When You Get Kicked by a White Guy
A 2010 article from Newsweek made international news with the headline, “Pakistan is the World’s Most Dangerous Country.” Growing up in Pakistan, I rarely experienced moments of panic. Pakistan could be dangerous—like when a bomb went off near my school—but I felt safe in my suburban neighborhood. When I decided to move to the United States for college, I traded my relatively calm and peaceful life in a decidedly “dangerous” country for a different, perhaps more potent danger that haunted me day and night: being a target because of the color of my skin. * It was a dark, stormy autumn morning in New York, an appropriately foreboding atmosphere for what was to come. The pavement splashed and pattered as I walked over it. The air tasted moist and damp; it had rained the night before. The sweet and cloying smell of weed hung over the quiet streets, the empty sidewalks, and the various buildings—red brick to my right, gray mortar to my left. For the “city that never sleeps,” New York seemed suspiciously like it was sleeping. The only... Read more...
