How we label people – or mislabel them – says as much about us as it does about them. Maybe even more. Digging back into my archives, I found this post from August 2013 when I was running an emergency food program in Portland, Oregon. I’ve added some thoughts.
That was then
My friend is a terrorist. I’ve known him for three years. He and his wife come “shopping” in our food pantry.
A few days ago as he walked toward our pantry, a vanload of people slowed down beside him and rolled down their window. He offered them a cigarette and, in response, they called him a terrorist and raced off.
If he had looked like a typical American, he might have laughed it off or expressed some kind of “buzz off” response. But he does not and so instead it unnerved him, especially when they circled back around and called him a terrorist once more as they drove by.
My friend does not look like a typical American, white, black, or otherwise. You see, he is Iraqi.
He loves the USA. And this place has, until now, felt like a safe haven for him, his wife, their children, and grandchildren – ever since they moved from Iraq a few short years ago.
As the war wound down, he realized that his family’s safety in Iraq was, with the departure of the American troops, at risk.
One, he had worked with the American forces, serving as a translator for the U.S. Army, side by side with our troops.
Two, he and his family are Roman Catholics. Have been for generations. One of his sons is a priest, no less.
A minority in Iraq, they felt vulnerable remaining there, so they moved to Portland under official refugee status. Life has not been easy here either. They arrived early on in the Great Recession and work has been impossible to find for this man in his late 50s. Thus he humbles himself and comes to us.
Easy or not, life in America has felt safe, very safe. Until recently.
Now a couple of guys in Boston have revived 9-11 anxieties and he looks like them. Well, sort of.
Now a U.S. soldier of Palestinian decent is on trial for a mass killing at Fort Hood and he looks like him. Okay, sort of.
Like I look like Putin.
Whatever the reason, there are people in our town who think my friend looks like a Muslim terrorist. And he’s not even Muslim.
So what if he were? Out of 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, how many are terrorists? Never mind the logic, the vanload of Americans who rolled down their window and called him a terrorist are probably the kind of people my grandmother referred to when she used to say, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” In other words, don’t bother talking sensibly to someone who refuses to be sensible. Except that the illogic can get someone killed.
My friend, I must admit, is no saint. He has a problem with Muslims, too. I listen to him vent about Muslims this and Muslims that. I hear him using the same generalizations on them as that vanload did on him.
But, my friend says, Christians shouldn’t treat others like that vanload of people did. And he is right on, even if he doesn’t always practice what he preaches. Christians like him and me are to be held to a higher standard, he says, and I agree. He is confused that Christians would call other Christians terrorists.
Now, here is a scene rich in irony. He is a Christian who looks like an Arab who thinks his accusers are Christians because they are Americans. They, the van riders, who look like Americans and may or may not be Christians, think he is a Muslim terrorist because he looks like the Middle Easterner that he is.
We all make a lot of assumptions about each other, don’t we? We see and assume, based on what we see, that people must be Christian or terrorist or some other label. This person is a good person because he looks like what we think a good person should look like. That person is evil because she looks evil to us. About people we can be, oh, so wrong.
I can see why my refugee friend might assume that the van people are Christians. We call America a Christian nation, after all. I can see why those people might mistake my friend for an Arab Muslim. Most Iraqis are Arabs and most Arabs are Muslim. Just not terrorists. About nations and ethnicities we can be, oh, so wrong.
I am sad that my friend has become unnerved, has lost his just-arrived-in-America innocence. Those people in the van spoke mere words, one word in fact. “Terrorist.” And that one word spoke terror into the heart of my friend who has seen more terror back in Iraq than I can ever imagine.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, we said as children. I’m sorry, friends, names can hurt us, too. And who knows but what action might follow those words?
It is enough to make a good Roman Catholic Iraqi, who helped the likes of my son in the U.S. army, worry for the safety of his children and grandchildren who look as much like Muslim terrorists as he does.
Even the Catholic priest. I have this fleeting thought. Can a priest killed for looking like a Muslim terrorist be considered a martyr for the Christian faith?
Such are the weirdnesses of our world. Not just in our present generation, but for countless generations past.
Still, saying prejudice and racism are part of the human condition is no reason to give up on hope. Or to give up on working for change.
I pray for my friend tonight, that he and his family be kept safe even though they live in Portland where people mistake them for terrorists.
And I pray for the vanload of people, that, whatever shortcomings caused them to say such hurtful things to my friend, they too will find peace.
Next week I think I’ll go visit my friend, sit and talk and laugh and pray with him, and with my presence assure him that there are Christians – Americans as well – who don’t judge a book by its cover.
This is now
That was 2013. This is 2024.
For a while I stayed in touch with that friend who had fled Iraq. Then I lost track of him. I am hoping it is because he didn’t need our emergency resources anymore. I trust it wasn’t because something bad happened to him or his family. I find odd comfort in sensing that, if something really bad had taken place, it would have been in the news. As far as I know, no Iraqi refugees that fit his description have been terrorized in the Pacific Northwest.
Still, the challenges I discussed in this post a decade ago remain with us as ever. In some ways things are worse. Our society is more polarized. Sticking degrading labels on people has become more acceptable, more mainstream.
It used to be that way. In my historical readings, it isn’t that far back that it was socially acceptable to call people derogatory names. But then such labeling went out of fashion and was deemed uncivil. Sadly, our more civilized ways are becoming increasingly unfashionable again. We deplore civility for being politically correct.
But what I wrote in 2013 is still true. That what we say about people has consequences, and not just that we will be held accountable before God for what we say about others. My reference is to the reality that what we say about people can lead to actions. And those actions can have dire consequences.
Only four years after I wrote that post, two teenagers were threatened on one of Portland’s Max Light Rail trains. It was the first day of the Muslim holy season of Ramadan.
One of the teenagers was a Somali girl wearing a hijab; the other was her non-Muslim friend, an African-American girl. As the girls moved away from the man who was threatening them, he went on shouting about how they should “go back to Saudi Arabia” and get out of “his country”, how “they were nothing and should kill themselves”, and how “Muslims should die.”
As he continued to move toward the girls, two white guys intervened to protect them. The attacker stabbed them and another white guy with a knife. Two died, the third survived with serious injuries.
The attacker was Jeremy Joseph Christian – what an irony of a surname! At his arraignment, Christian shouted: “You call it terrorism, I call it patriotism.” He was sentenced to “true life,” meaning he will never be released from prison.
If you dig into Christian’s past, you come up with all-too-familiar bio lines. He had been a likeable but struggling kid who went to prison for seven years for a robbery. Coming out of prison, he lived a transient life and with a growing interest in obscure Norse mythology and the idea of a master white race.
Some observers spoke of mental health concerns and the need for more mental health services, a cause I wholeheartedly support. Others say Christian had a severely flawed character and that Christian’s issue was not mental health.
In any case, he fits a lot of stereotypes of lone attackers with racist intent.
Stop right there.
When our minds begin to attach Christian to the same old tropes, we lose sight of him as a person and he becomes just a label. Just as much as those two women on the Max line were mere labels to him. Black or Muslim, they deserved to die, Christian believed, because he had labeled them, never knowing who they really were – just the color of their skin and something of what one of them was wearing.
Whatever else Christian brought to the table – a troubled childhood perhaps, some bad influence perhaps, emotional instability or paranoia even – he chose to see people as labels and not as people.
There is much to commend in the current fad of ceasing to label people as “a convicted felon” or “a disabled person,” labels that mean people are forever known first as a felon or disabled. Instead, the new preferred lingo is to say that he was convicted of a felony or she has a disability.
Such a change may make for longer sentences, but brevity is not our highest priority in communication. It may sound like semantics, but semantics is what gets us into this troubling conversation in the first place.
If we have any labels, Scripture is clear that all we human beings are Imago Dei, made in the image of God. That, my friend, is enough to tell me how I am to see all those around me – including Jeremy Joseph Christian. In our earthly understandings of justice and for the safety of our communities, he may deserve life without parole, but he is still Imago Dei.
I pray his life sentence allows him opportunity to have a new label – “follower of Jesus.” I pray he comes to understand the true meaning of his surname.
Classic Retake posts are revisited writings, in whole or in part, from my archived material.
This blog on journeying in the borderlands is also dedicated to understanding and pursuing justice and compassion for all people, regardless of labels or status in life. That is why we make the journey. If you wish to be part of this growing community of readers committed to these goals, be sure to sign up – as always, for free.
Max train story references: Jeremy Joseph Christian appears in court; Jeremy Christian’s path from troubled youth to TriMet stabbing suspect’ Man saw teenagers, one with hijab, and launched into racial tirade.
Public Domain photo by Edoderoo: Child embracing Reconciliation statue in Woerden, Netherlands