[quote=spdrun]Well, I reason by numbers. If more people did and thought about real risks, it would be a better world with less hatred.[/quote]
I grew up outside of Detroit and left in the late 80s. The Detroit area, generally has a large middle eastern population and Dearborn, MI has the second most dense population outside the middle east. I never recall there being any anti Muslim sentiment – zero. Probably, in part, because most of the Muslims that I knew did not present themselves as a group, but more as individual immigrants or first generation people who wanted a better life in the US. In fact, my high school had both a very large Jewish population and also a very large middle eastern population (although not as large a Southfield Lathrop, which later made it onto the cover of Newsweek with the caption “The Gaza Strip”). There was no religious tension – or if it existed, it was very well hidden.
So – if it were a matter of simple hatred, why didn’t it exist back in those days? People were, if anything, more provincial prior to the internet.
People do, however, respond disproportionately to a real risk over which they have no control. I can put little stick on slip guards in my tub – but individuals have little control over who gets let in to the country. It doesn’t help matters that people like the Tashfeen Malik make it in notwithstanding some very questionable associations.
I think Ben Carson put it most succinctly last night – if terrorists are not trying to get into the US as refugees, that would be considered “terrorist malpractice.” And he’s right. If your job is to be a terrorist and you want to engage in violence in the US, you’re failing at your goal if you don’t try to come in as a refugee.
Do I believe that there is any enhance risk near an Islamic center? No. In fact, my guess is that you are safer there (at least from terrorists, maybe not from Americans) than elsewhere.
