Leonard Pitts Jr.: A lost opportunity for understanding

A very interesting observation about Muslims in America and how far they still have to go, even though they thought they were accepted already.   - - Donna Poisl

By Leonard Pitts Jr.

A few words on what American Muslims need.

We were discussing this, an olive-skinned Muslim man and I, at a banquet last year, when he said a wistful, poignant thing that has stayed with me ever since. "We thought we were white," he said.

Not "white" in the sense of race, whatever that unscientific word means. Rather, white in the sense of assimilation and admission, white in the sense of people from Ireland, Armenia, Cuba, Hungary, southern Italy and other places who, upon arriving here, were regarded as threatening, nonwhite outsiders and required to earn their whiteness, their acceptance, over several generations. When the man said American Muslims thought they were white, he meant they thought they had successfully navigated the trail blazed by all those other people from all those other places.

Then came Sept. 11, 2001. All that progress -- and almost 3,000 human lives -- went up in smoke, and Islamophobia stormed America.
http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_20140567
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