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american backlash terrorists bring war home in more ways than one a special report by south asian american leaders of tomorrow american backlash terrorists bring war home in more ways than one board of directors Jeet Bindra, Chair President, Chevron Pipe Line Co. Indira K. Ahluwalia, Vice Chair Manager - Marketing, International Business & Technical Consultants Deepa Iyer, Secretary Civil Rights Attorney Debasish Mishra, Treasurer Vice President, Masala, Inc. project leader Ankur Agrawal - Engineer, Advanced Micro Devices Debasish Mishra Shom Bhattacharya - Managing Director, JP Morgan Securities editing Jay Chadhuri - Sp. Asst. to the Attorney General, State of N. Carolina Deepa Iyer Probir Mehta - JD Candidate, George Washington University research Meena Morey Chandra - Civil Rights Kiran Chaudhri, Kulmeet Dang, Poonam Desai, Ankur Doshi, Attorney Parvinder Kang,Debasish Mishra, Sunny Rehman, Fred de Sam Lazaro - Correspondent, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer Vivek Sankaran Sreenath Sreenivasan - Assoc. Professor, photo credit Columbia University Dylan Martinez (Reuters), Dita Alangkara (AP), Mark Lenniham board of trustees (AP), Carlos Osorio (AP), Fred Greaves (AP), Derek Ruttan Prakash Agarwal - CEO, NeoMagic Corp. (AP), Boudicon One (AP), Charles Bennett (AP), Jayant S. Kalotra - CEO, Intl. Business & Adrees Latif (Reuters), Kenneth Lambert (AP) Technical Consultants, Inc. Rakesh Kaul - CEO, Hanover Direct special thanks Gopal Khanna - CEO, Intl. Tecnical Consultants Deepa Iyer for assisting with recommendations Kishore Kripalani - Proprietor, Gaylord Probir Mehta for research resources Restaurants Masala.com for sparing time for this project Pam Kwatra - CEO, Kripari Marketing Edward W. Merrow - President, Independent Project Analysis Sujata Murthy - Sr. Director of South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow (SAALT) is a Communication, Universal Music national nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering Mahendra Nath - CEO, The Nath Companies leadership and civic engagement among Indra Nooyi - President & CFO, PepsiCo Jay Sidhu - CEO, Sovereign Bancorp South Asian Americans. Rajiv Tandon - CEO, LearningByte Intl. Ashok Trivedi - CEO, iGate Capital Hima Vatti - Attorney Kiran Verma - Proprietor, Ashiana Indian American Backlash: Terrorists Bring Home War in More Ways than One, Restaurant Copyright © 2001, South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow. All rights reserved. This publication may not be duplicated in any form without the writ- ten permission of the publisher. South Asian American Leaders of Tomorrow south asian american is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit, tax-exempt organization. Inquiries and/or leaders of tomorrow subscription requests can be made in writing to SAALT at 1429 G Street, NW 1429 G Street, NW / PMB 299 / PMB 299; Washington, DC; 20005-2099 or via email at [email protected]. Washington, DC 20005-2009 no reason other than the spelling of their name, the color of their skin, the clothes that they wore, the religion they practiced or the accent with which they spoke English. Indeed, in the first week after the terrorist attack (Sept.12th through September 17th), newspapers and other media serving major cities throughout the U.S. reported 645 bias incidents directed towards Americans perceived to be of Middle Eastern descent. At the end of the week, three more innocent lives would be added to the death toll exacted by this national tragedy. The backlash took the form Land of the free racial jokes made in the workplace, verbal harassment in the streets, phone threats to individuals There were 645 On September 11, 2001, in their homes, property incidents of backlash millions of Americans damage and violence at against Americans of realized that their lives would places of worship, and tragi- South Asian or no longer be the same. cally, the shooting deaths of These Americans, many of several individuals. Middle Eastern whom could trace their roots descent in the week to the Middle East or South As a result, many members following the Asia, shared in the pain, fear, of Middle Eastern and South Sept. 11 attack and anger that all Americans Asian communities reported felt over the terrorist attacks that they were frightened to that led to the destruction of leave their homes, attend the World Trade Center, a work or school, or practice section of the Pentagon, and their religions for fear that thousands of missing, injured they would be the targets of or dead. discrimination or attacks. For Americans of South America became less free. Asian or Middle Eastern descent, however, their fear was compounded by the possibility that they would be unjustly held responsible for the vile acts of terrorists for american backlash: terrorists bring war home in more ways than one purpose The purpose of this report is incidents scattered around the discrimination faced by to document an ugly, but the country. Arab Americans and South nonetheless, important Asians and to give communi- section of American history. The reality, however, was that ty leaders and activists a tool News accounts of the bias incidents were far more with which to organize their tragedy are justifiably replete widespread than were local communities to respond with stories of heroism, reported. These fears were to the backlash. courage, and strength in the captured more accurately in wake of the September 11 stories reported by local Finally, this report intends to attacks. press which form the demonstrate that South foundation of this report. Asians have been impacted News of the backlash, by the backlash and are however, was not widely Rather than let these local therefore, are integral to reported, especially in the stories slip into obscurity, this forming solutions for the national media during the report is designed to compile future. first week after the attacks. the stories to provide a more Most news accounts merely accurate picture of American repeated the same horrific reaction to this tragedy. This incidents of backlash, giving report is also intended to the impression that it was encourage the media to limited to a few, isolated continue to accurately report page 4 a saalt project american backlash: terrorists bring war home in more ways than one methodology Over 400 media sources were covered in the compila- tion of this report. The media included were selected from one of two methods: The first were media sources included in the Lexis-Nexis database. Given the conven- ience and exhaustive list of media included in the data- base, Lexis-Nexis was an obvious reference tool. The bulk of our research, was conducted manually, over the Internet by search- ing the websites and online archives of local newspapers. These newspapers were selected based on the follow- ing criteria: smaller communities that are result, they may not have not included in the report. covered each bias incident or • Daily coverage covered incidents that Second, inconsistency of occurred after their initial • Serving cities with a online archives for story. population of 50,000+ newspaper sites presented another limitation. Different Additionally, every effort was • Members of the newspapers had different made to accurately National Newspaper access to their archives and document time, location, and Association (this was in some cases, there were no other details of each incident. due to the fact that NNA archives at all. As a result, This was not always possible, has a convenient online some reported incidents may however, as evidenced by directory of local have been missed. the fact that close to half of newspaper websites) the incidents do not have an Third, this report is focused occurrence date. In cases These methods presented on bias incidents reported by where no incident date has some limitations that the press. It does not include been reported, for the preclude our report from any incidents reported to the purposes of the report, the being completely police or other organizations date has been asserted to be comprehensive: by individuals. the day before publication of the news story. First, some bias incidents Finally, in many cases, undoubtedly may have been papers ran comprehensive Unadjusted figures can be reported in papers covering articles on backlash - as a found in Appendix A. a saalt project page 5 american backlash: terrorists bring war home in more ways than one findings There were 645 bias incidents between Sept. 11 Fig. 1 Bias Incidents by Date and Sept. 17 reported by 250 media organizations serving large communities in the United States. These 200 incidents ranged in severity from racial jokes made in the office to serious hate crimes 150 involving assault, arson, and shootings. 100 The vast majority of incidents were reported to have 50 occurred immediately after the attacks on September 11, 2001. (Figure 1) While the 0 numbers drop off substantial- 9/11 9/12 9/13 9/14 9/15 9/16 9/17 ly towards the end of the week, it should be noted that this is not necessarily an indication of a drop in the quantity of bias incidents - most papers took a few days to report incidents and some local editors may have decided that they had run their “Muslim backlash” story Fig. 2 Incident Type for the week and chose not to run followup stories. Harassment and threats were Harassment the most common form of Threats bias incidents, making up Property Damage more than two-thirds of all Violence reported incidents. Anti-Muslim Weapons were used in 27 cases and vehicular assault occurred in five cases. page 6 a saalt project american backlash: terrorists bring war
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