Trashcan Terrorist

Was reading Sonia Faleiro's blog when I came upon this post about a poetry professor of Indian origin, who was harassed at his university in America because he was... well... leaving a box of poetry manuscripts by the trashcan for recycling!

The university president appreciated my distress about the situation but denied that the (police) call had anything to do with my race or ethnic background. The spokesperson of the university called it an "honest mistake", not referring to the young man from ROTC giving in to his worst instincts and calling the police but referring to me who made the mistake of being dark-skinned and putting my recycling next to the trashcan.

My body exists politically in a way I can not prevent. For a moment today, without even knowing it, driving away from campus in my little beetle, exhausted after a day of teaching, listening to Justin Timberlake on the radio, I ceased to be a person when a man I had never met looked straight through me and saw the violence in his own heart.

Good god, what has the world come to?

Read (supposed terrorist-poet) Kazim Ali's full post here.