to search warrant records obtained by U-T San Diego.
"And the victim's 17-year-old daughter was apparently distraught over the prospect of an arranged marriage to her cousin...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2125811/Shaima-Alawadi-murder-Authorities-eye-pending-divorce-troubled-relationship-teen-daughter-murder-Iraq-born-mother.html
In other countries there are public inquiries of varying types that do NOT just allow a person to gun someone down, or hang them, or kick them, or jump out of the car and beat them to death (young kids-often rich ones-killing homeless for a 'wild oat') or harm or kill young women "they" think it is OK to harm because they are considered "hookers". Again, the offenders are often rich.
The worst of this is that so many people condoned it, and that two young men have their lives ruined no matter what happens.
Most women are killed by husbands/boy friends and then by other family members. Maybe these unresolved questions pose a good reason to pause before race baiting and screaming 'hate crime!'.
Unlike Canada, in America there is no thin-line between free-speech and hate-speech. Without that line any crime committed can be labelled as a 'difference of opinion' as opposed to 'hate-crime.' It's easy for people in America to say "I thought they were dangerous, it had nothing to do with hate."
The amount of proof required to determine the difference between hate and opinion in America is simply ridiculous, and even in cases where it is patently obvious that it is indeed a hate-crime you have people accusing the victims that it is their fault that the hate-crime took place to begin with.
We don't have this problem in Canada because we drew a line in the sand defining what hate-speech and hate-crimes are, and that empowers Canadians on a whole to act on those who cross that line. It's the difference between 100 anti-hate protesters chasing a dozen white-supremacists into a subway, and a man still not arrested for killing a black male youth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Channon_Christian_and_Christopher_Newsom
The Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom case was DEFINITELY a racially-motivated hate crime, if there ever was such a thing.
Life was much better when those people had to use the rear entrance, right?
I just can't fathom how some people think. Perhaps I am also naive.
Whatever happened to welcoming a new neighbour with banana bread or a houseplant? Not hateful notes and a beating.
It makes me so angry that people are so quick to rush to judgement about someone based on their appearance.
Assuming all Muslims are terroists is the same as absurd as assuming all white guys are serial killers since the majority of serial killers happen to be white men
one could argue that there are more white males than males of other races but as a female chances if I'm a victim of a serial killer that killer will probably be white
of course it's absurd to think that means all white males are serial killers
just as it's absurd to think all Muslims are terrorises
What?
There are now TWO witnesses (not including zimmerman's cries for help on tone of the 911 recordings) who have come forward they saw zimmerman on his back on the ground; he was treated for injuries (bleeding from the nose & back of head)
Did Mr Martin go after Zimmerman in self defense AFTER he was shot? Or...was it before?
To call Martin innocent and Zimmerman guilty right now is somewhat premature. Zimmerman certainly should have heeded the police department's recommendation---which led to the shooting. But as for the FACTS of the case--we are all just kind of guessing...or making assumptions based on melanin concentration!
"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery. Then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.... After all we have been through. Just to think we can't walk down our own streets, how humiliating. "
Remarks at a meeting of Operation PUSH in Chicago (27 November 1993). Quoted in "Crime: New Frontier - Jesse Jackson Calls It Top Civil-Rights Issue" by Mary A. Johnson, 29 November 1993, Chicago Sun-Times (ellipsis in original). Partially quoted in US News & World Report (10 March 1996)
...and i get all caught up in the racism paradigm that keeps this country going (right barry?)