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Minorities treated as ‘scapegoats’ in US: Academic

Thursday, 15 October 2015 6:50 PM [ Last Update: Thursday, 15 October 2015 6:59 PM ]

Etler says US authorities use religious and ethnic minorities as “scapegoats” to evade responsibility of their actions.

The Unite States has a long history of targeting religious and ethnic minority groups as "scapegoats,” an American professor says.

“This allows the authorities to evade responsibility for their own actions and focuses attention on easily identifiable foreigners and so-called aliens,” Dr. Dennis Etler told Press TV on Thursday.

Etler, a professor of anthropology at California's Cabrillo College, made the comments in reaction to a US appeals court’s ruling on Tuesday that allows lawsuit against the New York Police Department (NYPD) for spying on Muslims.

Based on the ruling in the Philadelphia court, Muslim groups can pursue a civil rights lawsuit against the NYPD for conducting secret surveillance operations on Muslims without suspicion of criminal activity.

Etler said that “fear-mongering” has been diverting the American public’s attention from the underlying systemic problems that the US society suffers from.

“In the US, the real terrorism is the recurrent mass shootings perpetrated by young white men on a nearly weekly basis, the police shootings of young people of color, the occupation of minority communities by paramilitary police, mass incarceration of black and Latino youth and mass deportations of undocumented workers,” the academic noted.

“Criticism of these and other societal ills such as homelessness and increasing income inequality can be deflected by stereotyping a group that is easily identifiable and misunderstood, creating a climate of fear and loathing that can be manipulated by demagogues who only seek power over others,” he noted.

According to a Pew Research Center poll, 55 percent of American Muslims believe the US government's anti-terrorism policies have singled them out for increased surveillance and monitoring after a terrorist attack against the World Trade Center complex in New York on September 11, 2001.

“Unscrupulous politicians, a sensation seeking media and many prejudiced people help maintain a discriminatory attitude directed towards Muslims and other groups such as Hispanics and African-Americans, the vast majority of whom are simply good, hard-working and honest citizens and neighbors,” Etler concluded.

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