My mother's first visit to America was soon after 9/11. That Christmas, I took her to a mall near where I lived at the time. J was only a few months old and I was not able to fit into any of my pre-pregnancy clothes yet. I remember wearing to the mall a black shalwar-kameez she had brought for me from India because it was the only outfit I could fit into comfortably. My mother wore a sari as she always does. So there we were, two dark-haired, brown-skinned, petite ethnic women in clothes that looked decidedly foreign. A group of white punks hurled racially charged abuse and insults upon us while we walking inside the mall. It was the first time I had experienced anything like that in the States and I had been here for a couple of years at the time.
Needless to say, I was terrified and thought they might harm J. There had been reports of racial violence and the targeting of Sikhs because of their turbans. I could tell these teens were educationally and culturally backward enough not to know the difference between a Hindu or Sikh from India and an Arab from the Middle East. Not that being able to tell one apart from the other justified their behavior, but clearly my black shalwar-kameez had been the trigger for that outburst. Dusk was gathering and it was raining heavily outside. I was a relatively new driver at the time and was scared to drive down the hilly road that led home in that weather - especially with a new born in the car-seat. But we were too shaken to do anything else.
Having spent all our lives in India, where women have never felt safe around men in public places, we found this incident to be eerily reminiscent of the many bad experiences we have both had at different times back home. Of course, race and ethnicity have nothing to do with misbehavior there, but men will cuss out women in the most obscene manner just to terrorize them - we were both very familiar with what that felt like. That evening, a group of white kids had traumatized us in the exact same way, with their ignorance about our race and religion making it so much more dangerous given that 9/11 had happened just a few months before.
Article comments
1 - Cary Ace Bowers Jr
Get over your fear of other races,you caused your own paranoia by thinking of yourselves in your infinite greed,your wanting of slavery,youve lost respect for anyone not of your race,What do you want that you dont have,to dictate others lives is you have no authority.Authority is the dying issue,the separation of the lazy,and the doers is the future!
2 - Joanne Huspek
I am so sorry you had to experience what happened on the street as well as with the comment above.
You would think that our country, which has been based on embracing the immigrant, would have moved beyond this sort of ignorance and negativity. As a person of mixed ethnic background, I grew up with this growing up in the '60s.
Your mother is wise in her perception. Being wise is helpful in everything except allaying fear.