Saturday, March 6, 2010
What inspired this work?
1. The Color of Wealth by Meizhu Lui, Barbara Robles, Betsy Leondar-Wright, Rose Brewer, Rebecca, with United for A fair Economy
2. http://www.irr.org.uk/2001/september/ak000001.html
3. Systemic Racism By Joe R. Feagin
4. Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage by Leslie Picca and Joe R. Feagin
5. Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Climate: The Experience of African American College Students by Daniel Solorzano, Miguel Ceja, and Tara Yosso
2. http://www.irr.org.uk/2001/september/ak000001.html
3. Systemic Racism By Joe R. Feagin
4. Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage by Leslie Picca and Joe R. Feagin
5. Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Climate: The Experience of African American College Students by Daniel Solorzano, Miguel Ceja, and Tara Yosso
What does it mean to live in a post-racial society? How do we negotiate, the notion of post-racial in the Global World?
Thank you for visiting the Race, Class, Gender Project in Minnesota. I am currently an undergraduate student at the University of Minnesota, in African American and African Studies and Sociology. My Senior Thesis is entitled: "Post-Racial" Societies: A Comparative Study of South Africa and the United States. The Goal is to capture the unique experience of South African and African American students at Historically White institutions/Predominately White Institutions.
If you consider yourself a "Black" South African student or a "African American" student, please share your experience. Moreover, other People of Color and "White" American(s)/"white" South African(s) are welcomed to comment. I am interested in issues regarding racism on college campuses, both overt racism and covert racism. Since, these incidents are extremely sensitive and sometimes go un-reported, it is important that you share your experience, in order to combat discrimination(s) both in the Local and Global world(s).
Participation in this project will benefit students of Color at Historically White institutions and at Predominately White Institutions. Moreover, the findings of this project will be published in the future; however, all comments are confidential and anonymous. Below, is the consent agreement. Lastly, it is important to remember that all experiences are relevant, so please share your experience!
***Your comments will not be published on the blog, after submitting a comment you will be alerted,"post will be published later", ignore this***
Consent Agreement:
The purpose of this study is to generate attention and discussion around the experiences of African American and Black South African students at predominantly White Universities/Historically White Universities. There are no known risks to participating in this study. The information that I obtain will be kept private and confidential.Participation in this study is voluntary.
Somali Students Experience 2008
**http://www.mshale.com/article/Features/Features/Somali_Youth_Decry_Police_Profiling_Harassment/18193** (Okong'o, 2008)
MINNEAPOLIS – As a Muslim male of Somali descent living in post-September 11 United States, Mustafa Jumale knew that he risked harassment from law enforcement officers and racism from some Americans. Although he had never experienced it himself, harassment by police was a common complaint among his peers. But Jumale thought that if he did everything right – completed high school and went to college – people would treat him differently.
After three years at the University of Minnesota, where he studies Sociology of Law, Criminology and Deviance, Jumale learned that the university is far from the save haven he was looking for.
“‘Minnesota nice’ at this university is covert racism,” Jumale said, as he sipped a cup of coffee at as shop just outside the university’s West Bank campus.
Jumale’s sentiments stem from observation and interview he conducted of least a dozen students for a research paper he wrote about the experiences of “Somali College Students at a Predominantly White Institution.” In his research, Jumale heard from a Somali honor student who majored in English Literature but was told by a professor on the first day of class that the course was “too advanced.” Then there was another student who told him he received a D in a term paper because, according to the professor, “the words in your essay are not words you would be able to understand.” But no grievance was more common than alleged harassment by the university’s police.
Jumale heard complaints about police officers randomly searching Somali students’ supposedly looking for stolen property. Others complained about being asked to provide IDs while white students walked by uninterrupted.
Despite the pain these incidents caused, Somali students treated them like nuisances and went about their studies. It wasn’t until last October, when a police officer detained three Somali students for robbery, that Jumale and his fellow students realized that these were no trivial issues.
The sandwich robbers
At around 10 p.m on Oct. 19, 2007, Shafii Osman, a 19-year-old sophomore majoring in Biology, said he and two of his friends were walking from the university gym to a nearby MacDonald when an undercover police officer stopped them and asked for their IDs. Osman began to protest when the officer refused to tell them why he wanted their IDs, but one of the friends, who had gone through a similar incident, asked him to comply, lest he get arrested. After looking at their IDs and searching their pockets, the officer allegedly said they “fit the description” of “East African males” who had just robbed Subway, the sandwich shop. Osman said the officer ordered them into the car and took them to Subway.
“That was when we learned what the robbery was,” Osman said. “A group of guys had taken off with sandwiches without paying.”
Despite the Subway employees’ failure to identify the men who had committed the crime a few minutes earlier, the officer allegedly asked Osman and his friends to pay for the sandwiches or risk criminal charges. They chose the latter. The police officer booked them and let them go. With the help of an attorney, the three students were able to get their cases dismissed.
But for one of Osman’s co-defendants, who did not want to be identified, the whole ordeal was so damaging that said he is still struggling to understand it.
“It caused me a so much stress,” the friend said. “I was approaching exams with the possibility of being sent to jail.”
The student also reported that because he had to go to court four times, he dropped out of an internship.
Somali perpetrators
Jumale and other students say incidents like Osman’s are a result of a University Police Department that stereotypes Somali students. He cites three “public safety alerts” sent by e-mail to the entire university by Chief Greg Hestness. In the e-mails sent between Oct. 10, 2007 and March 10, 2008, Hestness describes each of the suspects as either “East African or Somali,” or just “Somali.”
“When we applied for admission to this university, we were not required to check a ‘Somali’ box,” said Fathi Gelle, who was recently elected president of the Somali Students Association at the university. “How do you know who is Somali? I can bring you a three different people from Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia and you won’t be able to tell the difference.”
Hestness, the police chief, said he had not sent any additional e-mails. But he also defended his use of “East African” and “Somali.”
"For identification purposes, if a person is of African descent and speaks with a foreign accent we have to share that information,” Hestness said.
But in one of the e-mails, Hestness listed the three suspects as “Somali” even though he had written that it was “not believed to be a random attack” because the victim “invited three acquaintances into his room.” He explained that the victim did not know their names but had invited them to the dorms to sell drugs.
On other allegations of profiling, Hestness said that despite numerous appeals to Somali students, no complaints had been filed against any of his officers.
“I don’t know how many ways to ask them to come to us,” Hestness said.
But there was one time in early May when Somali students went to Hestness’s office to complain against a police officer who allegedly assaulted a young Somali woman.
“We have always thought that women were immune to police harassment but this attack proved us wrong,” Jumale said. “The same Somali students we had been trying in vain to organize against ethnic profiling turned up to protest.”
The young woman is Nadar Ali, a 23-year-old who recently graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry. Ali said that on the evening of May 7 she was scheduled to meet with friends at the library. When she couldn’t find them, she went into the lobby to make a phone call. A security guard went to her and ordered her to “hang up the phone or leave the building.” Ali said she told the guard that there was no rule that said she couldn’t use the phone in the lobby. The security guard called police.
“I expected the officer to get both sides of the story and resolve the conflict,” Ali said. “But the officer grabbed me by the shoulder and asked me to leave the library.”
Ali said when she told the officer that it was against her religion for him to touch her, he replied, “I don’t care about your religion.”
John Dewey, who is listed as one of six witnesses in a complaint Ali filed later with the police, said that although he did not witness the initial confrontation, he saw the officer pull Ali by the hand as he escorted her down the stairs and out the door.
“She kept on saying repeatedly, ‘Don’t use force on me,’” Dewey said.
A group of about 40 students, most of them Somali marched to the police department that evening and demanded to see the chief.
“An officer told us that it was after five (o’clock) and ‘the chief has a life,’” Ali said.
Graduation barbeque disbanded
Hestness could not comment on the case because Ali’s complaint was still under investigation. He said that he would make a determination after listening to witnesses and examining video footage from the library.
Ali, who wears a hijab, said that she and other young people get harassed because they are Muslim. What concerns Somali young people and the entire Somali community is that if you have a name like “Ali,” or “Mohamed,” you are more likely than any other African to go to jail. A look at the Hennepin County Jail roster during one week in June showed at least 70 names that many said were most likely Somali. The people on the list, most of them born in the 1980s, were charged with offenses ranging from misdemeanors like trespassing and loitering “with intent to buy,” to felonies like robbery and murder.
“There is a pattern here,” said a man we’ll call Mohamed because revealing his identity could cost him his job. “Of all the people from Africa – Kenyans, Ethiopians, Liberians – why are Somalis the only ones being thrown in jail?”
Mohamed said events like the May 1 missile attack that killed Aden Hashi Ayro, an alleged al Qaeda leader in Somalia, increase the police’s profiling of Somalis. He cited a case where students from the University of Minnesota complained to him about Minneapolis police officers forcing them to vacate Minnehaha Park, where they had gathered for a graduation barbeque.
Coincidentally, Jumale, Ali, Gelle and Osman were all at the barbeque. According to their separate accounts, a group of Somali teenage girls got into a fight with white teenage girls away from the exact site of the barbeque. While breaking the fight, a white man supposedly slapped a Somali girl. The girls reported the incident to Somali men, who retaliated by beating the white man. The white man called 911 and when officers arrived, they ordered all Somalis, nearly 100 of them, to leave the park. Jumale said that the white people were not asked to leave.
Ali, who only a few weeks earlier had had a bad experience with the policeman at the university, said she was so angry that she left immediately to avoid losing her temper and getting arrested. When Jumale and others said when they asked whether it was possible that all the Somalis committed the crime, one officer told them, “You all look the same. We can’t tell who did it so you have to leave.”
Like Hestness the university police chief, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak said there were no complaints from Somali youth about police harassment.
“We can’t solve a problem unless it is reported to us,” Rybak said.
Rybak said he was aware of the challenges facing the Somalis and was working with their leaders to find solutions.
“Public safety is an issue we keep an eye on because there are so many Somalis who are victims of crime and too many Somalis who are also involved in crime,” he said. “It is also important to recognize that we’ve had youth violence issues with all parts of our community.”
Rybak said one of the areas he was focused on was trying to have more Somali police officers in the police force.
“We hired our first couple now and we want more Somalis to apply,” Rybak said. “As you described that [Minnehaha Park] incident – I don’t know what the facts are – but I do know that it’s much more helpful to have a Somali officer on site."
MINNEAPOLIS – As a Muslim male of Somali descent living in post-September 11 United States, Mustafa Jumale knew that he risked harassment from law enforcement officers and racism from some Americans. Although he had never experienced it himself, harassment by police was a common complaint among his peers. But Jumale thought that if he did everything right – completed high school and went to college – people would treat him differently.
After three years at the University of Minnesota, where he studies Sociology of Law, Criminology and Deviance, Jumale learned that the university is far from the save haven he was looking for.
“‘Minnesota nice’ at this university is covert racism,” Jumale said, as he sipped a cup of coffee at as shop just outside the university’s West Bank campus.
Jumale’s sentiments stem from observation and interview he conducted of least a dozen students for a research paper he wrote about the experiences of “Somali College Students at a Predominantly White Institution.” In his research, Jumale heard from a Somali honor student who majored in English Literature but was told by a professor on the first day of class that the course was “too advanced.” Then there was another student who told him he received a D in a term paper because, according to the professor, “the words in your essay are not words you would be able to understand.” But no grievance was more common than alleged harassment by the university’s police.
Jumale heard complaints about police officers randomly searching Somali students’ supposedly looking for stolen property. Others complained about being asked to provide IDs while white students walked by uninterrupted.
Despite the pain these incidents caused, Somali students treated them like nuisances and went about their studies. It wasn’t until last October, when a police officer detained three Somali students for robbery, that Jumale and his fellow students realized that these were no trivial issues.
The sandwich robbers
At around 10 p.m on Oct. 19, 2007, Shafii Osman, a 19-year-old sophomore majoring in Biology, said he and two of his friends were walking from the university gym to a nearby MacDonald when an undercover police officer stopped them and asked for their IDs. Osman began to protest when the officer refused to tell them why he wanted their IDs, but one of the friends, who had gone through a similar incident, asked him to comply, lest he get arrested. After looking at their IDs and searching their pockets, the officer allegedly said they “fit the description” of “East African males” who had just robbed Subway, the sandwich shop. Osman said the officer ordered them into the car and took them to Subway.
“That was when we learned what the robbery was,” Osman said. “A group of guys had taken off with sandwiches without paying.”
Despite the Subway employees’ failure to identify the men who had committed the crime a few minutes earlier, the officer allegedly asked Osman and his friends to pay for the sandwiches or risk criminal charges. They chose the latter. The police officer booked them and let them go. With the help of an attorney, the three students were able to get their cases dismissed.
But for one of Osman’s co-defendants, who did not want to be identified, the whole ordeal was so damaging that said he is still struggling to understand it.
“It caused me a so much stress,” the friend said. “I was approaching exams with the possibility of being sent to jail.”
The student also reported that because he had to go to court four times, he dropped out of an internship.
Somali perpetrators
Jumale and other students say incidents like Osman’s are a result of a University Police Department that stereotypes Somali students. He cites three “public safety alerts” sent by e-mail to the entire university by Chief Greg Hestness. In the e-mails sent between Oct. 10, 2007 and March 10, 2008, Hestness describes each of the suspects as either “East African or Somali,” or just “Somali.”
“When we applied for admission to this university, we were not required to check a ‘Somali’ box,” said Fathi Gelle, who was recently elected president of the Somali Students Association at the university. “How do you know who is Somali? I can bring you a three different people from Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia and you won’t be able to tell the difference.”
Hestness, the police chief, said he had not sent any additional e-mails. But he also defended his use of “East African” and “Somali.”
"For identification purposes, if a person is of African descent and speaks with a foreign accent we have to share that information,” Hestness said.
But in one of the e-mails, Hestness listed the three suspects as “Somali” even though he had written that it was “not believed to be a random attack” because the victim “invited three acquaintances into his room.” He explained that the victim did not know their names but had invited them to the dorms to sell drugs.
On other allegations of profiling, Hestness said that despite numerous appeals to Somali students, no complaints had been filed against any of his officers.
“I don’t know how many ways to ask them to come to us,” Hestness said.
But there was one time in early May when Somali students went to Hestness’s office to complain against a police officer who allegedly assaulted a young Somali woman.
“We have always thought that women were immune to police harassment but this attack proved us wrong,” Jumale said. “The same Somali students we had been trying in vain to organize against ethnic profiling turned up to protest.”
The young woman is Nadar Ali, a 23-year-old who recently graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry. Ali said that on the evening of May 7 she was scheduled to meet with friends at the library. When she couldn’t find them, she went into the lobby to make a phone call. A security guard went to her and ordered her to “hang up the phone or leave the building.” Ali said she told the guard that there was no rule that said she couldn’t use the phone in the lobby. The security guard called police.
“I expected the officer to get both sides of the story and resolve the conflict,” Ali said. “But the officer grabbed me by the shoulder and asked me to leave the library.”
Ali said when she told the officer that it was against her religion for him to touch her, he replied, “I don’t care about your religion.”
John Dewey, who is listed as one of six witnesses in a complaint Ali filed later with the police, said that although he did not witness the initial confrontation, he saw the officer pull Ali by the hand as he escorted her down the stairs and out the door.
“She kept on saying repeatedly, ‘Don’t use force on me,’” Dewey said.
A group of about 40 students, most of them Somali marched to the police department that evening and demanded to see the chief.
“An officer told us that it was after five (o’clock) and ‘the chief has a life,’” Ali said.
Graduation barbeque disbanded
Hestness could not comment on the case because Ali’s complaint was still under investigation. He said that he would make a determination after listening to witnesses and examining video footage from the library.
Ali, who wears a hijab, said that she and other young people get harassed because they are Muslim. What concerns Somali young people and the entire Somali community is that if you have a name like “Ali,” or “Mohamed,” you are more likely than any other African to go to jail. A look at the Hennepin County Jail roster during one week in June showed at least 70 names that many said were most likely Somali. The people on the list, most of them born in the 1980s, were charged with offenses ranging from misdemeanors like trespassing and loitering “with intent to buy,” to felonies like robbery and murder.
“There is a pattern here,” said a man we’ll call Mohamed because revealing his identity could cost him his job. “Of all the people from Africa – Kenyans, Ethiopians, Liberians – why are Somalis the only ones being thrown in jail?”
Mohamed said events like the May 1 missile attack that killed Aden Hashi Ayro, an alleged al Qaeda leader in Somalia, increase the police’s profiling of Somalis. He cited a case where students from the University of Minnesota complained to him about Minneapolis police officers forcing them to vacate Minnehaha Park, where they had gathered for a graduation barbeque.
Coincidentally, Jumale, Ali, Gelle and Osman were all at the barbeque. According to their separate accounts, a group of Somali teenage girls got into a fight with white teenage girls away from the exact site of the barbeque. While breaking the fight, a white man supposedly slapped a Somali girl. The girls reported the incident to Somali men, who retaliated by beating the white man. The white man called 911 and when officers arrived, they ordered all Somalis, nearly 100 of them, to leave the park. Jumale said that the white people were not asked to leave.
Ali, who only a few weeks earlier had had a bad experience with the policeman at the university, said she was so angry that she left immediately to avoid losing her temper and getting arrested. When Jumale and others said when they asked whether it was possible that all the Somalis committed the crime, one officer told them, “You all look the same. We can’t tell who did it so you have to leave.”
Like Hestness the university police chief, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak said there were no complaints from Somali youth about police harassment.
“We can’t solve a problem unless it is reported to us,” Rybak said.
Rybak said he was aware of the challenges facing the Somalis and was working with their leaders to find solutions.
“Public safety is an issue we keep an eye on because there are so many Somalis who are victims of crime and too many Somalis who are also involved in crime,” he said. “It is also important to recognize that we’ve had youth violence issues with all parts of our community.”
Rybak said one of the areas he was focused on was trying to have more Somali police officers in the police force.
“We hired our first couple now and we want more Somalis to apply,” Rybak said. “As you described that [Minnehaha Park] incident – I don’t know what the facts are – but I do know that it’s much more helpful to have a Somali officer on site."
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities Crime Alert Reaction
-----These Comments were collected Via Facebook---
UMPD crime alert (copy pasted below my message) has offended a lot of members of the Cedar-Riverside and Somali community; many residents and community members think it's racist. When the email was sent out, City Councilmember Cam Gordon forwarded it to an online Cedar-Riverside forum. The reaction from Somali residents was a loud and angry one. Residents were angry with the usage of the term "East AFrican accent". They asked - what is an East AFrican accent? It's really vauge and subjective which I agree with. Having said that, we can't deny that many East Africans DO have an accent when they speak English. But East Africans from different regions have different accents. So how can you generalize that into one East African accent?
The second problem with this terminology, in my opinion, is that many people wouldn't even be able to tell the difference between diverse E African accents anyway. Because there is a preconceived notion of all crime in Cedar being associated with Somalis, whether you say the criminal had an Ethiopian/Oromo/Eritrean/Somali accent isn't going to stop people from thinking s/he was Somali.
So it's a twofold problem:
1. You can't define an East African accent, so maybe the UMPD should stop syaing that.
2. There is an erroneous assumption that all crime in Cedar and all crime committed by East Africans is Somali.
Knowing these problems, what are the solutions? I'm interested in knowing what you guys think about this and what we can do. When I was a freshman, there was a big ruckus about this same issue when the alerts would say "Somali". The SSA president back then worked with the UMPD to do diversity trainings and asked they use the term "East AFrican" but clearly, even this is not enough because people are still getting angry.
My question is: is this anger about the use of the word East African, or this anger that the community already has because of past tensions and issues (like police targeting/stopping/questioning/searching Somalis etc)? I feel like there has already been a lot of anger about other things but this is like the straw that's breaking the camel's back...
What do you all propose should be used instead? Because whether you like it or not, the UMPD is going to have to include racial descriptors (white, black, asian etc) in order to identify the criminal. But how should they do it?
-----------------------
University of Minnesota Police are asking for the public's help in
identifying three suspects in a robbery that occurred in the Carlson
School of Management building on Tuesday, February 23 at approximately
2 p.m. See photos below.
The robbery victim -- a university employee -- was in her office when
two suspects entered, threatened violence, and demanded money. The
victim complied and was not harmed, and the suspects fled.
Both suspects are between the ages of 18 and 20 years old and both
spoke with an east African accent. A third suspect is also seen in the
photos captured by campus video surveillance cameras.
If you have information about the identity of the suspects in the
photos or any information about the case, please call the University
of Minnesota Police Department at 612-624-COPS. Refer to case number
UM-10-050809.
UMPD crime alert (copy pasted below my message) has offended a lot of members of the Cedar-Riverside and Somali community; many residents and community members think it's racist. When the email was sent out, City Councilmember Cam Gordon forwarded it to an online Cedar-Riverside forum. The reaction from Somali residents was a loud and angry one. Residents were angry with the usage of the term "East AFrican accent". They asked - what is an East AFrican accent? It's really vauge and subjective which I agree with. Having said that, we can't deny that many East Africans DO have an accent when they speak English. But East Africans from different regions have different accents. So how can you generalize that into one East African accent?
The second problem with this terminology, in my opinion, is that many people wouldn't even be able to tell the difference between diverse E African accents anyway. Because there is a preconceived notion of all crime in Cedar being associated with Somalis, whether you say the criminal had an Ethiopian/Oromo/Eritrean/Somali accent isn't going to stop people from thinking s/he was Somali.
So it's a twofold problem:
1. You can't define an East African accent, so maybe the UMPD should stop syaing that.
2. There is an erroneous assumption that all crime in Cedar and all crime committed by East Africans is Somali.
Knowing these problems, what are the solutions? I'm interested in knowing what you guys think about this and what we can do. When I was a freshman, there was a big ruckus about this same issue when the alerts would say "Somali". The SSA president back then worked with the UMPD to do diversity trainings and asked they use the term "East AFrican" but clearly, even this is not enough because people are still getting angry.
My question is: is this anger about the use of the word East African, or this anger that the community already has because of past tensions and issues (like police targeting/stopping/questioning/searching Somalis etc)? I feel like there has already been a lot of anger about other things but this is like the straw that's breaking the camel's back...
What do you all propose should be used instead? Because whether you like it or not, the UMPD is going to have to include racial descriptors (white, black, asian etc) in order to identify the criminal. But how should they do it?
-----------------------
University of Minnesota Police are asking for the public's help in
identifying three suspects in a robbery that occurred in the Carlson
School of Management building on Tuesday, February 23 at approximately
2 p.m. See photos below.
The robbery victim -- a university employee -- was in her office when
two suspects entered, threatened violence, and demanded money. The
victim complied and was not harmed, and the suspects fled.
Both suspects are between the ages of 18 and 20 years old and both
spoke with an east African accent. A third suspect is also seen in the
photos captured by campus video surveillance cameras.
If you have information about the identity of the suspects in the
photos or any information about the case, please call the University
of Minnesota Police Department at 612-624-COPS. Refer to case number
UM-10-050809.
Somali Students Experience 2008
**http://www.mshale.com/article/Features/Features/Somali_Youth_Decry_Police_Profiling_Harassment/18193** (Okong'o, 2008)
MINNEAPOLIS – As a Muslim male of Somali descent living in post-September 11 United States, Mustafa Jumale knew that he risked harassment from law enforcement officers and racism from some Americans. Although he had never experienced it himself, harassment by police was a common complaint among his peers. But Jumale thought that if he did everything right – completed high school and went to college – people would treat him differently.
After three years at the University of Minnesota, where he studies Sociology of Law, Criminology and Deviance, Jumale learned that the university is far from the save haven he was looking for.
“‘Minnesota nice’ at this university is covert racism,” Jumale said, as he sipped a cup of coffee at as shop just outside the university’s West Bank campus.
Jumale’s sentiments stem from observation and interview he conducted of least a dozen students for a research paper he wrote about the experiences of “Somali College Students at a Predominantly White Institution.” In his research, Jumale heard from a Somali honor student who majored in English Literature but was told by a professor on the first day of class that the course was “too advanced.” Then there was another student who told him he received a D in a term paper because, according to the professor, “the words in your essay are not words you would be able to understand.” But no grievance was more common than alleged harassment by the university’s police.
Jumale heard complaints about police officers randomly searching Somali students’ supposedly looking for stolen property. Others complained about being asked to provide IDs while white students walked by uninterrupted.
Despite the pain these incidents caused, Somali students treated them like nuisances and went about their studies. It wasn’t until last October, when a police officer detained three Somali students for robbery, that Jumale and his fellow students realized that these were no trivial issues.
The sandwich robbers
At around 10 p.m on Oct. 19, 2007, Shafii Osman, a 19-year-old sophomore majoring in Biology, said he and two of his friends were walking from the university gym to a nearby MacDonald when an undercover police officer stopped them and asked for their IDs. Osman began to protest when the officer refused to tell them why he wanted their IDs, but one of the friends, who had gone through a similar incident, asked him to comply, lest he get arrested. After looking at their IDs and searching their pockets, the officer allegedly said they “fit the description” of “East African males” who had just robbed Subway, the sandwich shop. Osman said the officer ordered them into the car and took them to Subway.
“That was when we learned what the robbery was,” Osman said. “A group of guys had taken off with sandwiches without paying.”
Despite the Subway employees’ failure to identify the men who had committed the crime a few minutes earlier, the officer allegedly asked Osman and his friends to pay for the sandwiches or risk criminal charges. They chose the latter. The police officer booked them and let them go. With the help of an attorney, the three students were able to get their cases dismissed.
But for one of Osman’s co-defendants, who did not want to be identified, the whole ordeal was so damaging that said he is still struggling to understand it.
“It caused me a so much stress,” the friend said. “I was approaching exams with the possibility of being sent to jail.”
The student also reported that because he had to go to court four times, he dropped out of an internship.
Somali perpetrators
Jumale and other students say incidents like Osman’s are a result of a University Police Department that stereotypes Somali students. He cites three “public safety alerts” sent by e-mail to the entire university by Chief Greg Hestness. In the e-mails sent between Oct. 10, 2007 and March 10, 2008, Hestness describes each of the suspects as either “East African or Somali,” or just “Somali.”
“When we applied for admission to this university, we were not required to check a ‘Somali’ box,” said Fathi Gelle, who was recently elected president of the Somali Students Association at the university. “How do you know who is Somali? I can bring you a three different people from Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia and you won’t be able to tell the difference.”
Hestness, the police chief, said he had not sent any additional e-mails. But he also defended his use of “East African” and “Somali.”
"For identification purposes, if a person is of African descent and speaks with a foreign accent we have to share that information,” Hestness said.
But in one of the e-mails, Hestness listed the three suspects as “Somali” even though he had written that it was “not believed to be a random attack” because the victim “invited three acquaintances into his room.” He explained that the victim did not know their names but had invited them to the dorms to sell drugs.
On other allegations of profiling, Hestness said that despite numerous appeals to Somali students, no complaints had been filed against any of his officers.
“I don’t know how many ways to ask them to come to us,” Hestness said.
But there was one time in early May when Somali students went to Hestness’s office to complain against a police officer who allegedly assaulted a young Somali woman.
“We have always thought that women were immune to police harassment but this attack proved us wrong,” Jumale said. “The same Somali students we had been trying in vain to organize against ethnic profiling turned up to protest.”
The young woman is Nadar Ali, a 23-year-old who recently graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry. Ali said that on the evening of May 7 she was scheduled to meet with friends at the library. When she couldn’t find them, she went into the lobby to make a phone call. A security guard went to her and ordered her to “hang up the phone or leave the building.” Ali said she told the guard that there was no rule that said she couldn’t use the phone in the lobby. The security guard called police.
“I expected the officer to get both sides of the story and resolve the conflict,” Ali said. “But the officer grabbed me by the shoulder and asked me to leave the library.”
Ali said when she told the officer that it was against her religion for him to touch her, he replied, “I don’t care about your religion.”
John Dewey, who is listed as one of six witnesses in a complaint Ali filed later with the police, said that although he did not witness the initial confrontation, he saw the officer pull Ali by the hand as he escorted her down the stairs and out the door.
“She kept on saying repeatedly, ‘Don’t use force on me,’” Dewey said.
A group of about 40 students, most of them Somali marched to the police department that evening and demanded to see the chief.
“An officer told us that it was after five (o’clock) and ‘the chief has a life,’” Ali said.
Graduation barbeque disbanded
Hestness could not comment on the case because Ali’s complaint was still under investigation. He said that he would make a determination after listening to witnesses and examining video footage from the library.
Ali, who wears a hijab, said that she and other young people get harassed because they are Muslim. What concerns Somali young people and the entire Somali community is that if you have a name like “Ali,” or “Mohamed,” you are more likely than any other African to go to jail. A look at the Hennepin County Jail roster during one week in June showed at least 70 names that many said were most likely Somali. The people on the list, most of them born in the 1980s, were charged with offenses ranging from misdemeanors like trespassing and loitering “with intent to buy,” to felonies like robbery and murder.
“There is a pattern here,” said a man we’ll call Mohamed because revealing his identity could cost him his job. “Of all the people from Africa – Kenyans, Ethiopians, Liberians – why are Somalis the only ones being thrown in jail?”
Mohamed said events like the May 1 missile attack that killed Aden Hashi Ayro, an alleged al Qaeda leader in Somalia, increase the police’s profiling of Somalis. He cited a case where students from the University of Minnesota complained to him about Minneapolis police officers forcing them to vacate Minnehaha Park, where they had gathered for a graduation barbeque.
Coincidentally, Jumale, Ali, Gelle and Osman were all at the barbeque. According to their separate accounts, a group of Somali teenage girls got into a fight with white teenage girls away from the exact site of the barbeque. While breaking the fight, a white man supposedly slapped a Somali girl. The girls reported the incident to Somali men, who retaliated by beating the white man. The white man called 911 and when officers arrived, they ordered all Somalis, nearly 100 of them, to leave the park. Jumale said that the white people were not asked to leave.
Ali, who only a few weeks earlier had had a bad experience with the policeman at the university, said she was so angry that she left immediately to avoid losing her temper and getting arrested. When Jumale and others said when they asked whether it was possible that all the Somalis committed the crime, one officer told them, “You all look the same. We can’t tell who did it so you have to leave.”
Like Hestness the university police chief, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak said there were no complaints from Somali youth about police harassment.
“We can’t solve a problem unless it is reported to us,” Rybak said.
Rybak said he was aware of the challenges facing the Somalis and was working with their leaders to find solutions.
“Public safety is an issue we keep an eye on because there are so many Somalis who are victims of crime and too many Somalis who are also involved in crime,” he said. “It is also important to recognize that we’ve had youth violence issues with all parts of our community.”
Rybak said one of the areas he was focused on was trying to have more Somali police officers in the police force.
“We hired our first couple now and we want more Somalis to apply,” Rybak said. “As you described that [Minnehaha Park] incident – I don’t know what the facts are – but I do know that it’s much more helpful to have a Somali officer on site."
MINNEAPOLIS – As a Muslim male of Somali descent living in post-September 11 United States, Mustafa Jumale knew that he risked harassment from law enforcement officers and racism from some Americans. Although he had never experienced it himself, harassment by police was a common complaint among his peers. But Jumale thought that if he did everything right – completed high school and went to college – people would treat him differently.
After three years at the University of Minnesota, where he studies Sociology of Law, Criminology and Deviance, Jumale learned that the university is far from the save haven he was looking for.
“‘Minnesota nice’ at this university is covert racism,” Jumale said, as he sipped a cup of coffee at as shop just outside the university’s West Bank campus.
Jumale’s sentiments stem from observation and interview he conducted of least a dozen students for a research paper he wrote about the experiences of “Somali College Students at a Predominantly White Institution.” In his research, Jumale heard from a Somali honor student who majored in English Literature but was told by a professor on the first day of class that the course was “too advanced.” Then there was another student who told him he received a D in a term paper because, according to the professor, “the words in your essay are not words you would be able to understand.” But no grievance was more common than alleged harassment by the university’s police.
Jumale heard complaints about police officers randomly searching Somali students’ supposedly looking for stolen property. Others complained about being asked to provide IDs while white students walked by uninterrupted.
Despite the pain these incidents caused, Somali students treated them like nuisances and went about their studies. It wasn’t until last October, when a police officer detained three Somali students for robbery, that Jumale and his fellow students realized that these were no trivial issues.
The sandwich robbers
At around 10 p.m on Oct. 19, 2007, Shafii Osman, a 19-year-old sophomore majoring in Biology, said he and two of his friends were walking from the university gym to a nearby MacDonald when an undercover police officer stopped them and asked for their IDs. Osman began to protest when the officer refused to tell them why he wanted their IDs, but one of the friends, who had gone through a similar incident, asked him to comply, lest he get arrested. After looking at their IDs and searching their pockets, the officer allegedly said they “fit the description” of “East African males” who had just robbed Subway, the sandwich shop. Osman said the officer ordered them into the car and took them to Subway.
“That was when we learned what the robbery was,” Osman said. “A group of guys had taken off with sandwiches without paying.”
Despite the Subway employees’ failure to identify the men who had committed the crime a few minutes earlier, the officer allegedly asked Osman and his friends to pay for the sandwiches or risk criminal charges. They chose the latter. The police officer booked them and let them go. With the help of an attorney, the three students were able to get their cases dismissed.
But for one of Osman’s co-defendants, who did not want to be identified, the whole ordeal was so damaging that said he is still struggling to understand it.
“It caused me a so much stress,” the friend said. “I was approaching exams with the possibility of being sent to jail.”
The student also reported that because he had to go to court four times, he dropped out of an internship.
Somali perpetrators
Jumale and other students say incidents like Osman’s are a result of a University Police Department that stereotypes Somali students. He cites three “public safety alerts” sent by e-mail to the entire university by Chief Greg Hestness. In the e-mails sent between Oct. 10, 2007 and March 10, 2008, Hestness describes each of the suspects as either “East African or Somali,” or just “Somali.”
“When we applied for admission to this university, we were not required to check a ‘Somali’ box,” said Fathi Gelle, who was recently elected president of the Somali Students Association at the university. “How do you know who is Somali? I can bring you a three different people from Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia and you won’t be able to tell the difference.”
Hestness, the police chief, said he had not sent any additional e-mails. But he also defended his use of “East African” and “Somali.”
"For identification purposes, if a person is of African descent and speaks with a foreign accent we have to share that information,” Hestness said.
But in one of the e-mails, Hestness listed the three suspects as “Somali” even though he had written that it was “not believed to be a random attack” because the victim “invited three acquaintances into his room.” He explained that the victim did not know their names but had invited them to the dorms to sell drugs.
On other allegations of profiling, Hestness said that despite numerous appeals to Somali students, no complaints had been filed against any of his officers.
“I don’t know how many ways to ask them to come to us,” Hestness said.
But there was one time in early May when Somali students went to Hestness’s office to complain against a police officer who allegedly assaulted a young Somali woman.
“We have always thought that women were immune to police harassment but this attack proved us wrong,” Jumale said. “The same Somali students we had been trying in vain to organize against ethnic profiling turned up to protest.”
The young woman is Nadar Ali, a 23-year-old who recently graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry. Ali said that on the evening of May 7 she was scheduled to meet with friends at the library. When she couldn’t find them, she went into the lobby to make a phone call. A security guard went to her and ordered her to “hang up the phone or leave the building.” Ali said she told the guard that there was no rule that said she couldn’t use the phone in the lobby. The security guard called police.
“I expected the officer to get both sides of the story and resolve the conflict,” Ali said. “But the officer grabbed me by the shoulder and asked me to leave the library.”
Ali said when she told the officer that it was against her religion for him to touch her, he replied, “I don’t care about your religion.”
John Dewey, who is listed as one of six witnesses in a complaint Ali filed later with the police, said that although he did not witness the initial confrontation, he saw the officer pull Ali by the hand as he escorted her down the stairs and out the door.
“She kept on saying repeatedly, ‘Don’t use force on me,’” Dewey said.
A group of about 40 students, most of them Somali marched to the police department that evening and demanded to see the chief.
“An officer told us that it was after five (o’clock) and ‘the chief has a life,’” Ali said.
Graduation barbeque disbanded
Hestness could not comment on the case because Ali’s complaint was still under investigation. He said that he would make a determination after listening to witnesses and examining video footage from the library.
Ali, who wears a hijab, said that she and other young people get harassed because they are Muslim. What concerns Somali young people and the entire Somali community is that if you have a name like “Ali,” or “Mohamed,” you are more likely than any other African to go to jail. A look at the Hennepin County Jail roster during one week in June showed at least 70 names that many said were most likely Somali. The people on the list, most of them born in the 1980s, were charged with offenses ranging from misdemeanors like trespassing and loitering “with intent to buy,” to felonies like robbery and murder.
“There is a pattern here,” said a man we’ll call Mohamed because revealing his identity could cost him his job. “Of all the people from Africa – Kenyans, Ethiopians, Liberians – why are Somalis the only ones being thrown in jail?”
Mohamed said events like the May 1 missile attack that killed Aden Hashi Ayro, an alleged al Qaeda leader in Somalia, increase the police’s profiling of Somalis. He cited a case where students from the University of Minnesota complained to him about Minneapolis police officers forcing them to vacate Minnehaha Park, where they had gathered for a graduation barbeque.
Coincidentally, Jumale, Ali, Gelle and Osman were all at the barbeque. According to their separate accounts, a group of Somali teenage girls got into a fight with white teenage girls away from the exact site of the barbeque. While breaking the fight, a white man supposedly slapped a Somali girl. The girls reported the incident to Somali men, who retaliated by beating the white man. The white man called 911 and when officers arrived, they ordered all Somalis, nearly 100 of them, to leave the park. Jumale said that the white people were not asked to leave.
Ali, who only a few weeks earlier had had a bad experience with the policeman at the university, said she was so angry that she left immediately to avoid losing her temper and getting arrested. When Jumale and others said when they asked whether it was possible that all the Somalis committed the crime, one officer told them, “You all look the same. We can’t tell who did it so you have to leave.”
Like Hestness the university police chief, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak said there were no complaints from Somali youth about police harassment.
“We can’t solve a problem unless it is reported to us,” Rybak said.
Rybak said he was aware of the challenges facing the Somalis and was working with their leaders to find solutions.
“Public safety is an issue we keep an eye on because there are so many Somalis who are victims of crime and too many Somalis who are also involved in crime,” he said. “It is also important to recognize that we’ve had youth violence issues with all parts of our community.”
Rybak said one of the areas he was focused on was trying to have more Somali police officers in the police force.
“We hired our first couple now and we want more Somalis to apply,” Rybak said. “As you described that [Minnehaha Park] incident – I don’t know what the facts are – but I do know that it’s much more helpful to have a Somali officer on site."
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