Written by an anonymous CELOP student

When I entered the counter to check in at Logan international airport, the security asked my brother and I nicely to follow him to another place, and asked us if we have any luggage and we told him that we had, he accompanied us to the place where we picked them up and followed him again. At that moment, I was really scared but my brother was so calm, I think because he used to come to the US every year for business so he has been in such a situation most frequently.

Then we arrived to an isolated place; nobody was there except for one or maybe two passengers who were leaving at that time. When we got there, the police asked us to open the luggage and started to search for something that might incriminate us. I was very frightened, not because of that, but I was scared that he might ask me to turn on my laptop which has a non-genuine copy of windows operating system which would cause me a lot of troubles, fortunately he did not. The funniest thing was when he found my notebook, he was turning the pages desperately to find a page in English to read, but all my handwriting was in Arabic. Ultimately he released us. I really breathed deeply as we exited the airport and thank God for his help.

Before coming to the USA, I had this imaginary picture about the US reflecting an equality and undiscriminated attitude from both the government and the people themselves. However, this image has changed after I just arrived in the USA last year.
Now, I have spent almost a year in the US, a year enough to erase that image and replace it maybe with a more factual and darker image as I see how African Americans are not treated equally as their white peers. The Media always draws a misleading picture about the US, especially when it comes to the unspeakable issue, racism, especially towards African Americans as they are as American as white people. They do not have the same opportunities as white people have. Worse education, lower income, higher unemployment and a higher homelessness rate. I could not see the equality that I always have heard about. On the other hand, I can’t judge other races but I can see Hispanics are not better than African Americans. Moreover, in the last couple months, there were many administrations across the US as in two different cities, two African Americans were killed by a white policeman and they were found not guilty by the court. Both cases
support the assumption that in America racism still is a huge issue that the government should take more seriously.

However, after 9/11, I think Americans do not look at Muslims as they used to before that. Last Tuesday, the tenth of February, three Muslims were shot by an American and the media, I mean all the media, just ignored it like nothing happened, but social media really exposed the incident and criticized the media because they did not even mention it until after a couple hours because they were Muslims who were shot by a white man, what if it was vice versa. I think it would become the headlines in all the news channels. I think most Americans are not racist, but the hate speech, which is protected by law, can trigger such racial crimes and increase the gap between different races.

As a person, I respect free speech and I believe that everyone should be able to express his opinion without fearing the consequences. However, this speech should not escalate the racism and drag down the country into a worse situation.