Friday Review: Terrifying Minorities

Last week Minority Rights Group International used the release of its new report, "State of the World's Minorities 2006", to critique the war on terror. The report is the first attempt of any organization to present annual data and analysis on the situation faced by minorities globally. MRG's effort is part of a widespread development in liberal and left activism: the focus on minority harm and anti-discrimination.

Michael Lattimer, MRG’s executive director, explains that governments have transformed "what should be a struggle against terrorism into a war on minorities." Lattimer expresses a problem common to minority rights advocacy and opposition to the war on terror in general. He begins by accepting the assumptions of the war on terror and then "critiques" it for being improperly implemented. As a consequence, , MRG is sanctioning the broader erosion of civil liberties in the process of opposing minority rights abuses. This is generally true of the minority rights position, and it is problematic for two reasons.

First, the minority rights position places minorities in an adversarial relationship with broader society. The focus on minorities makes the implicit point that these communities are somehow "under threat" and "vulnerable", that they need to be vigilant in protecting themselves from the rest of society. This assumption of a threat posed by society and of the vulnerability of the minority reinforces the worst assumptions of the war on terror: massively overestimated threat and massively underestimated individuals. Equally, it reinforces the war on terror’s assumption that the great threat to individuals comes from their peers and neighbors.

Minority rights groups thus find themselves mirroring the Bush administration by trading in fear. Since minority rights are constituted around the prevention of harm and protection of the vulnerable, minority rights advocates places themselves in the peculiar position of searching out such harm and even talking up threats to their communities. In anti-discrimination and minority rights logic, it makes perfect sense that advocates end up collecting discrimination "incidents" as evidence of the need for minority rights. Proving minority vulnerability justifies their agenda.

Examples abound. The war on terror has pushed Arab and Muslim advocacy groups to absurd degrees of threat deterrence. In anticipation of the US invasion of Iraq, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) put together a "Muslim Community Safety Kit." In a similarly paranoid move, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) issued an advisory statement to Arab-American and Muslim-American communities, "in light of the bombings that took place in the public transportation system in London." With fear-mongering equal to any engaged in by the federal government, the ADC counseled:

IF YOUR PLACE OF WORK, PLACE OF WORSHIP, OR SCHOOL IS IDENTIFIED
WITH ARABS AND/OR MUSLIMS:

* Make sure the location has an open line of communication with law
enforcement.
* Make sure you know all the exits to your building.
* Make sure the location has a current emergency plan that is
defined and can be implemented should the need arise.

IF YOUR CHILD CAN BE IDENTIFIED AS ARAB OR MUSLIM, OR MAY BE
CONFUSED FOR BEING OF MIDDLE-EASTERN ORIGIN:

* Make sure you discuss the events with your children and that they
feel comfortable speaking with an adult if they face harassment by
others
* Make sure your children know what steps to take to avoid
confrontation with other students.
* Work with your children's school to implement an anti-
discriminatory policy.

As a "precautionary measure" the ADC proceeded to advise Arab and Muslim Americans that they should feel threatened if they, or people they are associated with, "can be identified with Arabs and/or Muslims." It cannot be in the interest of any Americans to live in this state of fear from their society, especially when the threat is almost non-existent (for the proof see CAIR’s own annual reports which attempt to document every "incident" of discrimination nationwide; violent crimes are exceptionally few). Yet CAIR and ADC believe the documentation of all discrimination minutia are an integral part of their advocacy work. Both groups have features on their websites for Arabs and Muslims to report incidents of "discrimination" or "hate." CAIR advises that all incidents be reported, "even if you believe it is a 'small' incident."

CAIR's "Muslim Community Safety Kit" is a study in war-on-terror ideology. In the advice on "Reacting to Acts of Discrimination," Muslims are instructed to "Remain calm." CAIR’s "mosque security guidelines" identify shrubs around a mosque as an "area of vulnerability", and suggests Muslims "trim shrubs" in order to reduce areas "in which criminals may hide." The safety kit concludes with an extensive "bomb threat checklist" which Muslims are to "keep near phone in case of threatening calls." Although some may have thought it impossible, CAIR seems to have stolen the prize on public service scare-mongering from even the color-coded terror threat system. And in an indication of just how far the assertion of liberty has been subsumed by the avoidance of risk, CAIR’s safety kit, incident report form, and annual reports compiling all incidents are placed under the Civil Rights section of their website.

While it is not surprising that minority groups have been sucked into the fear management politics of the rest of the country, they have nothing to gain from the development. A strong position in society cannot be achieved by insisting that one is vulnerable, and collective action cannot possibly be fostered by heightening Americans’ distrust of one another.

The second problem with the minority rights position is that, as illustrated by MRG's report, it entirely accepts the logic of the war on terror. Take the example of searches and surveillance. The minority rights challenge to many of the government’s programs is based on the fact that individuals are being singled out on the basis of their race, ethnicity or national origin. Logically, if the searches were randomized or done equally, then there would be no minority rights problem. In other words, nobody's liberties would really be violated if everyone were surveilled. Hardly a victory for liberty.

This is exactly the framework through which all present domestic war on terror discussions are taking place. Randomized, generalized searches have become the aim of law enforcement, because they ensure that the government will be able to survive any legal attack. This is what happened with the randomized New York subway search policy, recently upheld in federal court. Police commissioners testified that they designed the program specifically to be able to overcome constitutional hurdles.

This is not just a problem for resisting specific programs, it is also speaks to our priorities. No longer able to define what individual liberty is or what purposes it serves, those hoping to defend civil liberties can only identify a violation of rights when it is dressed in the garb of discrimination. Non-discrimination becomes the principle rather than liberty. This shift from a defense of liberty to anti-discrimination threatens to bring about a society in which all limitations on freedom are acceptable as long as the limitations are universally applied.