A few Arab-American students at a high school in Dearborn, MI got into some trouble for designing and wearing a t-shirt that apparently refers to the attacks of September 11, 2001.
The shirt was designed for the 2011 class. School administrators and mostly Arab-American parents got involved in this by holding a public meeting (there is not much to do in Michigan).
The t-shirt designer said it was not meant to celebrate the attacks, but rather to show pride in the class of 2011 and apologized for the shirt. Wadhah Almadhagi, one of the students involved said, “I was foolish to do it and I’m very sorry. I can promise that as long as I’m in Edsel Ford I’ll do my best to ensure something like this, as foolish and naive as this, will never happen again.”
The school decided not to punish them as the consensus emerged that it was not intended to be pro-9/11.
This case is actually more interesting than it may appear. It is loaded with symbolism and identity politics.
What I find interesting in this is that this is a somewhat ambiguous t-shirt design. It mixes the school’s mascot, a falcon, with a historical event in strange ways. I agree it seems inspired by the attacks, but the message is incoherent. Is “us” the school’s 2011 graduating class, then, or is it “us” as Arabs or “us” as Americans? If anything, this message seems to be that the school, as signified by the falcon mascot, cannot “bring down” the class of 2011 — that is if we accept that the bird is flying into the numbers with windows on them rather than next to them.
If I just saw this image and was not given any background, I would suspect it was a patriotic shirt glorifying how the 9/11 attacks did not “bring us down.”
This leads to me wonder whether it was the actual content of the shirt that was controversial or was it the fact that it was being worn by Arab-Americans? If this shirt was worn by white boys in a southern high school, would it have been controversial, or simply taken-for-granted that we were not brought down? One can only speculate.
Whatever the case may be, these are crazy times when a t-shirt with a few scattered symbols becomes the source of such controversy. I wonder if the usual crowds of people who complain about political correctness being rampant will make any noise about this. Of course they won’t, they will instead use this to show how dangerous Arab-Americans are, and so on, because political correctness is only bad when it runs against their politics.
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- MTV Cribs Dearborn, MI
- KABOBfest Breaking News: Two Dearborn Arabs to be Released
VERY BAD TASTE, BOYS. If we want the right to protest against those horrid tees that were made by the killers in the IDF ("Two shots One Kill" etc) we must keep our record spotless. We cannot speak from strength if we offend the very rules of decency we protest. I understand pride in who and what you are, but forgive me, I am sure you are not that naive as to think this would not offend Americans.
Personally I think it would be offensive whoever wore it. But by Arab Americans triply so because so many other links in the American psyche, none of them good, would connect and spark at the very least, heated debate. It is like waving a red flag at a bull in rut.
As for political correctness, this has NOTHING to do with it. Political correctness is a Communist tool to force the public to accept social manipulation against its better judgment. IE the gay agenda, the black agenda, the feminist agenda, the racial agendas, whatever "genda" they are trying to instill into us. It is peer driven and created to instill shame into the offender. It was a tool created by the Frankfurt School as part of the methods they would use to bring America to its knees to ripen us (America = actually the West period) for the necessary corruption to ease the Zionist disease of Communism into our midst.
This is just bad judgment by a group of young men who thought to push the envelop a bit. Also these guys should realize, as much as it sucks, in the US those of the Middle East are under extreme pressure from the average schmoe person. And there are millions of you. Think of how this can ripple out and effect others, and the fighters for Palestine. It sounds far fetched, but the American mind is on the whole, not too deep and acts on surface emotions. Kinda like that angry bull. CHARRRRRRRRGE!!
Instead, Find a more fitting image that has a positive feel to it that lets people know you cannot be brought down. The same amount of energy put into a depiction of 911 could be put into something else in terms of imagery. Something from the Holy Koran perhaps. Or even more fitting at this time, something to do with the strong, resilient tortured members of our Umma, the citizens of Palestine.
Posted by NooR | January 6, 2010, 5:28 pmI think you're right, Will, The context is very very important here, and Arab-Americans must tread carefully when it comes to 9/11, terrorism, etc. Yes, the Arab=terrorist equation is wrong, but it's there, so every action must be careful as to not feed into it. It may be the case that people in Dearborn, being aware of the risk of being automatically implicated in an act of terrorism, are the ones who are ultra-sensitive, too, not only xenophobic right-wing fools.
For that reason, I agree with you, Noor, only that the kids in Dearborn didn't say something like "Two down, plenty of towers more to go" whereas the IDF tees explicitly expressed pride in the killing. Also, Noor, what was your point in the third paragraph about political correctness and communism and Zionism. How exactly is PC a communist tool? You sounded there for a minute like Rush Limbaugh. Don't you think that expressing hatred toward a group is an indirect licence to hurt that group? And how exactly is Communism a Zionist disease? That stuff made no sense at all.
Posted by SaltyMac | January 7, 2010, 1:57 amI'm similarly perplexed, but I don't understand why this is more offensive if Arab-Americans do it as opposed to any other kind of American.
Posted by yaman | January 7, 2010, 2:00 amSHALOM! WARE CAN I BY ONE OF THASE SHARTS? ~Chaim~
Posted by Chaim Sugarman | January 7, 2010, 2:01 amSpeaking of Arabs wearing T-Shirts, remember this
Posted by eagle007blogger | January 7, 2010, 2:25 amSpeaking of Arabs wearing T-Shirts, remember this
Posted by eagle007blogger | January 7, 2010, 2:25 amYeayyy!!
America : Land of the Free
White kids can walk around with black-jew-muslim- hating Swastikas….while
Brown kids are beaten down into submitting White Supremacy!
Posted by OooKhalid | January 7, 2010, 5:51 amAnd Black Panthers can stand outside of polling places on election day with night sticks, intimidating voters! Yay Obama! He instructed his Justice Dept to drop the charges.
Posted by eagle007blogger | January 7, 2010, 6:51 pmI liked the concept of the t-shirt…
Even tough i feel it's too pro America….
but it could be taken the other way…as in America, signified as the eagle is crashing into its own towers; with the defiant statement that America's biggest blockbuster: 9/11, will fail to defeat America's biggest nemesis : Islam.
Posted by OooKhalid | January 7, 2010, 5:59 amI don't care who makes the shirt, that's hella awkward in my opinion.
Posted by SanaKF | January 7, 2010, 6:38 amI don't agree that "must keep our record spotless". That is exactly what Arab America is concentrated on– saying nothing that could offend any Zionist, any American occupation soldier.
The result: no talk of boycotting Israel, no marches, no action, nothing.
At the height of the Gaza Massacre, those few protest marches were advertised with flyers begging for "no politics", "no signs", "no chants", etc.
We are lucky the Zionists allow us to live, such scared rabbits we have become.
Posted by Boycott on campus | January 7, 2010, 1:11 pmWhatever your position vis a vis the attacks of Sept 11, 2001- the artwork on this t-shirt is obviously sending all sorts of mixed signals. The comments here reflect that. Often the remarks on t-shirts and bumper stickers offend some group. But there's always a fine line. This crosses that line, imho, no matter who you are.
I live in the south and you can be sure that there are constant "conversations" about the use of the Confederate Flag on t-shirts and whether teens are allowed to wear them into schools. Where I live, they are not.
Not sure where the poster lives that the community allows kids in school to wear swastikas but…
a tempest in a teapot and it was stopped sensibly and with good understanding from the creators who are, btw, children~! They've done better than some of the comments represented here.
Posted by angelini1 | January 7, 2010, 3:54 pmWill –
Plane 'plotter' met radical Yemen cleric al-Awlaki
The underwear bomber met radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen, after being recruited in London, a senior Yemeni official has said.
The same guy your Ft Hood shooter Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan talked too. Interesting. You still defending that association?
Anyhow, I agree that there is a lot of symbolism in the T-Shirt that could be interpreted in different ways. Funny that its Arab students wanting to point to 911… you could say it was meant to show pride in the class of 2011 and to say that the events of 911 will not bring down the Arab students. But most people would agree its an inappropriate shirt regardless of the interpretation. There definitely is a dark connotation which some people feel, something nefarious.
Posted by eagle007blogger | January 7, 2010, 7:03 pmTo even think of reprimanding these kids for a shirt that I took as them having pride in their class, then we should think of every other student that walks into a school building with Swastikas on their shirts or tattoos on them. Why are they not reprimanded? Why do we have such double standards???
Chris
Posted by Chris Tsia | January 10, 2010, 3:18 amKids are not permitted to wear swastikas to school. WTF are you talking about?
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Posted by Burton Haynes | May 28, 2010, 2:49 pm