Just a week after an innocent Pakistani-born US citizen, Syed Fahad Hashmi, plead guilty to one count of material support to terrorists--in order that he avoid spending 70 years in jail--another Pakistani-born US citizen tried to blow up an SUV in Times Square. He ran away from the car shedding his shirt, before being apprehended on a flight bound for Dubai.

The media, intellectuals, and pundits alike have seized upon it as justification for a policy of heightened scrutiny of all Pakistani-born naturalized citizens. The thinking is that all Pakistanis are somehow potentially tied to Al Qaeda by virtue of descent.

Each and every time incidents like this are used to systematize new policies, nobody calls them what they are: racist, ethnocentrist and unjust. To do so, is to be labeled a traitor and un-American. By virtue of Syed Hashmi's race, nationality, and plea--coerced under what constitutes torture for three years--he is guilty by association.

This is not unlike how the Nigerian would-be bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, unwittingly placed all Nigerians on the Homeland Security watch list. (FYI, ABC News has video of a young Farouk blasting guns in Yemen.)

Back in January, as I passed through customs at JFK returning from holidays in Akwa Ibom, the customs officer openly asked his partner what was to be done with women coming from Nigeria. I waited nervously while they debated my case, turning my passport this way and that as they scrutinized the watermarks. All the while, I prayed they wouldn't open my luggage and discover the undeclared egusi and atama inside.

Finally, they let me go with a cursory glance, waving me through the sliding doors into the hustle and bustle of NYC. Thankfully, despite my ethnicity and brown skin, I do not look like a terrorist.

But this eyeball test is exactly what federal and state government officials are after. Take, for instance, recently passed legislation in Arizona that makes failure to carry immigration documents a crime. Residents are subject to being stopped by the police, held, and deported simply for "looking like" an undocumented immigrant.

Again, when people say the U.S. is a free country, I shake my head. We are living in a proto-fascist era. We're all guilty by virtue of race, religion, and nationality until proven innocent. And most brown people can't really afford adequate legal help if something goes wrong. If you happen to be rich, white and male (notwithstanding the standpoint of one of my readers), you can steal upwards of $50 billion and still enjoy your basic freedoms.

Went to a book talk yesterday on Meri Danquah's anthology The Black Body @ The Brooklyn Museum.

The first reading I attended on this book was at Bluestockings Bookstore in the Village last November. At the time the event was slated to begin, the bookstore organizer started asking attendees, some of whom were friends of the author, whether Meri had called to say she was coming. As they confirmed, Meri arrived thirty minutes late in no hurry and a floor-length leopard print jacket.

She didn't apologize, didn't even mention her lateness, instead launching into a reading of her prologue before introducing some contributors seated in the audience, two white men, who read from their essays (one about dating a sexy black actress and the other about loving black music, both slightly fetishized). It was interesting hearing white men sharing very beautiful and personal sentiments about the black body. I suppose I have always been somewhat skeptical.

And Meri's essay, about raising a daughter in the U.S. away from a self-affirming, loving community in her native Ghana, and all the havoc this dissociation wreaked on her daughter's sense of self, resonated very personally with me.

But it was the militant, defensive responses Ms. Danquah offered during the Q & A that turned me off and away. She bristled visibly, irritated or annoyed at most of the questions, as though we should all fully study her and not ask that she cope with and understand the audience in front of her.

Nevertheless, I approached her to sign my copy of the book after several fraught moments at the cash register questioning, am I buying this just as a means of talking with her? do I even like her? am I buying this to support her just because she's a black/African/woman writer?

My pen barely worked and, for several moments, she scribbled circles on the page waiting for the ink to run. I reminded her that we had spoken once over the phone, when my father met her at a conference in DC and then again over email about my book project. I waited for that moment when the recognition came, her glassy eyes warming--and chilling again as she pulled away from the connection, cloaked in her leopard jacket, scribbling some nonsense ("Keep on writing") in my book and handing it back to me, turning to someone else.

All told, it cost me twenty dollars and my self esteem.

I suppose I was deep in the writing and just needed some compassion, some acknowledgement, something more than she was willing to give. I spent the hour afterwards talking with one of my writer friends about how guarded Meri was, rehashing the intricacies of her depression and antisocial behavior--laid out in her memoir, Willow Weep For Me--and trying unsuccessfully to forgive her. I resolved to step back from famous writers until my book was done, and my own fragile esteem had also re-cloaked itself.

At any rate, attending First Saturdays at the museum last night, couldn't help but wander upstairs to the book talk, hoping to lay eyes on Ms. Danquah again and meet some of the black contributors who couldn't make it before. She didn't even show up this time.

I often wonder how we learn to be-love each other, to be-love ourselves. I wonder why I sought to connect with Meri again though the first go around taught me better. Maybe it is human to seek connection/love from those who would deny us. And maybe the most well-intentioned of us can sometimes be the most unloving.

Even I, last night, found myself eager to end a too-long conversation with a long-time-no-see friend simply to walk alone, staring absently at the paintings on the wall.

my boss is a fan of naming people in the office to lead a diversity initiative promoting artists of color. i've heard from several colleagues that I am not the first to be approached with this challenge--the first was also the first non-white hire, of Indian descent.

in my subtle way, i have received his request with unintelligible mumbling, a nod of agreement, some inner eyeball-rolling. surely this is a noble initiative? only my boss cares little for representation, only that he looks to others as though he really cares.

i wonder, to myself, whether I should champion this cause? whether i should be outspoken and boisterous and invite all my friends to a garish gala in which i announce that we are breaking down doors and taking over?

i could do that, but i would be acting.

Not that I don't believe in the need for greater representation of people of color, of women, of Africans in the mainstream art world; rather, i don't believe my boss. in the same breath as asking me to diversify our talent, he often questions the inclusion of these artists as compromising the "artistic integrity" of his productions.

so i dismiss his request, find it to be the politically correct posturing of a privileged Caucasian male, secure in his lavish home with his wine collection and ascots and african carvings.

even i am his token, as shiny and black as a chess piece.