Where One Means All

The shooting at Fort Hood has been claiming the airwaves and the pages of the newspapers, and rightfully so. It's a tragedy, plain and simple. Innocent people were killed and injured and it rocked the lives of countless others.

From the beginning, there has been a lot of misinformation and speculation about what was happening behind the gates of Fort Hood -- first there was one shooter, then many, then only one, then he was dead and then miraculously alive again. As the military remains tight-lipped about the accused, the victims and pretty much the whole situation, the media pundits will continue their speculating and misinforming. They will speculate about his motives-- try to put his life together through a series of paper applications and documents to understand who he is and what he is about. They'll talk about his ethnic identity, Middle Eastern (Jordanian/Palestinian to be specific), his possible religious beliefs, his legal case against being shipped off...

And what will it all accomplish?


Countless mosques called in for heightened security, with a few already having received threats. Community organizations have already prepped and released their statements, distancing themselves from the individual, while trying to convince the country of Arab-American's loyalty and commitment to the United States.

That, I suppose, is the big difference between being White and being Not-White.

Being Not-White means that when someone within your community screws up, you are looked upon with a bit of extra scrutiny. Being Not-White means that when a Korean-American kid loses it and shoots his classmates, an entire NATION formally apologizes.
Being Not-White means that when someone, who may or may not even be of your faith but has a name that makes it seem as though he might be, screws up, buildings have to go into lockdown and your life, 1,500 miles away, is disrupted.
Being Not-White means someone, who looks clean-cut and respectable, has to come out in front of the news camera and apologize-but-not-apologize and remind people that the actions of one person in no way reflects those of an entire community.
Being Not-White means you, who are so removed from the entire situation, by distance, by faith, by life, will have to have a well-prepared statement about what happened, because you too are being judged in that moment.

While I hope that this situation will be treated in the context of what it is-- a soldier, for whatever reason, lost it and shot his fellow soldiers-- and that all the communities of Not-White people around the country can rest easily and not think about what might happen to them because of him.