Being Brown in America
By Shashi Tharoor
Newsweek International
October 29, 2001

Another reality check. I can scarcely count the number of times I’ve taken cabs and, for that matter, buses and subways, sporting what some American friends think of as a colorful version of a surgeon’s smock. I have even enjoyed wearing an Indian collar under a winter coat and being respectfully addressed as “Father” by New Yorkers who take me for a Catholic priest in clerical garb. But this is the first time I’ve had to be nervous about flaunting my kurta pajama in the street.

And yet caution is wise. In the wake of the unspeakable horrors of Sept. 11, signs have emerged of a lesser casualty: multiculturalism. In recent years the American melting pot had turned from pressure cooker to salad bowl as more and more visible minorities preserved their right to be identifiably different while proclaiming their assimilation into the American Dream. Citizens no longer needed to have color, creed, costume or custom in common. Americans grew used to sharing their streets with men in flowing beards and turbans and women covered from head to toe; mosques and temples sprouted like organic plants across the land. It was all part of the new multiethnic mosaic called America.

No more. Public hostility to the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks—brown-skinned Muslims—has transformed difference into diffidence. The killing of a Sikh in Arizona because his turban reminded an ignoramus with a gun of Osama bin Laden’s headgear sent a chilling signal to anyone who could be seen as Arab. Indian women who would never dream of wearing anything but a sari now struggle uncomfortably into Western skirts and pantsuits. Manly Sikhs, proud of the unshorn hair they wrap up in colorful turbans, sheepishly hang their locks in drooping ponytails. Observant Muslims, bearded as the Prophet, take razors to their chins. Arabs shuck their kaffiyehs for the hatless look. Police patrols have doubled outside mosques and Muslim community centers. “Different is out,” says an awkwardly T-shirted Bangladeshi I know, normally elegant in a spotless kurta. “Mainstream is in.” He has tied an American flag to his car’s antenna.

Despite calls for tolerance from President George W. Bush on down, the American public appears to have developed a sudden taste for racial profiling. The old sin of “driving while black” has given way to “flying while brown.” Ask the Pakistani-American who missed his brother’s wedding when he was pulled off a plane because the pilot felt “uncomfortable” having him onboard. Or the Muslim passenger who was taken off a flight, intensively grilled and then put back onboard, only to find some of his fellow passengers bursting into tears at the prospect of sharing a plane with him. Or the number of otherwise liberal, white Americans who tell me in all seriousness that they would never take a flight with an Arab on the passenger list.

But then you don’t have to be Arab, or a flyer. My 17-year-old son, walking home from school, was cursed at in the street as a “terrorist” and “Arab scum.” I have deleted the expletives that accompanied the abuse. Nor need I mention the reports of Arab stores being vandalized, or shoppers being coolly advised to “go back” to their own country.

Such incidents are still relatively rare, thankfully, and to a degree they are understandable in a nation gripped by a sense of peril from people who look Middle Eastern. But while Americans are taking a newfound interest in the rest of the world, so far fear and ignorance seem to be fueling prejudices. Bigotry hasn’t been as socially acceptable in decades; at times it seems that the days of the 19th-century Know-Nothing Party are back. A Louisiana politician’s diatribe about the need to crack down on “people wearing diapers around their heads” saw his popularity polls shoot up. It’s not a great time to be brown in America.

On the other hand, blacks are enjoying an unprecedented sense of belonging to mainstream America. And some of the alleged discrimination may be nothing more than the zealotry of newly security-conscious officialdom—sometimes even our own imaginations. The other day I found myself recounting an airport experience in which my checked baggage, after being tagged, was removed from the counter, taken to another room, opened and excruciatingly sifted through, item by item. I ruefully concluded that this was the price I’d have to pay if I wanted to be brown and airborne. “Hey,” retorted my friend, a pale blond Jewish Californian. “They just did that to me, too.”