Beyond Driving While Black and Flying While Brown: Using Intersectionality to Uncover the Gendered Aspects of Racial Profiling
![handle is hein.journals/coljgl12 and id is 285 raw text is: BEYOND DRIVING WHILE BLACK AND
FLYING WHILE BROWN:1 USING
INTERSECTIONALITY TO UNCOVER THE
GENDERED ASPECTS OF RACIAL PROFILING
SHERRI SHARMA
INTRODUCTION
The day after the September 11 th terrorist attacks in New York, two
Muslim women in veils were pushing baby strollers in Brooklyn when they
were surrounded by a group of angry youths who harassed them with racial
epithets.2 A week later, Sonia Sudan, a South Asian high school student in
Boca Raton, Florida, was at a Kinko's copy shop when she was hauled out
of the store by a deputy and held in a squad car until the FBI arrived and
released her. S onia w as h aving c ards printed for her b oyfriend, who w as
about to enter the Air Force. She had illustrated them with a pentagram
modeled after a piece of his jewelry, and a store employee had called the
police, claiming S onia was drawing satanic s ymbols.3 In addition, during
the last week of September 2001, a Muslim Harvard graduate student was
verbally and physically assaulted as she exited a subway station in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.4 She was wearing the hijab.5 Four white men
cornered the woman and shouted, What are you doing here? Go home to
your own country! and then tried to remove her hijab.6
Since the September 11 th terrorist attacks, incidents like these are
numerous.7 Arab Americans, or anyone who resembles one, male or female,
are being profiled. Yet the primary focus of racial profiling has been on
'This phrase refers to the profiling of Arabs and South Asians in airports and on
planes. It is a take on Driving While Black, the sarcastic phrase used to describe racial
profiling on highways.
2 South Asian Leaders of Tomorrow (SAALT), American Backlash: Terrorists
Bring War Home in More Ways Than One (2001), at http://www.saalt.org/biasreport.pdf
[hereinafter SAALT Report].
3 Rekha Basu, Indian Woman Journalist Details New Bias Against Women Who
Look Foreign. Women's eNews (Sept. 21, 2001), at
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/660/context/archive.
4 Juliet Chung, Grad Student Assaulted in Alleged Hate Crime, Harvard Crimson,
(Oct. 1, 2001), at http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=- 121413.
5 The hijab refers to the head covering or veil Muslim women are required to wear.
6 Juliet Chung, supra note 4.
7 See SAALT Report, supra note 2.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/coljgl12&div=13&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Beyond Driving While Black and Flying While Brown: Using Intersectionality to Uncover the Gendered Aspects of Racial Profiling
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