|
Washington Post - March 23, 2006
Babies, bigotry and 9/11
By Richard Morin
The ugly wave of anti-Arab feelings immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, may have been responsible for a sharp increase in the incidence of premature and low-birth-weight babies born to women of Arab descent in the United States in the months that followed the terrorist attacks.
The evidence is circumstantial but compelling, epidemiologist Diane S. Lauderdale of the University of Chicago says in the latest issue of Demography.
Other researchers studying black women previously have found that stress caused by discrimination boosted production of certain hormones to levels harmful to a developing fetus. To find out whether anti-Arab feelings after 9/11 produced a similar effect in expectant Arab or Arab American mothers, Lauderdale turned to birth records collected from 2000 to 2002 in California, where reported hate crimes tripled after the terrorist strikes, mostly because of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim incidents.
Lauderdale identified more than 15,000 mothers with distinctive Arab last names. She found that those women who gave birth six months after 9/11 were 34 percent more likely have a low-birth-weight baby than those who gave birth in the same six-month period a year earlier. Post-9/11 babies also were 50 percent more likely to be born prematurely.
She also found that babies with distinctively Arab first names as well as last names -- suggesting that their parents were either more recent arrivals or less assimilated -- were twice as likely to be underweight after 9/11.
Significantly, there was no change in the rate of either premature births or low-birth-weight babies among other women during the same time periods.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/22/AR2006032202205_pf.html
The Galveston County Daily News - March 27, 2006
Muslim woman claims oppression in court
By Scott E Williams
GALVESTON — A woman in court March 15 for a child support hearing said she wound up battling religious oppression from the presiding judge and a court bailiff.
Karwana Boyd said she was wearing a hajib, a headscarf worn as a sign of humility by Muslim women.
Boyd was at the Sam Popovich annex, waiting for child support Judge Doretha Henderson, when bailiff Clint Wayne Brown asked her to remove her head covering.
Brown told The Daily News the woman was not wearing a hajib, but a tight headscarf.
Brown asked her to remove the covering, and when she refused, he waited for the judge to arrive.
Judge Henderson, a travelling judge who presides over child support courts in six counties, said Boyd was one of two women in court that day claiming Muslim religious reasons for their headwear.
“I know what a hajib is,” Henderson said, “and this was not a hajib. She said she was Muslim, but was not wearing a traditional Muslim headscarf.”
Henderson and Brown both also denied Boyd’s claim that the woman was threatened with jail over her refusal to remove the headwear.
Boyd said, “He said if I didn’t take it off, I was risking going to jail for violating the courtroom’s rules.”
Boyd ultimately addressed the judge directly, and Henderson said she instructed Boyd to wait in the hall until her case was ready.
“That was the extent of our conversation,” Henderson said.
Boyd said she was filing a complaint with the civil rights division of the state attorney general’s office.
“I see this as nothing short of discrimination,” she said….
http://news.galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=143a1ae3f7b34de3
News Day - March 28, 2006
NYCLU claims Coast Guard discriminates
on religious head covers
NEW YORK - The U.S. Coast Guard is accused in a lawsuit of discriminating by requiring anyone seeking a merchant marine license to submit photographs showing no religious head coverings.
The lawsuit, brought Tuesday by the New York Civil Liberties Union in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, says the Coast Guard began enforcing the regulation after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The civil rights group brought the claim on behalf of Khalid Hakim, a devout Muslim who has served in the merchant marine while working for private shipping companies since 1973.
Before September 2001, he regularly received licenses after submitting photographs in which he wore his religious hat, called a kufi, the lawsuit said. After Sept. 11, though, the Coast Guard said he would have to remove the headdress to get a license, it added.
The lack of a license left him unable to work as a merchant marine, the NYCLU said.
Shortly before the lawsuit was brought, the Coast Guard without explanation issued a new license to Hakim, the NYCLU said.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and an order requiring the Coast Guard to change its practices.
Workers such as Hakim are not members of the military but are required to obtain merchant marine licenses to work on commercial ships that transport cargo in U.S. waters.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--religiousdiscrimi0328mar28,0,4994760,print.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork
|
