Suspicious minds

In light of the arrests of 17 terror suspects in Canada, Tearfree has been reflecting upon the worries about an-anti Muslim backlash.

And yes, Tearfree will admit that when something like this happens, she does indeed start looking much more suspiciously at young Muslim men. What’s more, she refuses to beat up on herself for doing this.

Why not?

Well, consider the following. After a mad cow scare, Tearfree doesn’t eat hamburgers. After an Air France jet skids off the runway at Pearson in a thunderstorm, she is much more cautious about flying in bad weather. And after a ring of conmen brandishing fake Hydro Quebec ID cards is arrested, she doesn’t like letting the meter reader into her house.

In fact when Tearfree walks past Burger King the day after yet another mad cow has been traced to Alberta (sorry, Alberta Rancher) and sees people happily chomping away on their burgers, being the naturally curious person she is, she wants to go in and ask them

a) whether they’ve heard the news and are ignoring it
b) whether they are just plain ill-informed and oblivious
c) whether they are risk analysis specialists confident that their chances of contracting Kreuzfeldt Jakob disease from a burger are next to nil

While Tearfree has never actually carried through and barged into Burger King with her questions, she did, when the meter reader arrived at her house in the wake of the Fake ID/robbery story, seize the opportunity to ask him directly if he was getting more requests than usual to see his ID. He answered a resounding yes and when Tearfree told him, his ID card looked like something he had printed up on his home computer in 1989, he confessed that new ones were about to be handed out to the entire meter reading staff due to customer complaints.

So the evidence would seem to indicate that not only is Tearfree not a racist for being suspicious of young Muslim men but she’s also not paranoid. Her reactions are normal and while they may not be good for young Muslims, the beef industry, Hydro Quebec meter readers and airlines that want to land in thunderstorms, she’s not sure that there’s really any way around these problems.

Statistically of course, we all know that most Muslims aren’t terrorists and most cows aren’t mad and most airplanes are the safest mode of travel, but humans have a well-documented tendency to overestimate the probability of high-risk events happening (eg terrorism) and underestimate the probability of low-risk events happening (eg bicycle accident).

That’s why when Tearfree got into a cab last winter to drive home over Mount Royal, a route filled with all sorts of cliffs for the driver to plunge off, she did not feel happy when the cabbie began the journey by praying to Allah and repeatedly tapping the dashboard. In fact Tearfree was so overcome by the situation that she was rendered temporarily speechless and couldn’t bring herself to tell the driver, she’d just changed her mind and would be getting out of his car. By the end of the ride, she was so relieved to have actually arrived at her chosen destination that she didn’t even remember to ask the cabbie the type of probing questions she had posed to the meter reader. As a result, she can't enlighten you as to how passengers like having a driver who begins every journey and every last minute instruction to "please turn here" with a prayer to Allah. Tearfree promises to be more vigilant in the unlikely event that this particular situation ever arises again.
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At the watercooler: This is a tough one since your office might have its very own Angry (see comments here), running around spuriously accusing colleagues of racism. It's probably best not to discuss this subject at work unless you’re prepared to run the risk of ending up in sensitivity training on the recommendation of some misguided HR official. Save this discussion for dinner parties and off-site lunches with trusted colleagues where you should feel free to raise the RTK talking points.

Anti-racist types like Angry are to the early 21st century what the "church lady" was to the fifties. They don't understand that it’s not enough to proclaim that you’re a fine god-fearing or anti-racist person and tell others, particularly those who don't always share your opinions, that they aren’t up to your standards. In fact, Angry is a real live example of a conflict-of-interest situation: I'm great because I say so. Well you would, wouldn't you?

In the sixties, people quit going to church partly because they didn't want to be lectured by self-appointed moral arbiters. Sometime in the next decade, they'll likely stop listening or pretending to listen to self-appointed moral arbiters like Angry. Unfortunately, in the mean time, those who question the cult of anti-racism will often face retaliation in the form of -- what else? -- accusations of racism. Speaking out against people like Angry is a bit like being a divorcee in 1962, not particularly pleasant but better than being in a sham marriage.

Call to action: The Angry/Church Lady attitude is often found in do-gooder organizations. Make sure your charitable dollars aren't supporting this type of thing.