In The Shadow Of September 11

WhenI crossed the border into United States in 1988, after living in Canada for twoyears, I had the curious feeling that my wife, my son and I, still brown-skinnedand dark-haired, had somehow become invisible.

We walked the streets of Hamilton, a small universitytown in Central New York, or nearby Utica and Syracuse, each of themimmaculately white, without attracting any unwanted attention. The motorists didnot gawk at us while we waited at the curb for the walk signal. At restaurants,there were no heads turning in our direction. The cashiers and shoppers atstores did not greet our entry with a quizzical, perplexed look, following ourvery steps. Even our neighbors left us alone.

I was relieved at this loss of visibility. It was asignal change from my experience of living in Canada, both in the recent pastand several years earlier, when I was attending graduate school in London,Ontario. The only time I felt comfortable stepping outside the campus was in thecold winter months, when bundled in jacket, hood, scarf and gloves, I becamenearly indistinguishable from every one else. In summer, when I had to shedthese sartorial covers, I ventured out only at night, under the cover ofdarkness. I had no wish to invite racial slurs from teenagers, whether sane ordrunk, driving by in their convertibles, pickups and jeeps.

I enjoyed this invisibility even at my teaching job atNortheastern University. Yes, there was a little edginess when I first entered aclass, a mild dismay, anticipating the strange accents and manners of 'anotherIndian professor'. For the most part, I managed to lay these fears to rest, andweek after week, my students would concentrate on what I had to say,undistracted by who said it. But this invisibility proved to be fragile.

When I began to depart from the scripted texts, drawingattention to the ideological intent of economics, its Eurocentric biases, andits disregard for facts, not a few of my students began to take a harder look atme. Over time, as I elaborated my critique, it made me more visible. Myethnicity and origins, my brown skin and dark hair, their density andopaqueness, began to obstruct the view. I became proof of the absurdity of mycritique. I felt like the Negro carpenter whose comments on the uxorial problemsof white clergy invited a sharp rebuke from the philosophic Kant. He declared,"this fellow was quite black from head to foot, a clear proof that he wasstupid."

Then, all of a sudden, September 11 introduced a newdynamic. The nineteen hijackers of Arab and Muslim background, their planescrashing into the twin towers, had unleashed a fury that would overthrow manygovernments, abridge many liberties, and rearrange many lives, here at home andabroad. This first massive attack on Americans on American soil had shakenAmerica. And America shaken was America united-in grief, anger andindignation-against anyone connected to the perpetrators of thisundeserved and 'unprovoked' act of violence. Almost instantly, I could sensefrom my little corner of the world, that this anger, volcanic and intense, wouldreorder the world in a hurry.

And so it did. Almost as soon as I walked into theAttleboro station to catch the 6:30 AM train, I noticed a change. One by one,the heads, the eyes, the glances turned to me, as they would towards a suspect,towards a face you recognize from a poster for the most wanted. The commuters,many of whom had taken this train with me for years, now felt uncomfortable atmy presence. In their new-born sense of insecurity, they had sensed a connectionbetween me and the hijackers. My Pakistani ethnicity was indistinguishable fromthe Arab background of the nineteen hijackers. A crust of visibility began tothicken around me. I was back in Canada.

The events since have revealed a rigorous working out ofthe logic im-manent in the attack of September 11. The world was quickly paintedin two unmistakable colors, white and black-no shades of gray tolerated. GeorgeBush had enunciated a new doctrine. 'You are either with us or you arewith the terrorists.' Ergo, if you are not with us, you are black-and that makesfor great visibility. This would be a global war, a Manichaean contest, betweenUnited States, symbolizing infinite justice and enduring freedom, and Osama,with his global terrorist network, commanding the evil hordes of Islamictotalitarianism.

Instantly, Pakistan was given "a secondchance" to prove itself-and, without losing a moment, the military generalstook up the challenge. The attack on Afghanistan was soon unfurled: themightiest concentra-tion of military power in human history deployed against awar-ravaged, famine-stricken country. The smart bombs, the cluster bombs, thedaisy-cutters, the bunker-busters began to descend on Afghanistan. And not a fewfell on villages, hospitals, mosques, and Red Cross warehouses.

Two additional fronts were opened up. The Al-Qaidanetwork would have to be starved of funds. Two lists were issued of politicalparties, financial institutions, charities and individuals suspected of links toAl-Qaida: their assets frozen. More ominously, America began a descent into aHobbesian state: where the liberties of some Americans and allaliens are being quickly traded against the security of other Americans.

The attack of September 11 led to an instant boom inracial targeting directed against persons of Arab, Pakistani and other Islamicethnicities. This has produced a growing number of arrests and detentions; butwhen their numbers crossed 1000, the count became a state secret, unavailable tothe public. New laws and edicts were passed allowing the FBI to tap phones, toenter into homes without notice. Now aliens, both legal and illegal, could beheld without trial for as long as a year. Any person suspected of terrorismcould be tried in secrecy by military courts, and hanged without a unanimousjury.

I am thankful in these dangerous times to be onsabbatical-away from my students, who would be spared, at least for a while, allmy talk about the toy economies that falsify reality, abstract from history, andelevate the interests of particular classes and particular nations (USA, amongothers) to the category of the Universal Good. My sabbatical had freed me at theright time from the unpleasant task of curtailing my own speech. Cloistered inmy academic cell, I could become invisible.

I did, however, in the first weeks after September 11,put up a red, white and blue flag on my office door. The inspiration for thiscame from my wife when she began plastering the front door, windows, mailbox andher car with six-by-ten flags. When a colleague commended me for my patriotism,I answered that I was only exercising my right of free speech-or what was leftof it. It was a comic gesture, attempting to regain the invisibility that I hadlost in the aftermath of September 11. 

M. Shahid Alam is aprofessor of economics at Northeastern University. Copyright M. Shaid Alam.