Readings for the First Week--9/11 Class

1) "A Policy Out of Control: Sikh's Turban Removed in Public and Placed Through Airport X-Ray Scanner"

"(San Francisco, California) September 5, 2007 – Screeners at San Francisco International Airport recently forced a Sikh man to remove his turban in public, place it in a bin, and then ran it through an x-ray machine last week, providing another example of how the Transportation Security Administration’s new screening policies do not keep America safe. The Sikh Coalition, the nation's largest Sikh civil rights organization, remains concerned that the TSA’s hastily-conceived headwear search policy endangers all Americans by focusing critical security resources on non-existent threats."

From The Sikh Coalition. For full text, click here.

2) "Turban Searches Rile Sikh Community"

"Like all practicing Sikhs, Gurpreet Singh Tuteja wears his turban as a sacred symbol of his faith and its values of discipline and austerity. Every morning, the Arlington County business consultant winds a long bolt of black or saffron cloth tightly around his uncut hair, where it remains until he returns home. He has worn the turban on hundreds of business trips, without incident...."

From The Washington Post. For full text, click here.

3) Article from The Karma of Brown Folk, a novel by Vijay Prashad that attacks the mythical image of South Asians as the "model minority." For full text, click here.