Denial

[redbird]

When I spoke to my mother last week, I mentioned (among many other things) that when I want to see papersky, rysmiel, and zorinth, I have to visit Montreal, because they don't feel safe coming to the United States to visit me.

Mom asked why, and I explained. This involved me giving a three-sentence summary of what happened to Maher Arar. Her response was that they had nothing to worry about because "They don't look Arab."

Right. I'm sure that's a great reassurance to them.

Comments

[redbird]

Nobody owns oppression.

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.