She seemed nice enough — short gray hair, spectacles, a gracious manner, elegantly dressed — until she said: “The problem we have in this country is the Muslims.” What do you do when you are faced with racism? How do you respond to someone who makes an Islamophobic statement like this?
This is not the first time I am in this situation, quite the opposite. And I have yet to find a way to deal with it. Should you walk away and avoid confrontation or is that cowardly? Should you confront and show your anger or is that courting trouble? Should you challenge and argue or is that digging a hole in the sand? My most natural reaction is to fall silent in shock.
That is what happened the first time I came face to face with Islamophobia. It was a good ten years ago when, as the chair of the alumni committee of the university where I obtained my undergraduate degree, I was asked to present an eminent professor of genetics at a public lecture. Usually our talks were held in lecture theaters at the university, but this man was so well known that we had ended up hiring a theater especially. It was sold out, possibly the most popular event we ever ran.
A few minutes before the talk was scheduled to start, I went backstage and was introduced to the professor by the man who managed the events. They fell talking about other academics, discussing possible candidates for future talks. That was when I heard the famous professor say: “The problem we have is the Muslims. Those b***rds are taking over the place.” I looked at him in shock, and then turned toward the event manager looking for a reaction. None. They continued talking regardless as we walked toward the stage and a moment later I found myself on stage in front of five hundred people having to introduce this man before his speech. I remember the feeling of standing there with the light on me, struggling to speak. The crowd heckled me as I stood silent. Then I simply said his name and asked them to welcome him. They applauded and I left.
That episode has haunted me. I have often asked myself what should I have done. Though I know I should have said something, I still don’t know what the appropriate response should have been. And since then, there have been many occasions when yet again I find myself mid-sentence, mouth agape, thinking: “Oh no, not again!” as yet another person I had thought intelligent and sensitive forgets or ignores that I am Muslim and insults Muslims in my presence.
Except that it goes further than that. One of the reasons I don’t like to point out I am a Muslim when someone makes such a remark is that I feel that every one of us should be offended by racist remarks, not just people of the race or faith which has been insulted. In fact I get just as upset when I hear anti-Semitic remarks and if anything I find that harder to deal with.
Not just anti-Semitism, but remarks against any group of people based on faith, race or skin color.
So what should you do when someone makes a racist remark?
The obvious answer is to confront them, but in my experience this invariably leads to a slanging match. Arguing and trying to convince them they are wrong has been my preferred strategy but in most cases all it achieves is the exposition of the depth of the problem. The debate will run round and round in an ever-increasing circle, each point challenged and replaced with a new point of difference until eventually you end up exactly where you started. Walking away sometimes seems the best thing to do, but then you are contributing to the problem by not flagging it up as wrong.
I simply don’t know the answer. The only helpful advice I have been given is to say, “I take a different view” and steer the conversation away to safer ground. That is what I do when I find myself in the back of a taxi for instance and the driver turns to me and with a beatific smile informs me that there are too many of those Arab good-for-nothings in France.
The saddest thing about racism is that it is learned so early. Children as young as four have been repeatedly found to categorize people according to race and skin color. Moreover they also attach values to these skin labels, usually assigning positive traits such as success, trustworthiness and attractiveness to lighter skins. This is best exemplified by the real story of the son of a friend of mine. At the age of four, this child of two Arab parents came home from school one day and announced to his father: “Daddy I love you because you are my dad but I love Mummy more because she is white and you are black.”
Anything which segregates people in my view promotes racism. They are two sides to the same coin. Those who readily split people up into ethnic groups almost inevitably end up discriminating along racial lines. It’s yet another version of the “us and them” argument. The person who today thinks Koreans are the problem will tomorrow think Arabs are the problem. Just as the person who yesterday thought Jews were the problem today thinks Muslims are the problem. It is a way of thinking which creates racism and the only way to protect ourselves from racism is to fight it at the root by teaching our children not to categorize people according to race, faith or skin color and by encouraging them to mingle and play with the most diverse group of people possible. By the time someone sits up in front of me and tells me very politely that people of my faith are the cause of all their problems, it is too late to change their thinking.
