MELISSA BLOCK, host: Now a story about Muslim stereotyping in the U.S. from commentator Gigi Douban.
GIGI DOUBAN: I was driving me kids to school the other day, when I was stopped at a light and I heard Arabic. I know this language. No big deal if you're in Brooklyn or Detroit but, it isn't often spoken here in Birmingham.
I was curious so I looked over to my right. There pulled up beside me was an Arab looking man - black hair, skin the color of iced coffee, beard cropped-short. He was listening to a tape of Islamic sermons. Who was this guy anyway? He stared straight ahead. From what I could tell he didn't look especially friendly but he didn't look particularly menacing either. His face seemed blank.
I didn't want to be caught staring so I looked away, but not before I noticed he was driving a white cargo truck. Hold it. Muslim guy in a cargo truck. My mind played a flash round of word and picture association - all involving the words truck bombs.
My boring, suburban calm turned to an adrenalin-spiked code orange. I wished the light would hurry up and turn green already. Come on, come on, I said, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. I glanced back at my kids in the rearview mirror. My daughter, still sleepy-eyed, had her headphones plugged into her ears and my 5-year-old son, staring out the other window, seemed equally oblivious.
When the light finally turned green I made my left turn and the truck headed straight down the main thoroughfare. I felt such a sense of relief, and then -wait a minute - I thought to myself. What's gotten into me? I'm a Muslim of Egyptian decent, born and reared in the U.S., and I've been on the other side. I've seen people's hair stand on end when I tell them my children are learning Arabic. You should see their faces when I walk into a restaurant with a friend who wears hijab, the traditional headscarf.
In the aftermath of September 11th, 2001, it was a given that people were going to be wary around Muslims. No surprises there. But what I wasn't prepared for was what the last five years of intense leeriness toward Muslims would do to me. I began to fear my own.
This didn't seem right. After all, how much of this was because I had been conditioned, almost in a Pavlovian way, to beware the bearded Arab Muslim. And right there beside me was the poster boy for Islamic extremism. But what made him the poster boy? He didn't look much different than 100 guys I'd seen at family gatherings and weddings. Was it the Islamic tape he was listening to, reminiscent of any number of terror threats broadcast on Al-Jazeera? It could be. Then again, my own mother played tapes like that for hours on her little kitchen cassette player while she stuffed and rolled grape leaves tight as cigars.
It didn't matter that I was both the enemy and the victim here. I'd bought into the stereotype and that was mortifying. Worse still, the stereotype was about me, driving this gut-level fear of mine. As an American, I refuse to live in fear.
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BLOCK: Gigi Douban lives in Birmingham, Alabama.
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