Dunkin’ Donuts pulls Rachael Ray ad after complaints, reported widely in entertainment news section. So, what’s the matter with USA? A country who pride to be the so called defender of freedom, who just a few years ago ‘liberated’ Iraq, is look like just another intolerant and racist country?

This is a commentary from a scholar

Amahl Bishara, an anthropology lecturer at the University of Chicago who specializes in media matters relating to the Middle East, said complaints about the scarf’s use in the ad demonstrate misunderstandings of Arab culture and the multiple meanings that symbols can take on depending on someone’s perspective.
“I think that a right-wing blogger making an association between a kaffiyeh and terrorism is just an example of how so much of the complexity of Arab culture has been reduced to a very narrow vision of the Arab world on the part of some people in the U.S.,” Bishara said in a phone interview. “Kaffiyehs are worn every day on the street by Palestinians and other people in the Middle East — by people going to work, going to school, taking care of their families, and just trying to keep warm.”
While some extremists and terrorists may wear kaffiyehs, “To reduce their meaning to support for terrorism has a tacit racist tone to it,” Bishara said.

They should look and learn from Indonesia, an archipelago with more than 300 race, and still manage to respect others with different fashion (of course, as long as it is polite and didn’t harm public sensibility).

Related posts:

  1. The Empire strikes back — case of Windows Vista
  2. Everything 10 in 2008 by Time Magazine