There is an old saying that goes like this: “a book cannot be judged by its cover.” Some people however browse books in the bookstore and if they enjoy the title and the graphics on the front and back covers, they may buy the book and add it to their library. That is what those books are probably good for anyway, an addition to a personal library. The expression indeed is a metaphor for those who only see the outside and not the inside. In his most famous speech, Martin Luther King dreamed of a society where his children “will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Alternatively, as the famous poet Saadi once said: human’s body is honored by its spirit, hence the symbol of humanity is not one’s nice attire. If someone selects another person merely based on looks, the selected is good to be put on display only for presentation as a model, as in the case of the book with a nice cover. When someone is judging others by their appearance, we call that person racist, sexist, or homophobic. It is in fact against the law, as the US constitution declares that no one can be discriminated based on gender, race, religion, or national origin. One who is in the position to decide who should be selected to run for an office or handle certain tasks involving public, or who should be admitted to cross the border (such as a custom officer) must be mindful of the constitution.
I have not seen one of my nephews for about 12 years. He moved to live in Europe two and a half decades ago. On his recent trip to Canada to visit his brother, he decided to take a short trip to the US for a visit. It made me delighted to see him after all those years, and arranged to see him in the airport when he arrived last Friday night. I spoke to my wife to make plans for sightseeing and other cheerful activities especially that his visit was short and only for a couple of days. I tried to remember where I took him when he was here for the first time 15 years ago, to show him new places this time. We canceled a party we were supposed to go to on Saturday in order to spend more time with my nephew. We did some grocery shopping on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon, so we would not have to waste time shopping in the weekend. I called my wife from work to make sure we had all we needed in the house for our visitor. She told me how excited she was to see another one of our relatives, as we both enjoy having company over house most of the time. I stayed a little longer at work on Friday, so I would not have to check in my office in the weekend. When I arrived home, my wife told me that she had received a call from expected guest's brother in Canada that the US Custom denied a visa to his brother! Several phone calls back and forth between our house and my nephew’s house in Canada on Friday did not give us much information about the situation until he called the following day and described the events.
He explained that with a European passport and considering that he had traveled to the US before, it did not even entered his mind the possibility of not receiving a visa. He checks his luggage with the travel agent and receives a boarding pass and proceeds towards the gate with US Custom at the entrance. After the agent checks his passport, the agent asks him where he is from, which he responds by mentioning the name of his adopted country. The agent puts the question differently by asking him where he is originally from, which he responds that he is originally from Iran. At this point, the agent leads him to a smaller room and with a more direct tone of voice tells him to wait there. My nephew obliges, thinking that there is an error or a case of mistaken identity that would be corrected in a few minutes since he has a couple of hours left to his flight time. These few minutes turn out to be seven long and hard hours of detention, without permission to contact anyone or step out of the room (or cell)! My nephew was fingerprinted and interrogated, and he had to disclose to them his autobiography for as far back as his memory allowed. Of course, after each interrogating session he was left alone for a long time, pondering what went wrong and how long he would be detained. After he was totally demeaned and humiliated, they told him that they could not grant him a visa and they called for Canadian border police to remove him from the US territory! Totally puzzled, and insisting to know on what grounds he was treated in such a way, one of the officers confidentially murmured in his ears that he had an Arabic name and his birth place was Iran.
One of the oldest tricks of domination is creating division. Assuming that the officers did not receive a direct order to detain any Iranian origin with Arabic name who tries to cross the border, government’s policies create racial and ethnic divisions in order for people to screen each other. This happens less than a month when Obama congratulates Iranians on their new year, in Parsi. When the empire is weak and it is choked with variety of financial and political problems, the best tool in the hands of the emperor (right wing media and Wall Street and multi-national corporations, in the case of the US) is to keep struggling people feel better about themselves by disgracing their neighbors. It gets to the point that a custom agent allows himself to tell the victim openly that he was discriminated against because of his name and his birthplace. This custom agent may be Mr. John Doe, or Ms. Wong, or Mr. Ramirez, or Mrs. Singh, or Mr. Mohammad! In fact, the more racially, financially, and ethnically suppressed one is, the more racist against other minorities he or she may become. To attack Afghanistan we had to make Taliban (US creation) and Afghan citizens look nomads and subhuman. In order to attack Iraq we had to make their dictator as the owner of weapons of mass destruction. In order to attack Libya we had to claim that the dictator was mass killing his own countrymen. In order to stifle those who speak loudly against our policies at home, we need to re-institute segregation by creating boundaries between “haves and have-nots”, “whites and coloreds”, “those with accents and those without”, and any other means that can separate people and divide them into individuals. In such a way, they cannot group together again as they did in Madison, Wisconsin, a threat to the empire. The interesting fact is that when we read history of all great empires, we notice that in their last days as, when they were gasping for air, they were all entrenched in a long standing and never ending war, their debts were skyrocketing, the disparity between the rich and the poor had reached its highest, their populace had the lowest educational level, and all other nations were either afraid of them or hated them. Having a non-white person as the president is the best time and it makes the best scenario to endorse racism.
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