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TEDx Talks
Published: 2016-12-14
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIAm1g_Vgn0
whenever I travel I carry a little metal box of Altoids mints because after a four hour seven AM flight everyone has bad so almost anyone is willing to take the men from the muffler on the airplane and I know I've been successful when my neighbor turns and asks so what's your name you see even if there was an elephant in the room I'm still the elephant
in the room yeah when an elephant offers you miss on an airplane and it's not always easy to accept soon the courageously curious do pop the what's your name question I try to make it worth their while my name is among it means hope in Arabic most days my name is a waitress at my family's Damascus restaurant full time university student and then some pre law
world traveler eleven countries my name is I've performed poetry in eight of those kind international spoken word poet apologetic most strong woman Syrian American who's happy activist social justice advocate my name is right here teacher Colorado bone mile hi baby but at the airport my name is random search and on the street it's terrorists sand nigger rag head press down on the news it's isis G.
Heidi suspect radical my name is could sure most full neighbor being extremists my mama who wears the Haitian of the Islamic headrests is often referred to is go back to your country from Iowa lease so and it does not take more than a couple questions to figure out that her country is the council bluffs corn fields but how would someone know this without asking they say
the shortest distance between two people story well I lab grade on that to say that the greatest distance you can travel in the shortest amount of time is by asking someone their name the way we name ourselves is a reflection of who we are I declarations family histories the things we believe the morals we abide by our homes cultures transformations like a Mohammed turned model or
at least set pizza turned the man and how we name others and how if we allow others to name themselves is a reflection of our own declaration of our courage and I fear the malleability of a person's story must be self determined coming from the lips of the story teller not anchorman not the megaphone not even the scarf on her head or the melanin in his
skin because no one can speak the names of billions in one breath unless it's in print and oftentimes when we generalize it isn't because we're pretty and when we don't ask someone their name we're not asking for their story in the words of mass media and rampant mis information it is hard for anyone including myself to deconstruct all these terrifying stories that we hear sometimes instead
of isolating them individualized sings them we tend to paints a group of people with a broad brush until suddenly everyone with the hijab Manisa rag head that needs liberating or everyone with white skin is a racist cracker or everyone with black skin is a fatherless nigger or everybody who looks like my father is going to blow up the airplane or if the killer had a light
complexion he's just immensely fragile lone wolf and we come to this point where we feel like we don't people their names because we are ready depicts them in Europe right now a mon jun mensal name change it's taking place that is completely transformed a humanitarian responsibility countries are deporting refuge but when you watch news coverage these refugees are being referred to as migrants because let's face
it deporting my grin sounds way more reasonable than deporting individuals who have been forced to flee their country because of persecution war and violence the United Nations definition of refugee as in me these people but it is not my choice instead of a circumstance some economic gain instead of a desperation flea awards these little one our refuge not my good I took this photo last year
at a refugee camp on the Syrian Turkish border and contrary to popular belief they Arent poisons they're not here to steal our democracy here take over our neighborhoods they're people families who wish that they could go home but it had to make that home somewhere else and we've got to this point where the word migrant this actually means high although brown foreign speaking people and we
end up forgetting there was a point where some people what if considered those who looked like this to be migrants as well right so and it is in this forgetfulness that we assume monopolize on people's stories attribute their race social class religions clothing to the names that we chose for them terrorism is a fine modern day example unfortunately in the past few years so much violence
has just spread across our country when you watch the news there's always the specification as to whether or not terrorism was involved which I think we all know means the killer looks like which he's a Babe which must mean which must mean that the killer course pledges allegiance to this right but correct me if I'm wrong news coverage does in fact tends to be a little
different when the terrorist looks like and it ultimately has us forgetting that terrorism by definition of terrorism has always come in all shapes and colors then what happens when we can find certain names with certain depictions wrongfully excluding some and including others we end up he gene masses of people under a name that says dangerous even if they're nowhere near like when we say thug instead
of seventeen year old black child's when we say alien instead of immigrant when we say lazy poor people instead of on equal wealth distribution when we save bomber a set of clock this man's name Craig picks he is often referred to as a parking dispute but his real name is a man who shot and killed three Americans in their homes in their heads execution style because
they were mostly his name is hope crime their names are de yeah usage Andreasen twenty three year olds twenty one and nineteen the yeah and you said we're just named husband and wife newlyweds and the three were known by their loves ones as sons and daughters brothers sisters student activists Instagram as taxpayers Americans but now their names are too young to have been speaking their names
are rest in peace unless you harm he thinks did not ask them their name he assigned it to them when he assigned them each a bully named him a threat to his America and as a result took their money this is a photo on via and use his wedding day it's so beautiful they were killed before they could even see this studies show that during breaking
news coverage the first story is the one that stayed even if it isn't true like during the Paris attacks when there was talk that refugees were dangerous because they found a passport only to later confirmed that there were no Syrians or refugees involved but when we have such a huge habit of miss naming people it's it's easy to overlook these kinds of mistakes and this is
exemplary of what happens in a culture of fear in a society that doesn't ask one another their names and you end up with the mouth of an anchorman at the mouth of a gun doing all the talking on September eleventh two thousand one I attended a private K. through eighth Islamic school and within the first hours of the tragedy my school received two bomb threats the
word terrorist was not on my spelling list but all of us kids picked it up pretty soon and in naming US tariffs omits Marist tragedy that affected us as Americans to in the words of bdellium untalented we were not just more news but we were suspects as well but a few months ago me and my very hounds some white boy looking brother named Osama and I
where at the museum buying planetarium tickets and an elderly white man walked up to me and said I'm sorry about everything you must be going through right now I want you to know that not all Americans believe what these buffoons are sake and I want to use the word buffoon anything I want you to know that we stand by now had I not been wearing a
little piece of my identity on my head he wouldn't of known to tell me this and even though he didn't ask me what my name was she instead told me hits I have learned from experience that when someone really wants to know they will be willing to cross that threshold of fear and find out that my name means hope and then we'll have the courage to
ask the much more important that probably only I can answer a lake what's that thing on your head we're you forced to wear it are almost relieved violent people does the car and release dates Kilala vice can you please tell me what's up with ice this this question though is seemingly uncomfortable are how I know that I have been human and are how the courageously curious
know that really I'm only as scary as the silence fear fest upon meeting someone new we ask their name we do not assign it to them and with that name we are given accessory bloodlines and dialects books and poems prospective is wars struggles and survival story what's your name is such a short distance to cry but when you ask me rule buddy I would take you
from Kuala Lumpur to Barcelona debate hoops we're gonna go to Damascus to Sydney to Trinidad and Tobago I will show you met my class it was seventy plus international scarves the graves of my thirty one family members who've been killed in Syria coffee shop that I hang out at and do my homework but we must have the courage claim our curiosity a cool beyond anything we
