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appearance, this fraction of an identity, is associated with crime and fear and inner -city grime, and society doesn't want to think that our life could be like that. Judging people on our false preconceptions has tragic consequences. A recent reminder of this was the death of Trayvon Martin and the subsequent trial of George Zimmerman, when a teenager was killed just because he looked "suspicious" The instinctual reaction to what we perceive as "dangerous" has not taken rights away from African Americans only, though. The terrorist bombings of the world Trade Centers in I2001 sparked widespread distrust of Middle - Eastern Americans and people of Islam faith. Many people believe the stereotype that all Muslims or all Middle Eastern - Americans are terrorists. Twelve years later we have built our memorials and mourned our dead, but we have no more resolved our aggression towards Muslim people than we have brought back our beloved friends and family. In the aftermath of 9111, airline security was tighter than ever, and this spawned a new era of racial profiling. Innocent citizens of the United States were pulled over, tracked, searched and frisked just because they looked Arab, and this degrading treatment continues. My family sponsors a Syrian student, Farah, who attends Macalester College, .and she has told me stories of her experience traveling across the border to Mexico while attending United world College last year. As the teacher presented the students' passports, from countries all over the world, the border guard asked for "the Syrian ". Farah was questioned for an hour, because of her homeland. we may like to imagine this type of discrimination is in our past, but this American assumption of guilt by association is a fact of life for some people and scares them out of their light to Free Movement in and out of the Country (UDHR., Article 13). This persecution is not compatible with human dignity. By listening in on phone calls, frisking people on the streets and interrogations without legitimate cause for suspicion, we use fear as a tool to