Pew Study: Muslims and Gays Most Discriminated in America

According to a recent September 2009 study completed by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, nearly six-in-ten American adults (58%) say “that Muslims are subject to a lot of discrimination in the United States; far more than say the same about Jews, evangelical Christians, atheists or Mormons…”

In fact, of all the minority demographic groups discussed in the September 2009 Pew Forum study, only “gays and lesbians are seen as facing more discrimination in America than Muslims”, with nearly two-thirds (64%) of the American public saying there is a lot of discrimination against homosexuals in the United States today.

Some of the other key results below from the September 2009 Pew Forum Study revolve around average Americans asked to finish this statement “There is a lot of discrimination against…”

According to the Pew Forum study, the top 5 responses were (in descending order):

• Gays and lesbians (64%)
  
• Muslims (58%)
  
• Hispanics (52%)
  
• Blacks (49%) and
  
• Women (37%)

Thus, along with our American LGBT brothers and sisters, it seems as though our two different demographic groups are joining both our African-American and Latino minority cousins as some of the most currently-discriminated demographic groups within general American public opinion.

From this most recent Pew Forum study, we can find that both 1) American Muslims and 2) the American LGBT community now currently represent two of the lower societal ‘rungs’ of our current civil rights ‘discrimination totem pole’ today.

In a 2006 academic journal article entitled “The Arab is the New Nigger”, University of Southern California anthropologist and professor Lanita Jacobs-Huey wrote extensively about how ethnic urban comedians of color (particularly black comedians) have been using our current post-9/11 civil rights legal dystopia as their new racialist joke punchlines at our comedy juke joints around the country.

Here is a brief sampling of what Professor Jacobs-Huey found in terms of her extensive interviews with black comedians and her own research traveling to urban comedy clubs throughout America on issues dealing with post-9/11 societal discrimination:

Comedian Ian Edwards: “Black people, we have been delivered…Finally, we got a ‘new nigger’…The Middle Easterner is the ‘new nigger’…”

Comedian Don ‘D.C.’ Curry: “It’s a good time to be Black…If you ain’t got no towel wrapped around your head, your ass is in the game!”

As Professor Jacobs-Huey further cogently points out: “…the ‘Arab as new nigger’ premise is itself a telling exemplar of the paradoxical impact of September 11 on the lives of many African-Americans [and other historically disenfranchised minority communities]…” within the United States today.

“Many comics [of color after 9/11] adopted this premise as a sardonic celebration of their newfound privileges resulting from the curtailment of Arab American freedoms…” In comedy clubs around the country, Professor Jacobs-Huey noted that many minority comics and black comedians today are now using this new paradigm to “critique America’s diminished attention to racism, poverty and other social ills still plaguing African-American [and other minority] communities” after 9/11. (Editor’s Note: See Hurricane Katrina [or ask New Orleans] for further details…).

As a prominent American Muslim human rights lawyer, I am honored to currently share some of these lowest societal ‘rungs’ of discrimination within our civil rights ‘totem pole’ with our African-American, Latino and LGBT brothers/sisters of all stripes. Even though it seems that currently ‘Gays’ and ‘Muslims’ now currently rank one-two within the discrimination societal list du jour, our black and Latino cousins can take a much-deserved and long-overdue (albeit brief) sigh of post-9/11 racial relief knowing that there is someone FINALLY lower than them on our current American civil rights ‘totem pole’.

A long time overdue, I know…

However, this overdue collective sigh of racial relief should be short-lived because we now have the moral imperative to use this teachable moment as ‘Minority Americans’ to start hammering and chopping away at the foundational wooden premise of our centuries-old social discrimination and American civil rights collective suffering ‘totem pole’; once and for all.

Most importantly, this most recent September 2009 discrimination study completed by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life did successfully answer that one penultimate sociopolitical question on the mind of all Americans in the age of Obama today:

Q: Are we in the United States of America a ‘post-racial’ society yet?

A: Not by a long shot…