Does This Shirt Make Me Look Illegal?

    "Aren't you worried someone will think you're a terrorist?"
    I laughed uncomfortably, as did my wife and the others in our group. I had been speaking at a church and was being introduced to a member of the congregation. He was commenting on my beard and the fact that it made me look "Muslim". He wasn't a bad guy, from what I could tell. He could very well have been making one of those foot-in-mouth statements that I've made a hundred times and regretted all the way home. Admittedly, it came off a more than a little racist, but I was willing to give the guy the benefit of the doubt; something the state of Arizona has recently become less than willing to do.
    I know from columns in the press and conversations with friends that I am not the only one disturbed by Arizona's Immigration Bill SB1070. But I can't help but throw my two cents worth in. The fact is that it will be next to impossible to keep this from turning into racial profiling and worse. It is simply too likely that a man who ought to be at home with his kids will, instead, be sitting in a jail cell, simply because he forgot to carry his papers.
    I don't doubt that the majority of Arizona police officers are decent folks, just looking to do their jobs. But now a bill exists that allows those with less than stellar motives to harass someone under the pretext of "reasonable suspicion". There's little chance that this bill will make things better and too great a chance that it will make things worse.
    Bishop Tutu puts it this way:
    ...when you strip a man or a woman of their basic human rights, you strip them of their dignity in the eyes of their family and their community, and even in their own eyes. An immigrant who is charged with the crime of trespassing for simply being in a community without his papers on him is being told he is committing a crime by simply being. He or she feels degraded and feels they are of less worth than others of a different color skin. These are the seeds of resentment, hostilities and in extreme cases, conflict.
    We need to be more than frustrated or concerned with this turn of events, we need to be vocal and adamant. We need to write who we need to write and boycott what need's to be boycotted. This bill is unacceptable. Approaching a stranger who looks or speaks differently with a presumption of guilt is no way to build trust or to build community. It breeds a suspicion and fear that too easily translates into anger, hate, and even violence. Sometimes all we need to diffuse a bad situation is to take a deep breath. This bill makes that breath more difficult to take and, for that reason alone, t's a bill that needs revoking.