“What would you do?”
Several bloggers have reviewed a recent ABC production, “What would you do?” in which hidden cameras in a bakery recorded the responses of customers while a sales-clerk refused to serve a Muslim woman wearing a head scarf and uttered racial slurs. (The sales clerk and the woman in the scarf were both actors.)
Jamerican Muslimah’s reaction:
“I personally think when we use terms like [Islamophobia or anti-Muslim bias] that we’re somehow softening (and taking the sting out of) very racist actions and words. We’re creating a distance between something people of color experience in their daily lives (racism) and replacing it with a term that describes discrimination against a specific group of people. Not only do terms like “anti-Muslim bias” or “Islamophobia” isolate Muslims from the larger anti-racism movements, they don’t prick at the moral consciousness of the average American in the way that terms like “racist”, “racism” or “bigot” do. (After all, it is no longer socially acceptable to be overtly racist).
The link to the video at youtube.
The Islamic Workplace on this and similar incidents.
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