I Can See It In Their Eyes

Time magazine recently did an article entitled “Islamophobic”. With the New York City mosque controversy a national issue, Time decided to classify all Americans as fearing the Islamic religion and Muslim people in general. One would think that any article making these broad generalizations would have some damning evidence. In one of the articles last paragraphs, one Muslim man claims his neighbor hates him. How does he know this? He says “I saw the look in his eyes and I knew what he was thinking”. Really? The neighbor never said anything or acted on his hatred, but this Muslim man can see the hate in his eyes. This is not very damning evidence and would never hold up in court. Is this the best that Time can do? After all, to tell the story from only the Muslim point of view is flawed at best. And what’s worse, nobody can corroborate this hateful look. This is not journalism, it is voodoo! Time is creating a story without proof or evidence of actual hate. We can just as easily classify this Muslim man’s claim as being paranoid or reverse Islamophobic syndrome.

When the Tea Party was protesting ObamaCare outside the Capitol Building, House Democrats decided to stroll through the protesting crowd. This was a calculated move on the Democrats part with one motive in mind – to show what the Tea Party is all about: racism. Things got a little heated and words were exchanged. Afterwards, Democratic house members made the claim that Tea Party members were indeed racists as they spit and spewed racial epithets towards black house members. The whole incident was caught on tape by multiple TV cameras and none of them can corroborate the Democrat’s claims. Later, some left leaning media pundits claimed it may not have been said, but they could clearly see the hate in the protestor’s eyes. It never dawned on these progressive pundits that the protestors actually may be angry about the ObamaCare legislation.

One summer during my corporate years our organization hired a coop named Naveed. Naveed reported to directly to me. The entire summer I was continuously meeting with Naveed because he was not only failing to get his job done, but he was not showing up to work all together. I documented matters because I was unable to motivate Naveed to do a good job. After I gave Naveed a poor exit review he stated that he was going to report me to human resources because I was a racist who did not like Pakistanis or Muslims. He never reported the incident because I showed him proof of his failure to work. Naveed did not realize that big brother was always watching its employees every move. Every time we swipe our badge, the company knows when we come and go, and it proved Naveed was at work only 29% of the time. Naveed left as a very disgruntled employee and told me he could “see the hate and distain for Muslims” in my eyes. Let the record show, first I did not even know Naveed was Muslim until he pointed it out. Secondly, I have had plenty of Muslims work for me and most were not only good people, but excellent employees. Thirdly, I would never hold an entire group of people responsible for the poor performance of one individual. In fact, the best full time employee I ever had was Muslim and the worst was a white male who was a Jehovah’s Witness. There simply is no correlation between gender, race, and religion and work performance.

I have heard people say this statement hundreds of times “I can see it in their eyes” when referring to an injustice being done on to them. It is strange how so many people can see hate on a person, but these people never say a hateful word or commit a hateful act against them. I know first hand that this statement can be misplaced aggression by a paranoid person. I did not hate Naveed; he was simply a poor employee. Hate is a strong word, and it needs to be spoken to be true, we cannot assume everyone that looks at us differently hates us. After all, this sounds like a child crying foul because Johnny looked at him in a bad or funny way. Is this what we have devolved to as a nation – to fabricate a fictional story of racism with no proof to sell a few magazines? If this is true, it proves we do indeed live in a sad world.