[mobglob-discuss] Fwd: Mistry said no. We must all say no

[Chris Shaw]

Christopher A. Shaw, Ph.D
Associate Professor
Research Pavilion
828 W. 10th Ave.
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada, V5Z 1L8
tel: 604-875-4111 (ext. 68375)
Fax: 604-875-4376
e-mail: csshawlab at hotmail.com





>From: "Pegi Caesar" <pegic at hotmail.com>
>To: 1stunitedftaa at sandelman.ottawa.on.ca
>Subject: Fwd: Mistry said no. We must all say no
>Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 12:53:04 -0500
>
>From: Bob Thomson <bthomson at web.ca>
>
>Subject: [ftaaott] Mistry said no. We must all say no
>Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 09:52:39 -0500
>
>Mistry said no. We must all say no
>
>By HEATHER MALLICK
>
>Saturday, November 9, 2002 – Globe and Mail, Page F2
>
>That dignified man, Canadian novelist Rohinton Mistry, is now in my 
>personal pantheon because he said that simple word "No."
>
>He gave up his U.S. book tour halfway through because his treatment at 
>airports was consistently racist, rude, humiliating and ultimately 
>unbearable. And you know what that makes him.
>
>It makes him the modern Rosa Parks.
>
>A quiet "No" can work wonders. I don't mean on the American airport 
>officials who take him aside for scrutiny, questions, luggage dissection 
>and shoe examination so that passengers stare in fear and loathing. I don't 
>mean on an American government that announces it will zero in on Canadian 
>citizens born in certain countries. Mr. Mistry isn't from one of those 
>countries and isn't even a Muslim. He just isn't white.
>
>Rosa Parks was tired that day in 1955. She didn't want to give up her seat 
>to a white man, and that small decision led to a revolution. The only 
>difference between then and now was that she had no expectation of getting 
>away with it. In 2002, we have a government that gets upset about racism 
>dished out to Canadian citizens, as do Globe and Mail readers who are 
>seething over not just the treatment of Mr. Mistry, but all the bullying at 
>the border.
>
>I suppose they have the alternative of reading the National Post, which 
>disgraced itself by printing a piece on Mr. Mistry that said: "It does 
>sound as if he might develop a thicker skin."
>Or perhaps a whiter one might help?
>
>Let's extrapolate. Imagine if Mr. Mistry had been Jewish. Racial profiling 
>at one time meant Jewish profiling. Sneering phrases like "thicker skin" 
>were said of Jews before and after Kristallnacht and in the decades that 
>have passed since then. I have immersed myself, stunned and bewildered, in 
>the study of what was done to Jews in the past century. Memoirist Roman 
>Frister recalls his flirtatious companion, a Nazi officer's stupid wife, 
>praising his dark complexion. She had tired of German pallor. "Yes, I had a 
>Semitic face," he realized. The ultimate Nazi test of Jews in Krakow, he 
>writes, was to pull a man's pants down in the street and check for 
>circumcision. Swarthiness, beards, anything could spark a search.
>
>I read the transcript of a shooting at an Israeli checkpoint in Hebron last 
>year. An Israeli soldier asked a Palestinian man, a municipal worker with a 
>pass, "Where are you going?" The man responded, "Why are you asking me?"
>
>So the soldier shot the man's foot off. The Globe ran the photo of him on 
>the ground, his face in a rictus of agony, with his foot and half of his 
>calf hanging by a thread. The ground was pooled with blood. "9:05" was 
>inked on the victim's forehead to indicate the time of tourniquet and he 
>was taken away to a legless future.
>
>Fences make good neighbours, do they? Only if no one ever tries to cross 
>them. But it is the nature of a small planet -- and may I point out, a 
>supposedly globalized one -- that fences are made for crossing and 
>recrossing.
>
>A Canadian woman told The Globe this week of her ordeal at the U.S. border 
>where she was held, interrogated and threatened with fingerprinting and 
>photographing after it was noticed on her Canadian passport that she was 
>born in Iran. At this point, she gave up and said she didn't want to cross 
>the border. But had she already? Nobody, including the U.S. security 
>people, could say.
>I was invited to a friend's wedding in New Orleans recently and very much 
>wanted to go. I'm Canadian-born, but do make unalloyed fun of John Ashcroft 
>in this column, especially his singing career. A black mark on my passport 
>possibly?
>
>But I couldn't figure out the "line in the linoleum," 2002's version of 
>1990's "line in the sand." At what point am I safe in my Canada? In the 
>United States, at what point does the dreaded phrase "body cavity search" 
>occur? I have a real aversion to official penetration, as opposed to the 
>recreational kind.
>
>Borders, lines, walls, checkpoints. "In or out, make up your mind," as 
>mothers irritably say to their toddlers while the screen door hangs open.
>
>A friend who travels regularly to the States said flatly this week, "I 
>won't visit a country that would treat Rohinton Mistry that way. That's 
>it."
>
>Rosa Parks said no. Rohinton Mistry said no. My friend said no. I said no. 
>Maybe we should all say no.
>
>You can't treat your allies this way. And if I were to cross the U.S. 
>border, would I look over to the shoeless "specially selected people" and 
>pass by? I still partly hold to some notion of the basic benevolence of 
>Americans that Mr. Mistry, having seen it up close, rightly does not.
>
>But if the "selected" were Jews, would I remain silent? No.
>
>The worst thing one can be is a bully, a racist. Fighting racism is a 
>principle. Let's stick to it in this country, even if the Americans have 
>soiled their history once again and handed terrorists a gleaming victory.
>
>hmallick at globeandmail.ca
>
>
>
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