Hoodies, hijabs, and homicide

Just one month after 17 year-old Trayvon Martin was murdered on the public streets by a vigilante in Sanford, Florida, a 32 year-old Iraqi woman named Shaima Alawadi was beaten to death with a tire iron in her home in San Diego. Alawadi was a Muslim woman who wore the hijab. A note by her body read, “Go back to your own country you terrorist.” Inferior minds, poisoned with racism, have attributed Martin’s death to the hoodie which he was wearing. But attacks on Blacks which focus on their attire extend from the hoodie to how low they hang their pants off their butts, how they wear their baseball caps, & whether or not their garb signifies gang membership--because clothing has become the symbol of racist hatred. The imputation against Muslim women is that they are coerced (since women can’t have religious commitments or ideas of their own) by men & religion to wear the veil. While the dominant culture encourages women to “flaunt it if you’ve got it”, more modest women are vilified as victims &/or terrorists & freedom of religion is reduced to confetti. While the perpetrators of these murders bear full responsibility for their crimes, the media has played a central role in creating hostility & hatred against Blacks & Muslims & in whipping up hysteria against their attire. Every time we see another report or article with such imputations, we should take out our poison pens & make our voices heard & we should protest, as hundreds of thousands are doing now in support of justice for Trayvon Martin. As we have seen with Blacks & the phony war against drugs, with Mexican immigrants in Arizona, with Muslims & the freedom of religion, what is under attack is the Bill of Rights for all of us (or what’s the NDAA all about!?). Defending people’s right to wear whatever the hell they want is a part of defending the Bill of Rights. (Photo on left is Trayvon Martin; woman on right is not Shaima Alawadi)