Race, Ethnicity Affect Chicagoan' Response to September Tragedies

By: Sarah KarpOn most nights, the flashing red lights of airplanes making their way to and from the city dot the sky above Bridgeview, a working-class suburb that lies just southwest of Midway Airport.

But on Sept. 11, after terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon and crashed another in Pennsylvania, grounding all of the nation's aircraft, only a few stars shone silently above.

It was two days before the rumble of takeoffs and landings resumed. But emotions poured into the Bridgeview streets sooner.

Every night from Wednesday, Sept. 12, to Friday, Sept. 14, people cruised in their cars up and down Harlem Avenue, flying American flags and honking. Others stood on both sides of the street waving flags, many wearing red, white and blue jackets, T-shirts or jeans. Some carried balloons, signs or bandannas. They shouted, whooped and cheered. Almost all of them were white.

Down the block that Friday, near a darkened strip mall of stores owned by Arab-Americans, Ray Maali was quiet. Maali, a 26-year-old, American-born Palestinian, said he saw the display in two ways.

"On one side, I am patriotic," he said. "On the other side, as an Arab American, I see racism."

Every day for a week after the terrorist attacks, The Chicago Reporter sent its staff to talk to leaders and residents in different communities in the Chicago area. The Reporter found that, immediately after the attacks, everyone-a Pakistani man in West Rogers Park, a Mexican man in Pilsen, a black woman in Chatham-seemed saddened, horrified and stunned. But as the initial shock wore away, Chicagoans began to see the events of Sept. 11 through their own personal lenses, each formed by where they were born, where they live and how they identify themselves racially and ethnically.

For Marge Richard, one of Bridgeview's white residents, the events confirmed her dislike of Arabs. Like most of the inner-ring southwest suburbs, Bridgeview is predominantly white. It grew during the 1960s and 1970s when whites left Chicago neighborhoods that were attracting African Americans. Arab Americans began to move to Bridgeview about 10 years ago.

"As far as I am concerned, ship them back to where they belong," she said. "They don't belong here."

Such sentiments left Badr Khudeira, an Arab American who also lives in Bridgeview, feeling both frightened and betrayed. He's one of as many as 200,000 Arabs in the Chicago area, estimates the Chicago-based Arab American Action Network. Khudeira was born and raised in the United States. His mother is from Palestine and his father is from Syria, but they met each other in college in the United States, he said.

"We have always lived next to them in peace and now they are turning on us," he said.

Maisha Hamilton-Bennett, president of Hamilton Wholistic Healthcare, a mental health consulting firm, said patriotism can easily turn into racial hatred. She pointed out that religious leaders were targets of death threats after they said on television that they supported peace. "People are so caught up in emotion that their common sense has gone out to lunch," said Hamilton-Bennett, who is African American.

'Nobody Understood'
On that Tuesday morning, thousands of people who had just arrived at work were turned around. Their buildings evacuated or workplaces closed, they clogged downtown streets, making mid-morning look like rush hour as they returned to their neighborhoods and homes.

Sabrina Smith was one of them. Smith, a South Shore resident who works downtown, was shopping that afternoon with her mother, Augusta, on 87th Street in predominantly black Chatham. Both worried about the innocent people who died.


Part of the problem, Sabrina Smith said, is that the United States meddles too much in international affairs. She wishes the government would "stay out of those other folks' countries."

Angela Wooten, a black 31-year-old schoolteacher, was also shopping on 87th Street. She said when she heard the news, she immediately thought someone from the Middle East was responsible. "You hate to label one group as the 'terrorists,' but the way it looks, it looks like something they might do," she said.

At a press conference at the Chicago Emergency Communication Center, Chicago Police Department Supt. Terry G. Hillard deflected questions about anti-Arab crimes to the FBI. But the next morning, Mayor Richard M. Daley thanked Chicagoans for "resisting the urge to strike out blindly at members of any particular ethnic group."

But not all of them did. The Chicago Police Department created a new category of hate crimes-"World Trade Center-related"-for those committed against people in the wake of the attacks. Between Sept. 11 and Oct. 5, police made 13 such arrests, said Pat Camden, deputy director of news affairs for the department. Between 1994 and 2001, 29 hate crimes were committed in Chicago against Arab or Muslim people, according to police reports.

Sahar Mawlawi, director of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations' Advisory Council of Arab Affairs, said the number of reported hate crimes is "not really representative of what is taking place in Chicago." Since Sept. 11, she has received 125 calls reporting harassment against Arabs, Muslims or people perceived to be Arab or Muslim. "I always ask, 'Have you gone to the police?' Many people say, 'No, I'm scared,'" she said.

The day after the attacks, 21-year-old Mark Ishu woke up feeling sad. Ishu grew up in northwest suburban Park Ridge and now attends Indiana University in Bloomington. Both of his parents are Assyrian. And he suspected that, once again, innocent people who look like him, people of Middle Eastern descent, would become targets of retaliation.

As a child, he had been taunted by other kids who called him a terrorist. And on this day, Ishu said, it seemed that everyone-even his college professor-looked at him differently: "I felt like nobody understood."

Word of anti-Arab incidents compelled William Yoshino, director of the Japanese American Citizens League for the Midwest, to attend a Sept. 12 press conference at the South Loop office of the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization that does advocacy work on social justice issues.

"In 1942, there were precious few who had the courage to speak out against the action which led to the internment of Japanese Americans," he told a crowd of about 50. Yoshino said he feared Arab Americans would suffer the same fate as his parents, their friends and thousands of other Japanese Americans who, during World War II, were held in internment camps. His mother and father spent two years in a camp.

"In the aftermath of yesterday's events, the Arab American community must not be made to feel isolated, vulnerable and unsupported," he said.

On Thursday, Sept. 13, at an interfaith prayer vigil under heavy clouds and blustery winds, a white boy and an Arab Muslim boy played together near Buckingham Fountain.

Patti Paul, the mother of the 7-year-old white boy, Sam Katskee, said she came to the service because she wanted her son, whose father is Jewish, to know love and unity.

"I want him to understand that little fellow is his brother, that Muslim boy," said Paul, 40. "I want him to be able to grasp that at a tiny age."

Different Meanings
Friday, Sept. 14, began with reflection. Most Chicagoans heeded President George W. Bush's call to mourn with three minutes of silence at noon. Thousands gathered in the streets around Daley Plaza, and no one spoke above a whisper except for a black man standing on a corner nearby crying out to God. Some watched him in silence, but others nodded their heads, eyes shut, adding a "Yes, Lord" or "Amen, brother."

Sheila Halpin, a 45-year-old white woman who lives in Marina Towers and attended the service at Daley Plaza, said she couldn't shake her uneasiness. Though quick to condemn hate crimes against Arabs, Halpin said she had stopped taking taxis that might be driven by Muslims and Arabs.

"You're just more distrusting, I think, and that's unfortunate," she said.

Outside the Mexican Fine Arts Center, at 1852 W. 19th St. in Pilsen, both the Mexican and American flags flew at half-mast. Inside, anyone who tried to talk at noon was abruptly hushed.

Cesareo Moreno, 36, the center's visual arts director, said that for the first time he was flying an American flag at his home. He had always seen it as a symbol of the history of the United States and its government's policies-many of which he opposes.

But the flag means something else now, Moreno said. "For me, it is more of a sense of compassion and more of a desire to reach out as human beings, not Americans," he said. "It's a solidarity that transcends patriotism. It's coming together-it's like a wake."

Still, Zenia Ruiz, the museum's underwriting manager, said that, as a Latina who has watched the U.S. government fund militant groups in Latin America, she remains skeptical.

"I don't think this is an attack on our freedoms, on our ideals. I think this is an attack on the way our government is-their policies toward foreign countries," she said. "I think a lot is kept hidden from us."

Hours later on a dark street in Bridgeview, Maali made the same point. He told a group of white men-one of whom wore a U.S. Marines jacket-that they needed to understand Arab anger.

To many Arabs, the United States is responsible for violence in the Middle East, particularly when they see Israeli soldiers fighting Palestinians with U.S.-made arms, he said. "But no one here sees that. No one here knows about that."

Meanwhile, lights flashed from the police cars that blocked off all side streets leading to Bridgeview's Mosque Foundation, 7360 W. 93rd St. The protesters continued to shout and wave flags. One man, his body painted in stars and stripes, sprinted up and down Harlem Avenue, throwing candy.

A white teenage girl with a hard, angular face passed out fliers encouraging people to boycott Arab-owned businesses and to "break one Arabs window."

It also read: "WE ARE AT WAR."

Real Problems
Five days after the attacks, on Sunday, Sept. 16, about 150 Indian and Pakistani people lifted up the American flag as they marched in West Rogers Park. Some also carried handmade signs declaring "Pakistanis for Peace" or "Sikh Americans are Americans."

They moved west on Devon Avenue, from Hoyne Avenue, where the Patel Brothers sell fish and Indian spices, to Sacramento Avenue, where Rosenblum's World of Judaica sells 30 different styles of keepahs, hats worn by some Jewish men and women.

The next day was Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Many temples were taking extra precautions, worried they could be targets. Yet Rabbi Bruce Elder, associate rabbi for Congregation Hakafa in the North Shore suburb of Glencoe, said he was not scared of Arabs. He said he was more frightened when white supremacist Benjamin Smith went on a rampage in Illinois and Indiana in 1999, killing two people.

"It was a direct attack on local people … based on race, religion or creed," Elder said.

By Sept. 18, a week had passed, but Judith Moore was still recalling television images of the plane crashes. "It really didn't look real," said Moore, a 57-year-old black woman who works as a cashier at Edna's restaurant, 3175 W. Madison St.

Yet she hadn't stopped thinking about the everyday problems in the Near West Side neighborhood, where she lives. "It ain't nothing like it should be-our housing, our jobs, our neighborhoods.

"That's all we've ever known is poverty, being poor, living from week to week, day to day."

As a black man, Dr. Carl C. Bell, chief executive officer of the Community Mental Health Council, 8704 S. Constance Ave. in the Calumet Heights neighborhood, said he also had mixed emotions. On one hand, he believes in America's ideals. But continued racism means for him the reality has always fallen short, he said.

In that first week after the terrorism, other Americans were stressed and felt vulnerable-a sensation Bell said he had felt for a long time.

"I feel like saying, 'Welcome to the club,'" he said. "Black people have been terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan forever. But, if you have any sense, you don't let a crackpot ruin your life."

Contributing: The Chicago Reporter staff and interns.