Columnist Renée Graham struck a chord when she wrote that Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democratic Senate nominee, has been “branded as a frightening ‘other’ ” because he is Muslim (“El-Sayed is the just latest liberal candidate forced to affirm his loyalty to America,” Oct. 29).
At no time in our history have prejudices been weaponized so successfully for political purposes. Always latent, they have crawled out from under their rocks and been given legitimacy under the MAGA brand.
These types of attacks are hardly new to America. We interred Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor; our history of slavery continues, with racial discrimination rampant. During the potato famine “No Irish Need Apply” was common. Many Native Americans are treated as second-class citizens. Antisemitism escalates as I write, as does the Islamophobia Graham describes.
In 2011, as part of our project restoring the Nazi-desecrated cemetery in my father’s hometown of Nowy Dwor Mazowiecki, Poland, my colleagues and I initiated a tolerance essay competition in the local schools. Winners received scholarships and their school stipends. The words of our first winner, then a 15-year-old, ring as true today as they did then: “We must know that xenophobia, bigotry, nationalism, and hostility towards all the ‘others’ are actions, which sooner or later will lead every society to nothing.”
David Wluka
Sharon
