Discrimination

Discrimination (clip 1)

Transcript

Discrimination (clip 2)

Transcript

• 00:01

  [? Mouafac, ?] a Palestinian American, works in this NewYork pizzeria.Time to pray.Like many Muslims in this city after the September 11 attacks,he's felt under constant surveillanceand is convinced he's been closely monitored since 2004.I start seeing them.Different cars, sometimes in a four-door car,

• 00:22

  sometimes in a truck.Sometimes my friends, they come to visit me in the pizzeria.They talk to me.We shake hands.I give somebody a hug.They leave.They get pulled over right outside by undercover.Not by police, but undercover.[? Mouafac's ?] suspicions were confirmed in August last year,when an investigation revealed policehad been monitoring the activitiesof entire Muslim neighborhoods.

• 00:44

  Religious activities--This group of lawyers are guests on a Muslim radio show.They say the police's methods show biasagainst Muslims and illegal ethnic profiling.It appears that the NYPD was maintaining dossierson just a wide variety of people who had no link to criminality,no link to terrorism, simply because they were Muslim.

• 01:08

  Despite the public outcry, New York's police chiefdenies the accusation.Now Muslim community leaders are pressing New York's MayorMichael Bloomberg to take action and launch a formal inquiry.We're hoping that this can be resolved.And we're hoping that NYPD be investigatedfor what they are doing.The mayor has kept quiet so far, but civil rights associations

• 01:31

  have not.Cyrus is the civil rights managerfor the Council on American Islamic Relations.These attempts to erode America's civil rights aredone by spreading fear of Islam.That the more fear mongering we have about Muslims,the easier it is to justify wars in the Islamic world.

• 01:51

  The debate has made it all the way to Congress,where 34 members have called for federal investigation.The Justice Department has not responded yet.But for the Muslim community, the fight is far from over.

The history of the Asian American community—or Asian American communities—is rife with discrimination. Visible at an individual and institutional level, discrimination has shaped the opportunities, experiences, and identity formation [Page 274]specific to the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community for more than 150 years.

Chinese in America

In 1849, the discovery of gold in California led to a dramatic increase of Chinese immigration to America's West Coast. As mostly single men, they arrived with hopes and dreams of securing an economic foothold as part of the Gold Rush. Yet, the dreams of striking it rich proved difficult in the face of discrimination and false promises. The obstacles and prospects of upward mobility or returning to China with bounty in hand proved more difficult with each year. Despite arriving as part of a debt-credit system, where Chinese immigrants would amass debt in exchange for a ticket to San Francisco or the Gold Country, white nativists lamented the arrival of “coolies.” Labeled as “unfree labor” that threatened American ideals and white male laboring prospects, Chinese immigrants faced widespread discrimination and violence.

Discrimination followed Chinese as they were labeled as foreign, threatening, and pollutants to the white protestant work ethic. For example, while small in numbers because of job discrimination that limited opportunities, Chinese women faced widespread animosity. Chinese women were depicted as promiscuous and loose and therefore a threat to the Christian ethics of the United States. According to President

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