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CNN Live Saturday
Arab-Americans Fear Backlash
Aired September 22, 2001 - 13:39 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Thousands of victims of the September 11 attacks were nowhere near Washington, New York or Pennsylvania on that day. They are Arab-Americans, law-abiding people that now face discrimination as they try to go about their daily life. Their story is coming up just ahead after this break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KAGAN: Americans are trying to go about their daily routines this weekend. One example: Sports are back on TV. But whether it's watching sports, participating or just spending time with your family, embedded in the back of a lot of American minds is fear.
Here is CNN's Boston bureau chief, Bill Delaney.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BILL DELANEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): All over the country, shadows on the end of a week in late September. War -- that word, now like a dark cord within the routine rumble of life.
In Boston, officials downplayed concern from the U.S. Attorney General about a possible terrorist strike in the city this weekend.
MAYOR THOMAS MENINO, BOSTON: And there are no specific threats to the safety of the people of Boston.
TOM REILLY, MASSACHUSETTS ATTORNEY GENERAL: We need to go about our business. Now is the time to get out and go out. Now is the time to visit the city and go wherever you want to go.
DELANEY: Reassurance not dissolving for some deep uneasiness.
LINDA GREENVERG: I would not take a trip into Boston. So I wouldn't consider doing it.
JAMES CURRAN, HAIR STYLIST: This is a time to be paranoid. Anything is possible, it's scary. We've had a lot of cancellations for tomorrow already, and so the chances are the whole day might cancel [unintelligible].
DELANEY: From the relatively small scale of a downtown Boston hair salon to a 70 percent decline in hotel occupancy in the same city to brisk sales in Richmond, Virginia of survival gear at an Army-Navy store, a shift in how things are.
In Sacramento, California a night out at a comedy club took on perhaps a degree of defiance to difficult times.
BRIAN KELLAN, ENTERTAINER: We didn't know how they would take to laughing, and [UNINTELLIGIBLE], they're one of the hottest clubs I've played for in months.
DELANEY: Draped flags mingled pride and grief flanked by a new presence of police, comforting and disturbing. Near deserted parking lots at usually thronged airports, impossible to see as a blessing. Like beaches with few on them, a glimpse not of pleasure, but foreboding. Even outside reservoirs in some places, armed guards.
While in Tampa, Florida, like so many other places, many decided to take the train for the first time in years rather than fly.
(on camera): U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft says we all now have a vulnerability we should be attentive to, not yield to. But most everyone now is at least wary, many afraid.
Bill Delaney, CNN, Boston.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WOODRUFF: As part of the wellspring of fear, there has been an unsettling, and yet, almost predictable backlash against Arab- Americans. With some thoughts on that, here is our Washington bureau chief, Frank Sesno.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FRANK SESNO, CNN WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): Expressions of hate directed against Arab-Americans: a mosque is Cleveland rammed by a car, an Iraqi-owned pizzeria in Massachusetts torched, a man wearing a turban shot and killed at a gas station in Arizona.
One watchdog group has cataloged more than 250 incidents so far. The FBI is looking into more 50 specific complaints.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There have been some women who have been attacked. And many of my family members and friends have advised me to change the way I dress.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith.
SESNO: The president has repeatedly condemned the backlash, before a joint session of Congress and during a visit to a mosque.
BUSH: Those who feel like they can intimidate our fellow citizens to take out their anger don't represent the best of America. They represent the worst of humankind, and they should be ashamed. NIHAD AWAD, COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS: It was very comforting for us, and very comforting for the Muslim ladies, who have not been out of their houses for the past few days, for the many schools that have been shut down, for the mosques that have not performed religious prayers.
SESNO: Despite the president's reassuring words, many Arab- Americans, Muslims and others, feel they are being singled out and are under suspicion. Example: A Pakistani-American is flying first-class when a Delta airlines pilot approaches him before departing San Antonio.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He asked me that [UNINTELLIGIBLE] I want you to pick up your air bag and come out from this flight, because me and my crew are not safe flying with you.
SESNO: Delta says it takes the incident seriously and has -- quote -- "sympathy for all parties involved."
AWAD: You see myself and my fellow Muslims and Arabs being stopped in airports, because of our look, because of our features, because of our names, because of the way that we dress, I think speaks volumes.
SESNO: These ethnic overtones prompt some to draw parallels to another painful chapter in American history: Pearl Harbor and its aftermath.
CHERRY TSUTSUMIDA: Pearl Harbor happened and our whole life changed, and suddenly we were put into the role of the enemy, and we were also assumed to be guilty of some crime, which they never defined.
SESNO: Cherry Tsutsumida remembers. She was one of 120,000 Japanese-Americans, who were rounded up and sent to internment camps. She was seven years old at the time.
TSUTSUMIDA: My father was taken away right after the war broke out in December. And I was at school, and the kids came in, and they said, hey, your father is a Jap, and he was taken by the FBI. And I never saw my father again until the Thanksgiving of 1943.
SESNO: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] and stereotypes reinforced the government's campaign and popular imagery for years to come.
It took nearly 50 years for the U.S. government to formally apologize. Just this summer, a memorial honoring those who were sent to the camps, commemorating how far America has come since.
(on camera): Surely, the U.S. is a different, far more diverse and tolerant country now. But in times like these, with the nation under attack, people may fear those they don't know or understand. The American melting pot, tested yet again.
(voice-over): Frank Sesno, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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