Pomona, Ignorant of the Aftermath
Last Saturday, I retreated from the high stress life I live at Pomona College to the comfort of my home in Irvine, California, a mere 45-minute drive away. It’s a city like most other Southern California cities, similar to Claremont in the sense that both cities’ residents harbor feelings of security based on the fact that their crime rates are modest in comparison to their neighboring communities. And yet, I find this security false–a mentality that has contributed to the murders of many American citizens and residents since the terrorist attacks of September 11.
Thusly, with such a mentality in mind, I found myself sitting on Sunday morning, waiting for my car to be washed by the automated scrub-brushes of the local Irvine gas station. With my attention traveling in and out of the conversations going on around me, I fixate on the white mother and two children sitting behind me. Squinting in the early morning sunlight, I listen as this women matter-of-factly explains to her impressionable early-teen daughter and son that "Muslims are merely brought up to be religious fanatics," and that they "are practically brought up to be terrorists." I was appalled, yet sat, rooted in my seat, because I realized that, especially during this tumultuous time, I could not expect the world to be even remotely free of racism.
Why is this pertinent? Because after living in Irvine for 12 years the predominant sentiment amongst residents is that of the supreme safety of our little developed community. And yet, that same notion has been discussed and agreed upon on this very campus. While the local Muslim center is busy cataloging its series of threatening phone calls, Pomona students are discussing their relief that America is finally "pulling together" in this time of national heartache and tragedy.
The Pomona community did indeed galvanize itself in response to America’s crisis, but we as members of this community we can not allow our relative closeness to blind us from the atmosphere of the community and nation at large. America is not pulling together, the fringes of our communities are fracturing along the most shocking of lines. Across the nation, people of color have been goaded, harassed, beaten, and killed–their homes, places of employment, and centers of congregation have been made targets of vandalism and violence. And the targeting is directed a groups far beyond the Middle East. Americans of all colors and creeds are united against the fear of all that is different, and are becoming terrorists themselves.
We can not blanket ourselves in the comfortable homes that we we have made here at Pomona. It leaves us ignorant when the class-time lectures and public forums stop, and we are left to enlighten ourselves on the stark situation of the world around us. The scars of this crisis will heal, but not if we pretend that the quasi-utopia in which we live expands beyond the walls of this academic realm. We only seem to be safe when we are aware of the dangers that imperil us.
