Not so, MKH reports over at the Weekly Standard blog. I just love interesting little tidbits that put self-righteous liberals in their place and show the kind culture of the American South that I know from experience. Where else do people who don’t know you wave at you as you drive by?
Check it out here.
UPDATE: Allah’s got the video. The professor seems to be the only one with an open mind here. The students, particularly the one from the north and the guilty southerner, are quick to condemn Arab, Alabama as a place that won’t be hospitable to the girl dressed in traditional Muslim clothing. The whole premise is insulting in itself, but I was glad to see the local couple be as friendly and welcoming as anyone else I know from the South.
MILLER’S UPDATE: Mike knows Southern hospitality like I know the high-pressure, highly competitive hot plate of litigious glory called Northern Virginia. Towards the end of that cool CNN piece comes this:
“For Madeeha Hameed, 21, being part of this project has been especially personal. The senior at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, who took last semester off to travel as much as she could but has since gone back to school, moved to northern Virginia from Pakistan right before high school — and right before the September 11 attacks.
‘It was very difficult for me. … You know how high school is,’ she said. ‘I did not want to be known as a Muslim or a Pakistani, because I just wanted to fit in. I had a lot of anger toward my identity.’”
Not to deny her opinion, because I certainly haven’t lived the incredibly difficult immigrant experience, but I’m curious where she went to high school. If it was in Fairfax County (the biggest Northern Virginian/Virginian state school system), where I also went to school a year behind her, she would have gone to a high school likely incredibly diverse, albeit not in the conventional sense. Northern Virginian schools typically have extremely high levels of immigrants (and kids whose parents immigrated decades before), particularly from South Korea, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, and the Middle East (demographically, FCPS schools are almost 20% Asian or Pacific Islander). Again, I didn’t live her life, but in my classes there was always a high interest and dialogue about Muslim culture, particularly in the honors classes, as well as a large number of Muslim students who were popular in the conventional sense–football players, class officers, etc. While I would hesitate to generalize about an area, I can’t help but take a little offense at her implication of what Northern Virginia’s like; I genuinely miss the cultural diversity at home.
