Regards to Racial and Ethnic Minorities"

American political culture is wrought with conflict over the competing traditions of liberalism and it's contradictory inegalitarian ideologies. Liberalism holds most of our political ideals, such as freedom, equality, and individualism, but these ideals often clash with the inegalitarian practices that remain from our troubled political past, for example sexism, racism, homophobia, and classism. Nowhere is this conflict more obvious than in issues relating to the many racial and ethnic minorities that make up America.

The nation is founded on ideas such as "all men are created equal." However, America has historically been unfair to minorities. A prime example would be slavery. Not only did slavery infringe on the idea of equality, but it also stole away the freedom of the slaves, despite the fact that freedom from a despotic king was one of the reasons the founders enumerated for their departure from allegiance to the British crown ("Declaration of Independence"). Tocqueville feared that American "democracy" would never reach African-American's and that this was "the most formidable evil threateni

Inegalitarian traditions are often hard to let go of because of the fact that they have usually been practiced for numerous years. Smith notes that even Tocqueville "did not assume that racial conflicts would be swept away by the working out of the Revolution's egalitarian principles" (552). Again, slavery is an example. Southerners were so used to having slaves around to help fulfill daily tasks that they feared not having them around anymore. This fear was a result of seeing slavery as a part of their way of life. Southerners grew up seeing African-Americans and other races treated as less than equal and in turn, each generation continued this tradition. The loss of slavery as a practice so concerned southerners that they let this drive them to succession from the Union, and into a Civil War. As in this case, inegalitarian traditions are often difficult to remove or replace with more liberal ideals.

However, Muslim Arab-Americans are not the only ones to be persecuted in this latest wave of American inegalitarianism. Arabs who are not even Muslim are being attacked. According to the NY Times, even though there "are fewer than half million Sikhs in the United States, they have attracted a disproportionate share of the anger" that followed the attacks, probably due to their long beards and the turbans they wear ("Victims of Mistaken Identity..." A1). Even Christian Arab-Americans have been attacked, and according to Pastor El-Yateem, the hate has been "directed against Middle Easterners in general, regardless of religion" ("Christian Arabs..." A16). A Coptic Orthodox schoolboy was taunted and told he looked "like Osama," a allusion to Osama bin Laden, the supposed terrorist mastermind of the assault on America (A16). Since the September 11th attacks, "people who look Middle Eastern and South Asian, whatever their religion or nation of origin, have been singled out for harassment, threats, and assaults" ("Victims of Mistaken Identity..." A1).

Unfortunately, African-Americans are not the only minority that has been treated poorly over the nation's inequality-plagued past. During the rapid expansion of "Americans" throughout the lands that now compromise this nation, many Native-Americans were attacked, murdered, or merely forced from their homelands. Tocqueville saw the position of the Indians as "doomed" because they would not become "civilized, " and he believed that "as Europeans filled the continent, Indians would 'cease to exist'" (Smith, 552). Regrettably, this statement would be nearly true if not for recently renewed interest in Native-American culture. Asian Americans haven't faired much better. Chinese immigrants were often abused and forced to help build railroads during the post Civil War push westward of the late 1800's. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the U.S.'s entrance into World War II, Asian Americans were rounded up and placed in internment camps because of the fear that they might have been spies. It would seem that no minority has been immune to the injustices that riddle the American past.

After the discovery that the hijackers were Arabs or Arab-Americans, a wave of anti-Arab, anti-Muslim sentiment seemed to sweep the country. Many Arab-Americans were verbally assaulted or threatened. In Providence, Rhode Island, three African-American boys threatened a young Muslim girl with attack as she entered her high school ("The Other War..." A16). Scenes like this were widespread, regardless of the fact that American children are taught all throughout their schooling that the racial and ethnic diversity that makes up this nation is one of its strongest points, and to be exceptive of those differences. Of course, children learn from adults, so this behavior wasn't at all limited to schools. In Laramie, Wyoming, a truck crossed the yellow lines and nearly ran down a young Muslim woman, who had already been threatened by two men because she wore a traditional Muslim scarf ("Tough

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Approximate Word count = 2770
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)