There were two stories in the news recently that involved allegations of racial profiling against Asians and other people of color. One involved a Black professor of Africana Studies at San Francisco State University who was stopped — and eventually arrested — by two campus security officers while he was trying to retrieve a book from his office:
Antwi Akom says he was just going to his office late on the night of October 25 to pick up a book he needed to prepare for class the next day. But after he was stopped by security guards at San Francisco State University, he ended up facing felony charges of resisting arrest and battery of a police officer. Akom, an assistant professor of Africana studies, was briefly jailed.
He has told supporters that he had an identification card and was willing to show it to the guards. Security officials have said that they did ask for the ID. The security report said he did not comply with reasonable requests. Akom’s supporters said that he repeatedly told the officers he was a professor and that he was in a rush because he had young children asleep in the car he drove to campus.
The incident has prompted a wave of meetings and demands for reform at San Francisco State. Professors say that Akom was a victim of racial profiling and that black employees routinely face harassment. The controversy is particularly upsetting to some professors, who say that they have taken pride in San Francisco State’s progressive reputation.
The second involved a small group of Muslim Americans who were detained and then carefully watched after they prayed at a recent NY Giants football game:
The Muslims said they did not know they were in a sensitive area, and they complained that they were subjected to racial profiling while they were praying, as their faith requires five times a day. “I’m as American as apple pie and I’m sitting there and now I’m made to feel like I’m an outsider, for no reason other than I have a long beard or that I prayed,” said Sami Shaban, a 27-year-old Seton Hall Law School student who lives in Piscataway.
Shaban said he and four friends had just gotten to the September 19 New York Giants-New Orleans Saints game when they left their seats to pray. Around halftime, 10 security officers and three state troopers approached the men and told them to come with them, Shaban said. The men were questioned and then were not allowed to return to their seats, but were instead assigned to seats in another section, Shaban said. Three guards stood near them, and escorted them to their cars when they left the stadium, he said.
As with most incidents, there are two sides to each story and conceivably, there may have been legitimate reasons why these two people of color were stopped, questioned, detained, and in the case of the Africana Studies professor, arrested.
But ultimately, these two incidents inevitably highlight the continuing issue of how people of color are still — even in 21st century globalized American society — constantly being questioned and challenged on their status as “real” or “authentic” Americans and whether their actions are considered “appropriate” by people in positions of power and authority, who in most cases, are White.
In other words, it is clear that the White-dominated social institutions and power structures of this country are still clinging on to the firmly-ingrained presumption that the only people who merit the identity of being “American,” and therefore who get to enjoy the direct and indirect privileges of that identity, are White (and perhaps even more specifically, male, upper class, and Protestant). Everyone else who does not fit into this category, apparently including professors working the birthplace of ethnic studies, are automatically seen as potential criminals.
Even when we as a nation and society are in a heightened state of awareness due to possible terrorist attacks, presuming that someone or a group of people are potential enemies based almost entirely on their racial/ethnic/national origin identity is the very definition of racial privilege and racial profiling. In other words, it is flat-out racist, unjust, and wrong.
American citizens theoretically enjoy certain freedoms from invasion of privacy and false searches and imprisonment by authorities. But unfortunately, those rights are apparently only valid if one is White.
