The argument that only certain people need to worry about oppression of a given sort is an argument that many people--usually the ones who are told they needn't worry--use to defend the oppression as either unimportant or necessary. It's very close to "innocent people have nothing to worry about."
No, rysmiel doesn't look like the stereotypical Arab. The unwritten policies that were used to send Arar to Syria don't have a mathematical algorithm for how dark or otherwise in a "suspect class" someone has to be in order to be disappeared. [The logical suspect class that ought to be searched more closely, based on the 9/11 attacks, is "men traveling alone in first class", but that maps closely onto well-to-do businessmen, so it's not used.] And I cannot fault someone for not wanting to visit a country that disappears non-citizens because someone thinks they look like they might know something about someone who might be hostile.
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Date: 2005-01-30 12:46 pm (UTC)The argument that only certain people need to worry about oppression of a given sort is an argument that many people--usually the ones who are told they needn't worry--use to defend the oppression as either unimportant or necessary. It's very close to "innocent people have nothing to worry about."
No,