There is an additional aspect worth noting to the comments Juan Williams made that caused NPR to catch the vapors and fire him in order to protect the fragile sensitivities of its staff and listeners. Recall what he said to O'Reilly:
“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”
Mr. Williams also made reference to the Pakistani immigrant who pleaded guilty this month to trying to plant a car bomb in Times Square. “He said the war with Muslims, America’s war is just beginning, first drop of blood. I don’t think there’s any way to get away from these facts,” Mr. Williams said.
It is rarely remarked upon but true nonetheless: young men, under the influence of their heightened Testosterone, gain status by their ability to be dominating. We explicitly recognize the importance of Status and dominance in our primate relatives, but treat it as if it were somehow impolite to mention in mixed company. Adolescence and young adulthood are prime periods for establishing one's relative place on the masculine hierarchy. It is no coincidence that in High School the Quarterback of the football team has a higher status (with concomitant enhanced opportunities with the high status girls) than the nerdy computer geek. The fact that the computer geek can look forward to a much higher status outcome in ten years than many of the High School stars who peak too young is small consolation for those who have minimal future orientation. Adolescents do not, by and large, have an over developed future sense nor do they have a good grasp on cause and effect. How does this come into play with Juan Williams's comments?
Perhaps a brief digression will help. At one time young black men were held in relative thrall by a culture which circumscribed their opportunities and minimized their ability to gain high status. Elite schools and social networks were unavailable. Jews, another marginalized group, were able to set up parallel institutions and eventually break through the filters that traditionally kept them out of high status positions. For various not well delineated reasons (racism, unconscious racism among both blacks and whites, constitutional endowment, culture, or perhaps some other factors) blacks were never able to create parallel institutions of equal status to the white institutions. Further, when finally admitted to the elites, their ascension was accompanied by the subconscious meta-communication that they were allowed in as a favor, and were specifically not understood to be equal to their betters who practiced modern American noblesse oblige. They could go to Harvard and Yale but could never really be seen as deserving. This racism of low expectations continues to damage black Americans, including those who have "made it" (our First Lady is a prime example) and one response down the ranks was to opt out of education as a passageway to Status. Instead, from the 1960's on, th easiest way for the average young black man to gain status was to instill fear in the white power structure. Thus, ghetto and gangsta image became the fashion in black, especially inner city, communities. If modern middle class pathways to status were unavailable, more traditional pathways to status, based on physical prowess, intimidation, and machismo, would be adopted instead. The outcome was that while the majority of young black men were not criminal, a large cohort, the majority in some communities, adopted first the dress, then the mores, and then the behavior of the ganstas. This has been a disaster for black America and a major problem for the greater society.
Now consider the young Muslim who identifies with his co-religionists. He recognizes, perhaps only subliminally, that much (most?) Muslim cultures are failing. There are almost no successful Arab or Muslim role models. There are minimal numbers of Nobel Prize winners, actors, or entrepreneurs (and those who are successful in business are primarily those who are born into a corrupt kleptocracy who made their great wealth as parasites off the extractive industries that are the major accomplishments of the Arab/Muslim world. There are few Arab or Muslim nations that are powerful, none are democratic, yet the one area in which Arabs and Muslims have become accomplished is in terrorizing the infidels of the west whose example is a daily humiliation. For a young Muslim who does not see another option open to him, scaring Westerners is a way to be recognized and accorded power and status.
Just as the 1980's and 1990's featured boisterous young black men, dressed like gangstas (how many with their pants hanging off their thighs actually dressed like that to hide their gun and how many dressed like that as a fashion/status statement?) gaining a feeling of power by scaring the whites, today young Muslim men (and women) can gain a feeling of power and status simply by dressing in traditional Muslim grab and speaking in Arabic (or Farsi or Urdu; they all sound the same to most Americans.)
I have told this story before but it bears retelling. Shortly after 9/11 my Oldest Son's close friend, a young Muslim man from Kuwait traveling on a Saudi passport, came to stay with us in New York for the two month Christmas break. He flew from Richmond to New York and one of his first comments off the plane, barely 3 months post-9/11, was to the effect that he was frightened and horrified that so soon after 9/11, no one had even examined him closely for evidence of danger. After all, as he pointed out, he was exactly who you should be suspicious of if you were concerned about a repeat of 9/11 yet he was not even requested to remove his shoes, while several others, including an elderly woman, were checked carefully and had to remove their footwear. he thought this was crazy and, since he had no more desire to be blown up for others' concept of Jihad, was frightened to fly.
A good case can be made that profiling Muslims in traditional garb solely on th basis of their raiment is foolhardy (since any Muslim with nefarious intent is likely to try to blend in without arousing suspicion) it is indisputable that our current circumstances almost invite young Muslim men to attempt o gain status by scaring us. They do not have to be terrorists or incipient terrorists to do so and one of the most difficult tasks for our TSA is to differentiate young Muslim thugs, thug-wanna-bes, and devout innocents from incipient or actual terrorists. (And is there anyone who believes the TSA is capable of such distinctions?)
For the foreseeable future, the problem may be thought of as the following: A culture that finds status in death and its derivatives, as Islam is allowing itself to be characterized, is a culture that gains status in direct relation to how they scare the Other; we are the Other and every time we back down in the face of the extremists' demands (a terrorist veto) we further entrench the culture of death and destruction in the Muslim world.
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