In Pennsylvania, all you need is dark hair, and a job teaching Islamic Studies, as this woman found out:
I quit my part-time job today. I got a job in November working as holiday help at a major chain of stores that sells lotions, soaps, and a variety of scented items that are supposed to help us all feel better. I was fairly happy there during the Christmas season, all commentary about materialism destroying the holiday season aside, it was good. My assistant manager called me a freak, a mental patient, and a slut. I was able to deal with it by blocking her out of my head and
enjoying working with my peers. It was not great, but it was okay until she discovered that I teach Islamic Studies.I’m not Arab. I’m not Muslim…. So why am I talking about anti-Arab, anti-Muslim?
Because the assistant manager liked to tell me I “looked like a terrorist.”
In the winter I love to wear my black scarf around my neck. It’s warm and I like the feeling under my chin. I like to play with it and pull it up around my nose. This action makes me “look like a terrorist.”
“Stop doing that, you look like a terrorist,” she said to me over and over and over again.
What the hell does a terrorist look like?
Apparently it looks like 25 year old Anglican college professor with brown hair and auburn highlights who’s so pale that when she goes to fill-out forms about her ethnic background she’s sorely tempted to tick “pink.” […]
Teaching’s a crime now. Teaching Islam is practically a felony. I can’t even get a summer job with my degrees in Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern Studies because people won’t even meet me. I have to say, “Social Anthropology” or “Humanities” because otherwise, people don’t want to have anything to do with you.
You’re a pariah before they even lay eyes upon you.
Not the most important news of the day, but certainly one of the most depressing signs (for me anyway) of what our country has become since the attacks of 9/11. Now even having a degree in Islamic studies makes you suspect in the eyes of some red blooded Americans. Makes you an open object of ridicule and abuse.
Makes you look like a terrorist.
