I was sent off to purchase some cheap white wine yesterday to further the production of a very tasty tuna pasta. So I quickly ran over to the neighborhood mini-mart. Actually, this was my first visitation to the mini-mart. The woman behind the counter was brown. Going by the numbers she was probably an Indian immigrant. Indians predominate in the American brown community, and most of the people who work in these sorts of jobs seem to have accents, and so are immigrants. I profiled her before I even interacted with her.
I quickly found myself a $3 bottle of wine, and raced up to the counter. Pasta was boiling. Ingredients were cooling. Because of my preternaturally young face I set my identification on the counter. Below is what transpired….
[brown-skinned female clerk, age 50 or so, scrutinizes the I.D., and looks me over. She smiles]
Clerk: So you guys are done with roza? [roza = fasting for Ramadan]
Me: [thought: what kind of Muslim starts to buy alcohol again after Ramandan?] Uh, I’m not Muslim.
Clerk: [confused expression, smiles nervously] But your name is Khan. I thought you were Muslim.
Me: Yeah, I’m an atheist.
Clerk: [confused expression]
Me: I don’t believe in that stuff. I don’t fast. But I think my parents’ said that fasting was over….
Clerk: [even more confused expression] Your parents? So they are Muslim? But you aren’t?
Me: [Walking out of the store] My parents are Muslim, but I’m not. I’m an atheist. I don’t believe that stuff.
I have no idea what the clerk’s religion was, or their attitude toward Islam. She was just being friendly, and naturally profiled me. Most brown-skinned males with the surname Khan are Muslim. Most well-educated Americans of all races assume I’m Muslim without knowing anything about me. Naturally, they also assume I’m a Pakistani Muslim. This is entirely warranted by the numbers. The problem is when I introduce new information into the equation.
That new information being that I’m of that small minority of people with brown skin and a conventionally Muslim surname who does not identify with Islam at all. Not only that, but I also don’t identify with any other barbaric superstition, such as Christianity or Hinduism, or vacuous spirituality in general. When I introduce this information into the equation some cosmopolitan white atheist Americans bluster and get confused. I suppose scientific materialism for me but not for thee? It’s even more funny when secular whites want commiserate with me about Islamophobia (when I express skepticism about Islam sometimes I get the weird accusation of false consciousness and inability to resist the brainwashing of Western thinking). But in general American sensitivities are such that the conversation moves to other topics quickly.
Not so always with Muslims and/or South Asians. In the former class a lot of the uncomfortable discussion or tension emerges from the plain fact that they’re naturally offended that I dismiss their primitive superstitions. The more civilized Westernized individuals naturally move the conversation to more productive domains, while the more barbaric individuals can become irritable, or even verbally belligerent (though to be fair, the last is very rare). The class of South Asians is more interesting. In particular those South Asians who are not Muslim. These individuals operate in a world where confessional and communal identities are relatively fixed, and incredibly important. Even those individuals within this culture who are liberal in their attitudes, and “secular,” give a nod to the realities of their barbaric culture, where men, women, and children, live or die depending on whichever idol they bow down to, Krishna, Allah, or Christ.
Even transplanted to the United States, or even born in the United States, individuals with this orientation have difficulty understanding those of us who defect, deny, and repudiate, this barbaric cartel of organized superstitions. From the expression on the clerk’s face it was as if I was a black man who asserted that I was white, and denied that I was black. The analogy might seem very amusing, but it’s informative. In places like Brazil, from the perspective of a citizen of the United States there are indeed black men (i.e., those of mixed race) who assert that they are white, and deny that they are black! From a Brazilian perspective there are those of mixed race who perversely assert that they are black (e.g., Barack Hussein Obama).
Sometimes these confusions are serious. But most of the time I find them amusing. I hope you do too.