When thousands of innocent people died in the September 11 attacks, I wept. No matter the injustice, there is no reason to kill innocent people whose only "crime" was showing up to work. But the prevailing message since the attacks--that my patriotism is not only expected, but mandatory--has left me and many other black people in an awkward position.

In his 1972 autobiography I Never Had It Made, baseball great Jackie Robinson wrote: "I cannot salute the flag. I know that I am a black man in a white man's world. In 1972, in 1947, at my birth in 1919, I know that I never had it made." If every black person in America waved a flag, sang the national anthem, and wore red, white, and blue, other people would still continue to judge us by our skin color, and not our individual characters. How can I feel patriotic in a country where I am still fighting for my own equality?

I find it difficult to pledge allegiance to a flag that represents a country where my people were considered three-fifths of a human being and forced into slavery less than 140 years ago. A country where many of us, especially in the South, couldn't go to the polls until the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and where crimes like the 1998 murder of James Byrd Jr.--who was dragged to his death in Texas because he was black--still occur.

If black people are getting fewer mistrustful stares now, it's only because Arab Americans have taken our place as the country's most ostracized group. (Maybe UPN will give them a poorly-written sitcom now, too.) They're now the victims of hate crimes, racial slurs, and racial profiling, too. But that doesn't mean African Americans are suddenly exempt--even though some of us seem to think so.

In a recent Gallup poll, 71 percent of black respondents said they favored racially profiling Arab Americans before they boarded airplanes. It seems like we want someone else to take the heat for a while. Or maybe it's a way for us to feel like we're finally part of the mainstream. But it's still wrong. Anyone who has ever been guilty of DWB--Driving While Black--can tell you that when a cop pulls you over for nothing more than the color of your skin, it is one of the most demeaning and hurtful things that could ever happen to you.

Red, white, and black

The persistance of racism

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