Apparently if you might possibly in some racist jerk’s universe be considered “a man of Middle Eastern descent” you better not throw anything away at work where anyone can see you. Kazim Ali, a professor at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, took a box of old poetry contest manuscripts out of his car and set the box next to the dumpster outside of his office, for recycling, as he had done many times before. A student called the police and reported that a Middle Eastern man driving a white Volkswagon had left a possible bomb on campus. Classes were cancelled, buildings evacuated, and the entire campus closed.

In “Poetry is Dangerous” Ali says,

Because of my recycling the bomb squad came, the state police came. Because of my recycling buildings were evacuated, classes were canceled, campus was closed. No. Not because of my recycling. Because of my dark body. No. Not because of my dark body. Because of his fear. Because of the way he saw me. Because of the culture of fear, mistrust, hatred, and suspicion that is carefully cultivated in the media, by the government, by people who claim to want to keep us safe.

These are the days of orange alert, school lock-downs, and endless war. We are preparing for it, training for it, looking for it, and so of course, in the most innocuous of places–a professor wanting to hurry home, hefting his box of discarded poetry–we find it.

That man in the parking lot didn’t even see me. He saw my darkness. He saw my Middle Eastern descent. Ironic because though my grandfathers came from Egypt, I am Indian, a South Asian, and could never be mistaken for a Middle Eastern man by anyone who’d ever met one.

The university does not seem to have responded well. They deny there was any racism in this incident. The package was considered suspicious because Ali was assumed by the observing student and by the police to be from another country and “Middle Eastern”. Instead of apologizing to Ali and to all the students, and disciplining the offending student for an insane display of racism, the campus administration appears to have bought into and magnified that problem, by using the opportunity to remind the campus community to continue policing each other. INstead of apologizing to Ali, the administration nobly forgives Ali for his “honest mistake” of putting his stuff out to be recycled while being dark-skinned. Instead of that compoundingly racist and stupid reaction, the campus could have used it as a moment to open a conversation about race and denying the “culture of fear” in their community.

Technorati Tags: academia, antiracism