by Kabir Carter
I have been involved with the research and production of "This Was My City Too" since early December. As the focus of this particular program has shifted and sharpened, several accounts have drifted away from us and I can only hope that some of them will come to light elsewhere. In our attempts to chronicle immigrant stories, I have been struck by several incongruities and sad truths. I have seen that many Americans are unable to understand how they confuse and conflate race, ethnicity, national identity, cultural background, and religious heritage when employing terms like Arab, Middle Eastern, and South Asian. I've also spoken with Arab-Americans who choose to identify with the current Middle Eastern immigrant community in New York, even if their own families immigrated three or four generations ago. I've found that many individuals who believe themselves possible suspects in the eyes of the FBI and INS have not only known the horrors of sanctioned and unsanctioned "terror" in their home countries, but in fact came here to escape it — and there seems to be no end in sight to the immigration crackdown.
Before beginning to work on this program, I had always been fascinated by some Americans' amazing ability to, in all sincerity, claim that they had come from "nowhere." Is that a sign of successfully melting in the pot? How many generations of Americans can you count in your family? Our former mayor can count three, including himself. For the record, I get stuck at five, halfway into the 19th century, with African-American slaves and Choctaws in the Southeast and Prussian Mennonites in the Midwest. I hope that all of us never lose sight of our personal and collective immigrant histories.
In speaking and meeting with individuals in both Arab and South Asian communities, I assumed that my being (seen by most as) a minority would make me an empathetic listener by default. Instead, I found myself unprepared for the awkwardness I would feel as an outsider to what has been happening in these communities. I am profoundly disturbed by the arbitrariness exercised in determining the "terrorist profile", while also relieved that I don't quite match it — and embarrassed by my relief. I can only hope that those who listen to this program will try to see how, in times of war and terror, just how thin and mutable the barrier is between good and evil, targeted and untargeted.