Personal Stories in Paranoia
in the Days after September 11, 2001
By Kevin J. Walker, Netitor of the NetPaper
http://wordnetpaper.tripod.com
I remember the paranoia in the days right after 9-11. I had a beard then, and combined with my light skin and the olive drab green I often wore I got lots of strange looks. (My father was a Marine, hence the liking for green, I guess).
In the Hidden Valleys region I go to write, a farmer whose honey and apple stands I frequented told me of the utterances of another farmer that he didn’t particukaulry care for. He said the other was prejudiced and narrow minded.
Then he pointed deliberately towards his spread as I inwardly flinched. “That f------ right over there…”
“That sumbitch asked me about you ‘is he a Muslim or something? I’ve seen him around the Ridge. Is he somebody we should be worried about?’
“I told him, ‘no he’s just a regular Black person.”
This was a small town, and some allowances have to be made for the attitudes of some. But big cities aren't bastions of enlightenment and tolerability.
I lived near the airport, and was walking home after getting off gthe bus. Its always a long walk, going around an airport. A car came by way too slowly with some White male yahoos – or is that redundant on a Friday night?
“Hey, you! Allah is a pussy!” the passenger shouted.
“Dumb asses,” I thought.
“’Allah’ means ‘God’ in Arabic.”
But that would have only made matters worse, so as many others in those dark days I held my tongue and chose my battles wisely.
In the days after 9-11 I went out to the hidden valleys region of western Wisconsin where I go to write each Autumn until it gets too cold, and I was glad to be gone from the cities too. With plans going into skyscrapers we didn’t know if this was a single event, or just the start. As a survivalist since my early teens it was time to book!
So, we were in the Gander Mountain hunting and camping store in western Wisconsin getting some camping gear, and ammo for our numerous guns after the WTC attacks.
We noticed over and over how the White guys were eyeing us as we went about the store, and stacking our boxes of 9mm clips, shotgun and rifle shells. I didn’t know what their problem is; why do some people forget that the factories and stores didn’t close down when they bought their guns?
But it brought home again the realization that the only reason more Black men – and women— weren’t hung from trees and more Black townships weren’t ridden into and burned to the ground by Nightriders in the years after Emancipation and Reconstruction is because there was a balance and we had our guns locked and loaded too, thanks to the Second Amendment.
It was good for them to see that there were Black men who were jkeeping and bearing arms, and had a mindset to use them in their defense and their communities. Nothing clarifies the attention of a potential victimizer than that they might get a hole put in them by their potential target!
Others felt the sting of the dark days after September 11, 2001, people we mightn’t even suspect.
A bank officer in lacrosse Wisconsin told me that she was being treated chillily by some people; some told her to go back to where she came from.” She had a slight ethnic flair about her, with dark brown hair and eyes. Although American born and looking White to me, evidently that wasn’t enough.
I thought about Bosnia, and later in Rwanda in Africa, and how they went down the street to kill their neighbors of the other clan at the neighborhood Big Mama’s house, where they all grew up eating her food. Almost as if they were waiting for a hidden signal, and killing her, and her grandsons as if nothing ever counted; as if they weren’t even human beings worthy of mercy.
-- Three Brothas were joined by a fourth on Wisconsin Avenue, the main street in downtown Milwaukee as they were busy discussing about the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the anti-Muslim, anti-Immigrant violence that has ensued with the jingoistic war talk and sabre-rattling mood the nation is now infused.
One of them brought up something that placed their talks in a new perspective. "Have you noticed any brothers wearing their kufi hats lately?" one asked.
Come to think of it, we said, those North African styled brimless hats, as well as Kente cloth, head wraps or other outwardly ethnic garb has become rather scarce lately. Self preservation trumps fashion statements and ethnic identity any day!
And the negative attention that is being directed towards Mexican Americans and the Undocumented Illegals as they become the largest nonwhite population, and the current climate against other ethnics because of the terrorist dive-bombings is welcome news to many Black people, if they were really honest about it.
After talking with a friend of his about the backlash following the attacks, a traveler wrote in an open letter:
"I was talking to a friend Sunday on the telephone; he lives in Brooklyn. He was born in Panama, and is retired from Sears. He told me a Puerto Rican who was wearing a white skull cap was beaten half to death, as the crowd thought he was an Arab.
"Now, most Americans can't tell the difference between an Arab, a Hindu, a Sikh or an Italian for that matter. Many island-born Cubans and some Puerto Ricans in African religions wear African hats and tops-- which could make you look like what Americans think of as a Muslim or Arab. And you could get your ass whipped in New York, New Jersey, etc.
"In the right place and right suit, you could be mistaken for a Palestinian or a Muslim or even an East Indian (Pakistani), and have to run for your so-called African-mixed life.
"Normally it's no problem for me. But dressing in African clothing, or wearing an African hat could get me pulled over to the side; and sent to the back room for deep, deep questioning. Less in Milwaukee, more so in Chicago, L.A. or the East coast.
"Arabian Fest canceled their festival on the SummerFest grounds immediately after the Trade Center Bombings. White Patriots, Skin Heads, Magic Christians, and other hyped-up White Trash would have put those people in grave danger. That's just the way it is."
--30--
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