WE ARE ALL VINCENT NAVROZE BALBIR

Abstract

The shooting at Oak Creek, WI, where six people were killed and four wounded in a Sikh temple, is the result of certain exclusionary policies and rhetoric in American society. The language of exclusion and creating an internal ‘Other’ has been applied to various minority groups in the USA. With an increase in Islamophobia after 9/11, and broad categorization of brown bodies as suspect, there is an intense antipathy to those of West and South Asian ancestry. The tragedy of Oak Creek is the culmination of multiple, intersecting dehumanizing trajectories in American history, and is an American tragedy on multiple levels.