“How Does it Feel to be a Problem” by Moustafa Bayoumi tells various stories of Arab and Muslim men and women around the time of the World Trade Center was destroyed, and the people around them that are being rude and racist. One of the women is named Yasmin, she was a student of Fort Hamilton for high school. Her story is about how she couldn’t stay on the student council because it was a requirement to go to all school events, but based on her religion she couldn’t attend any of the dances so the school kicked her off, all four years of her time at Fort Hamilton she always tried to run for a spot in student council but always got rejected. So she got a lawyer made a governmental case that made it so the school changed it’s policy of having to go to dances for religious purposes, it subliminally stated the school was being racist. Yasmin went through the process knowing how to deal with racism because it happened in her everyday life, she shares a story with us about how she was sitting in the B63 bus and there was an Arab woman with a hijab on and she was holding a baby. There was a white couple on the bus and they were whispering, asking each other whether the woman actually had a baby of if it was a bomb. Yasmin heard their conversation and thought that it was a stupid question because if a white woman got on the bus with a baby they wouldn’t have thought any different. But the white couple requested the bus driver to stop the bus and check that the woman actually had a baby, which she did. This an example of a ridiculous situation that she was in where she stood up saying that it really was just a baby, but now she is defending herself where the school is being racist.
Moustafa Bayoumi probably received many stories with children that faced different types of racism, but when writing this story she made sure that this was the third story because at that point the people who are reading are getting the gist of what she’s doing, but she wants us to know that a fourteen year old girl used all of her socializing and homework time to do do research about something she believes. She wants us to know that having a lot of commitment and belief in something is a good recipe for success and achieving things that you want to get complete. For example Yasmin had a conversation with her father about how she’s investing too much time in the background research in making a case. “Yasmin’ he would say sighing ‘what are you doing?’... ‘Stop wasting time.’” Her father tells her directly that what she is doing is hopeless, but she still continues to do the research and in the end she gets what she wants, but Bayoumi wants us to know that you would really do anything for something you believe in.
Bayoumi is absolutely correct to state that you have to stand up for things that you believe in and she is able to beautifully display that through Yasmin’s story. Also racism is everywhere and when taken care of properly it can lead to successful ending.
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