A Gruesome Hate Murder and No One Caresby Anthony GregoryMar. 29, 2012 |
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The modern United States upholds an official code of antiracism. Despite any disparities in the criminal justice system or how the rest of the state treats people, violent crimes against some minorities are condemned especially loudly when they are thought to be motivated by bigotry. Unless the victim is of a national origin officially determined to be the "enemy," that is. Shaima Al Awada, an Iraqi mother of five and a devout Muslim, was brutally beaten to death with a tire iron in her own California home, her body left beside a note telling her to "Go back to your country, you terrorist." Nina Burleigh writes: Coming on the heels of the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida, there would seem to be many parallels between the two crimes--the hate speech, the prejudice, the innocence of the victims. A One Million Hijabs for Shaima Al Awadi page has even been launched on Facebook, but it's doubtful that the movement will really catch on because Iraqis still considered dangerous infiltrators in the eyes of Americans.Indeed, even though the Iraqi people did nothing against the United States, only to see their country destroyed, hundreds of thousands of their people slaughtered, millions displaced in two decades of murderous U.S. wars and sanctions, somehow these people are still seen as the dangerous ones. But of course, if it's morally justifiable to treat people as subhuman by the millions--a principle necessarily implicit in the U.S. warfare state--what's one more dead mother count? This is one kind of private violent crime that the state could easily discourage simply by refraining from its killing sprees abroad; the copycat incidents would surely decline. From the lynchings of German-Americans to the massacre of Al Awada, the worst hate-motivated crimes are inflamed by Washington's global crusades, and few take notice. Krauts, gooks, ragheads--if they wanted to be treated like human beings, they should have had the good sense to be born Americans. |