Racial and religious profiling remains a legacy of 9/11 — one we must end

(RNS) - On the morning of September 11, 2001, Sat Hari Singh | - a Sikh who retains his beard and turban - became a hero.

Singh, a train operator for the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York City, made the swift decision to pull his train away from the city as soon as he saw smoke at the Fulton Street station. After the attacks, the MTA recognized him as a "hero of September 11".

But weeks later, his employer instituted a "brand or segregation" policy, which required individuals like Singh to put the MTA logo on their religious hats. Overnight, he went from hero to suspect, and it took years of litigation to reverse the discriminatory policy.

Similarly, an American Muslim named Mohammad Salman Hamdani he was treated with suspicion before being recognized as the hero he was. Hamdani, who immigrated to Queens from Pakistan as a child, was a volunteer emergency medical technician and cadet working to serve in the New York Police Department. He died at ground zero helping those in need, but was initially treated with suspicion due to his family's background. It was only after his body was recovered in March 2002 that his name was cleared. However, even today, his name is among the civilian casualties of the attacks and is not recognized as a true first responder.

Stories like these are all too common: Americans from Muslim, Arab, Sikh, South Asian, and other communities were suddenly subjected to a flood of suspicion and hatred after 9/11, and that suspicion was institutionalized by politics and profiling. discriminatory governments as part of the "war on terror" that continues to have a disparate impact on millions of Americans today.

People with Arab or Muslim names, brown skin, or visible religious items were profiled, either by police, federal agents at airports, or their employers. Places of worship, most commonly mosques, were guarded without guarantees or sufficient legal justification.

Individuals were put in government "watch lists"or"do not fly lists"Due to your ethnicity or faith. Arab and Muslim American children, or those who perceived themselves as themselves, were bullied in schools, called "terrorists" by their peers. And all kinds of bias incidents, from verbal harassment to physical violence, were suffered by members of our communities. The first person to be killed in a post-9/11 hate crime was Balbir Singh Sodhi, a turbaned Sikh man who was shot dead while planting flowers outside his gas station in Mesa, Arizona.

Like our fellow citizens, we were collectively victims of terrorist attacks, but we were not allowed to cry in the same way, as we were also victims of prejudice and suspicion. Twenty years later, a serious policy change is still needed to move forward.

Despite thousands of hate crimes and incidents of bias Every year, the federal government does not require state and local law enforcement to provide accurate and verifiable hate crime data to the FBI. That hate crimes are underrated in our country it is indisputable done, with high profile cases demonstrating the trouble. Without a serious effort to demand better data collection and reporting, we are woefully behind in our attempts to address the problem of hate politics in America. The recent enactment of the Jabara-Heyer NO HATE Act as part of COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act it's a good first step, but more needs to be done to achieve meaningful and mandatory reporting.

To address some of the policies that have violated the civil rights and freedoms of our communities since 9/11, and the continuing injustices perpetrated against the black community, Congress must also act to pass the End the Racial and Religious Profiling Act. The existing guidance on profiling contains large gaps in national security, border security, and local law enforcement cases. Too often, police and surveillance authorities have been abused, affecting congregations in places of worship and individuals at the airport or on the street. Through this legislation, we can end these discriminatory policies, and additional action is possible through further reforms in the Department of Justice.

And finally, we must confront the main threat facing the United States: white supremacist violence. Congress should push for legislation such as DATA Law on national and international terrorism - without creating new charges of domestic terrorism that can be used as a weapon against the very communities we seek to protect, including black and brown communities. Our government should appropriately prioritize the federal resources we have instead of creating new legal mechanisms that could be misused against individuals and communities that, 20 years later, are still threatened by those who use fear and xenophobia in pursuit of political power.

On this solemn anniversary, we cannot rely solely on the rhetoric of remembrance and unity. Our country must continue to recover from the trauma of 9/11, and that means dealing with the painful experiences of those of us who became the targets of suspicion overnight, and that some of our neighbors, co-workers and officials elected treated us as such. . Any attempt to sweep this story under the rug dishonors the memory of those we lost, while a serious effort to build a better and more just society is truly the only way we can heal.

(Maya Berry is Executive Director of the Arab American Institute, a national civil rights organization founded to mobilize a strong, educated and empowered Arab American community. Satjeet Kaur is Executive Director of the Sikh Coalition, the largest Sikh civil rights organization. of the country, which fights for the right of all Americans to practice their faith without fear. The opinions expressed in this comment do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)