A Dream In Doubt

The film we watched in class on Friday, A Dream In Doubt, was a big eye opener for me.  I knew that hate crimes towards Muslims, Middle Easterners, or just those who wore turbans existed but to see it in the perspective of those who were affected definitely opened my eyes to the animosity towards those groups.  It is awful to think that just because people look like those who belong to terrorist groups they are targets for hate crimes and are literally killed because of their appearance.  Its amazing to me that there are people who can be ignorant enough to believe that those who wear turbans and have beards had something to do with the terrorist attacks.  At my school, there was a girl who was a grade behind me who was Muslim.  As expected, there were those snickers and jeers relating her to terrorists.  In the fall of 2011, the ten year anniversary of the terrorist attacks, she gave a speech at a school wide assembly explaining her faith and how she and her family were hurt by the 9/11 attacks just as any other American was.  To get up in front of 2,000 plus people and do what she did took a great deal of courage and I'm sure opened the eyes of many students.  In a sense, this is very similar to the Pearl Harbor attacks.  My grand-parents had some experiences while they were growing up, people would blame them for the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the thousands of deaths that came as a result.  It is sad that exactly sixty years after the Pearl Harbor attacks, our society was not able to transcend enough to not blame those who only share the same appearance of those who were our enemies.