“Borderlands and Identities”
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Kamakshi P. Murti, To Veil or not to Veil: Europe’s Shape-Shifting ‘Other.’


Wolran Kim
January 2014



"My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist.” This is a line from the 2010 film, My Name is Khan, which is made with the motif of the post-9/11 prejudice and shows the discrimination against Muslims frankly. Racism has existed since the primitive times in human society, but the events of 9/11 started a new development and situation of racism in the name of national security in the modern world of the new millennium.

Before 9/11, the airport was a romantic place with waving hands and hugs while watching the plane take off through the window. However, pitifully after 9/11, people use pick-up and drop off spots for goodbyes and all passengers have to go through search screens as if they are terrorists. Shortly after 9/11, American society had an atmosphere brutal enough to remind us of the tragedy of the Holocaust with increasing hate crimes of Islamophobia.

Racism begins with appearances. People wear lifetime dresses of skin colors and faces. No one can throw out this gifted special cloth and this is recognized as innate nature and status. Thus, “the human body is always treated as an image of society,” as Gilman expresses. Many sociologists predict that the racial structure will change from the white mainstream to non-white mainstream in the near future. Even my homeland, South Korea, a racially homogeneous nation with a long history, is exploding with an immigrant population from a third of the countries nowadays.

Racial distribution is no longer wedded to an obstacle of the border in this global era. My daughter’s boyfriend is a half-Italian, half-Brazilian American, but he is used to being a target of special investigations at airports because of his Middle Eastern appearance from his long hair and beard. Bloodlines become more ambiguous to identify race, but identifying by outward appearances is reminiscent to Foucault’s panopticon or the Orwellian world, just as in Murti’s words.

The terms nationality, race, and ethnicity are defined by skin color, religion, culture, or costume, and Gloria Anzalua’s border becomes higher form the issue of “safe and unsafe.” Learning foreign languages is always a valuable beginning to understanding other cultures and eliminating prejudice and discrimination in this global era.