Recognized for his movies such as Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, The Namesake, and How I Met Your Mother, Kal Penn is currently working in the White House Office of Public Engagement as the Associate Director and has been recently caught in a twitterversy with his views against the stop-and-frisk policy.
The controversy began when Penn tweeted, “Great op/ed by @MikeBloomberg on the merits of “stop-question-frisk.”
Shortly afterwards, however, the actor faced judgement and a debate ensued that focused on the policy. Being caught in crossfire between scholars, South Asian community leaders, students, artists, and lawyers.
Penn followed up and clarified his decision to tweet in the Huffington post where he said, “As people of color is this effective? Does it have merit? How do we make our own communities of color safer (since we are collectively more often victims of crime)?” He apologized for not being clear and conceptualising the reason behind his tweet. Which seemed like changing sides in the heated moment.
As a response to Penn’s question, ARC President Rinku Sen and SAALT Deepa Iyer have both opposed and released statements in the midst of the controversy.
According to them, “Our unequivocal answers to these questions are: no, no and not with stop-and-frisk.
Stopping, interrogating, detaining or searching people based on characteristics such as their actual or perceived race, national origin, immigration status or religion is racial profiling. In a democracy, there has to be a reason to stop and search someone. Being a person of color isn’t a good enough reason.
Stop-and-frisk sounds so benign yet it covers up the violent humiliation experienced by many young black and brown men annually. It involves being thrown to the ground face down. Cops dumping your belongings on the street while they taunt you with predictions that you’ll never amount to anything. Experiencing the humiliation a dozen times before you’re 16 years old and continuing into your adulthood. This type of police enforcement not only hurts the individual, but also entire communities whose members are treated as “others” and automatically deemed unwelcome suspects in their own neighbourhoods.”
For them, the stop-and-frisk policy is not effective and does not reduce crime rate but instead it perpetuates the epidemic of racial profiling especially for the South Asian communities who have also been racially profiled alongside the Latinos and Blacks in New York.
The South Asian leaders and Kal Penn both mentioned that since September 11, 2001, many South Asians have been the unfortunate targets of would-be terrorists in many settings.
Plenty of South Asians including Muslims and Sikhs have encountered racial hate crimes, harassment at airports and borders, interrogations and detentions by immigration authorities in the name of national security.
There is also a constant tension due to the surveillance of Muslim mosques, restaurants, and Muslim Student Associations. NYPD is also facing several lawsuits of their surveillance in Muslim communities. Many young working class people become targets of stop-and-frisk policy not just in airports but also in schools.
Kal Penn clarified furthermore, and extended his support to their statement and said, “I support the statement from South Asian community leaders on the impact of racial profiling. I have and still do oppose racial profiling in any form. I want to thank SAALT and Colorlines for reaching out and starting to educate & dialogue with me about these issues. I plan on being in regular contact with these great community leaders and allies around the issue of racial profiling, and to dialogue with and engage others about it. It’s important for all our communities to be educated, informed, and mobilized.”
The South Asian leaders have urged South Asians to join the growing multiracial movement to remove the stop-and-frisk policy and other policies that target persons of colour in New York city and across the nation.
Images & Source: colorlines.org, Rebekah Spicuglia/ARC, and bigstory.ap.org, and media.tumblr.com
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