BROWN AND BEARDED IN AMERICA GETTING PROFILED AFTER 9/11 Written by Walter Jay Jr.
“
Illustrated by Kendal Foreman
Again?” Jabir says, cutting me off in disbelief. As I look up, the cabin of his 1991 Honda Accord fills with red and blue light. Jabir was right. I couldn’t believe it. We were getting pulled over for the fifth time that night. Our crime? Playing late-night basketball with our friends and driving home brown and bearded in America. In those moments it is hard to process everything that is happening to you. Guilt, privilege, inequity, profiling, shame, anger, rage, confusion. It is a cocktail of emotions and events that even after nearly 15 years I am still trying to sift through and understand.
In 2006 certain racial, religious and cultural groups were being profiled for being brown and 12 Warrior Life
bearded in America. From me, a Sri Lankan Buddhist kid from Los Angeles, to Jabir, the only child of a Puerto Rican and Ethiopian immigrant from Oakland. Many of us were casualties from the fallout of 9/11.
A Minnesota Transportation Security Administration employee assaulting a man because he thought he was Muslim. Henry Clay Glaspell setting fire to a playground outside a mosque in Arlington, Texas. Antonio Nunez-Flores throwing a molotov cocktail at children at an Islamic Center in El Paso, Texas. Incidents against people that looked like me seemed to escalate to a state of normalcy.
Sept. 11, 2001, gave America the green light for the hatred and xenophobia it craved. Anyone that
