‘Half-Arab, Half-Jewish Housewife’ Detained On 9/11 Anniversary For Being Dark-Skinned

Really not exaggerating in that headline. Two days ago, blogger Shoshana Hebshi, a self-described “half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife,” found herself cuffed and thrown off a Frontier Airlines flight and strip-searched – because she was seated next to two Indian guys she didn’t know, and another passenger had found that suspicious.

Which is why on Sunday, 11/9/2011, Hebshi found herself being held and questioned in a Detroit cell for several hours, without any clear cause beyond her apparently criminal racial profile. Weirdly, Hebshi was tweeting about the situation as it unfolded – the cops boarding the plane, etc. – without realizing that she was the one being targeted. [Update: Hebshi's Twitter account seems to have been taken down.]

She blogs about the whole thing over here – it’s upsetting, but worth looking at:

I wasn’t sure what I could and could not say, and all that came out was “What’s going on?”

No one would answer me. They put me in the back of the car. It’s a plastic seat, for all you out there who have never been tossed into the back of a police car. It’s hard, it’s hot, and it’s humiliating. The Indian man who had sat next to me on the plane was already in the backseat. I turned to him, shocked, and asked him if he knew what was going on. I asked him if he knew the other man that had been in our row, and he said he had just met him. I said, it’s because of what we look like. They’re doing this because of what we look like. And I couldn’t believe that I was being arrested and taken away.

So yeah, yay freedom.

Hebshi’s blog: Some real Shock and Awe: Racially profiled and cuffed in Detroit.

[Source: BoingBoing]

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