Something is wrong at school.

It’s Tuesday morning, and you’re supposed to be in the middle of art class. Ginger, the art teacher and your close friend’s Claire’s mom, often runs late, but never like this. You’re still adjusting to fourth grade, but you’re looking forward to class with Ginger, who knows what she’s doing and disregards rules.

Claire is at school, so Ginger can’t be absent because her daughter is sick. In the words of Madeline’s Miss Clavel, something is not right.

The following series of events seems simultaneous. Ginger walks into the small room where your Montessori school’s Upper Elementary class keeps its math supplies and language material. The main teachers, Ms. Tethel and Mr. Josh, tell the entire class to sit in a circle on the floor. Someone pushes a TV on wheels inside.

You learn new words that day: The first is hijack.

Somebody hijacked two planes and crashed them into a tall building in New York City — another plane is aiming for the Pentagon, which until this day you only know as a shape.

The second is terrorist — the people who did this are terrorists.

Why will be impossible to grasp, but right now you’re concerned with the what. You don’t know much about war or attacks — years ago, when your dad tells you about Iraq, the enemy in a war, you picture lines of people shooting muskets, alternating like some twisted version of Red Rover. At Montessori school, you’ve only learned peace.

You aren’t sad yet, because you still don’t understand. What if someone calls from the airplane toilet, Akangbe, a sixth grader, jokes to sound clever in a situation the group doesn’t understand. You don’t say anything, but you know people can’t use electronics on a landing plane from all the times an attendant has told you to shut off your GameBoy. And crashing is like landing, right?

When your mom picks you and your sister up from school that day, which rarely happens, she says that Jodi, her boyfriend, and the soccer team are coming over. They need somewhere to react.

A bunch of blonde girls, teenagers, cry in your family room. They need something to eat, and you need a minute away from them. You walk to the snack drawer — next to the freezer, bottom drawer. There’s a bag of tortilla chips that’s stale, but they don’t seem to care.

You never paid much attention to Afghanistan before, but now you feel pressed, awkward. Afghanistan is right next to Iran. Does that make you complicit? There is going to be a war and people are sending anthrax around in envelopes. Even opening the mail can kill somebody now. You write “no” next to Taliban, terrorism, and war in your diary. If that’s in there with your most personal thoughts, people won’t think you’re lying, right? Don’t people know you want the world to be better?

Things change at school. It reminds you of the divide you felt last year during the election, one of the first times you realized people don’t get along. Is your dad going to fight in World War III? you wonder. Then you remind yourself that he is almost 40, safe because he’s too old. You draw words — elementary protest signs — opposing the war. Years later you learn about radicals and you want to become one. Maybe even for Iran.

High school is emotionally excruciating, but at least nobody seems to care about you being Iranian. It takes you years for you to realize it’s because you look just like your white American mother. You lucked out: People like your grandmother’s rice and call you exotic. Your friends never assume you’re Muslim (of course, as an arty kid, most of your friends are freshly declared atheists), or associate you with the threat of nuclear weapons. Instead, they thank you for bringing them headscarves back from Iran.

Barack Obama takes office, and over time the battles overseas and in your mind subside. Even in the summer of 2009, when the election is rigged and a quasi-rebellion hangs in the air, people side with the Iranian populace, especially after seeing a militiaman shoot Neda Agha-Soltan in the heart, the one death that overshadows Michael Jackson’s. Your worries subside a little, because it looks like Americans finally understand that Iranians are people.

You move to another city for college, opening up a new world — a world that, to your surprise, teaches Farsi. Obviously, you take it — you’re obligated. Maybe within a few years you’ll be less embarrassed, able to communicate with great aunts and uncles who never fully mastered English.

Introductory Persian is challenging, but manageable. There’s a good mix of students in your class: international affairs and political science majors, a handful of Iranians and halfies. You take every available class for your degree, and as you advance you feel further behind. Class sizes dwindle and your handicap sticks out more: your accent, your cruddy compositions you can barely read, your inability to roll your tongue or sound out unfamiliar letters.

At home, you felt Iranian. Your grandparents practically lived with you — for a few years they did live with you. Your father, the patriarch, decides everything. You eat rice and eggplant stew for dinner at least once a week. You dance with your hands at loud parties. But here, among real Iranians, you are different. You don’t look like them or speak like them. You realize you are not very Iranian at all. Something is wrong, and it’s you.

You are 24 on Election Day when you pull into a church parking lot to cast your vote for the country’s first potential female president. Today feels symbolic. The system of buildings connected to the church used to be your school. The swings and slide are still there in the front playground where the older kids spent recess. You smile at the porch outside the room where you learned about September 11th, but right now your mind’s set on the future.

You’re on a friend’s couch, eyes rapt on the television, cracking open a beer because you’re starting to worry. You tell yourself it can’t happen, but at the same time you’re not surprised about certain states. You know a state that won’t let people use the bathroom is going to vote red. Perhaps you see more evil in the world — by this point, you know damn well that not everyone is considered a person. And you’re right. Another red state, another beer. You seek comfort in addition, calculating the electoral vote. You try to think about the FiveThirtyEight projection that turns out to be horribly wrong. Michigan’s results come in and you know numbers can’t help anymore.

You only worry about yourself a little, because in the second debate he approached the “Iran issue” like a business deal. Iran has oil, saffron, caviar. Messing with Iran when all you care about is money is moronic. You’re fretting over everyone else you care about: those who really have something to lose. You can’t believe that voters would put so many people in danger to keep their sense of superiority and enjoy slashed taxes — never mind, you can.

“I’ll be okay, but I’m afraid for everyone else,” becomes your new motto.

You aren’t Muslim — hell, you can pass for one hundred percent white girl, or at least Jewish — but you are a dual citizen. Your existence is tied to a place news commentators think is bad. At this point, you don’t want to believe he’ll take charge. That denial won’t fade.

Your existence is tied to a place news commentators think is bad.
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And you’re angry with everyone who voted for him, everyone who thought they were more important than all those people who have something at stake — like your stepmother, whose child shares your Iranian blood. As a pacifist, you understand where she comes from to a degree, but you’re still angry, because that language didn’t spark a shred of hesitation or concern.

And you know they ignored him because they thought they had nothing at risk, even though you know they did.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

January comes and everyone starts quoting Orwell. 1984 becomes a bestseller again, but you think the country’s become like Animal Farm. People who wanted to keep their power are about to lose it. You have to be more than white to have power these days — you have to be the one percent of the one percent. A hundredth.

It’s kind of funny, actually, because this “dystopia” people say America is becoming is based on real historical events, as all dystopia is. Government corruption is inevitable. People just don’t care unless, or until, it’s personal.

His name is inescapable. You can’t stand to use it, to acknowledge that the “freest country in the world” was that easy to con, so you call him The Government. The guy you used to make fun of in middle school is the President, and now there are thousands of rich white males who want to annihilate people you care about from this hypocritical conglomeration called democracy.

Less than a week before you’re supposed to leave the country, the government tries to enforce a travel ban. No Muslims. By this point, you know that “Muslim” just means brown, or white but not white enough. Iran is on that list of seven countries. The fear that haunted you a decade ago rushes back because he’s trying to start a war. Iran isn’t the same as it was 30 years ago, but you know most people here don’t know that. No, they don’t care to know. For the first time in your life, you are afraid to exist.

There’s a protest at the airport tomorrow. You have to go. You have to. You spend hours assembling an Iranian flag from nine pieces of construction paper, exacerbating the tendinitis in your elbow, to draw the four crescents to scale. The next morning, you become inspired to write “TRUMP IS THE NEW SHAH” on your masterpiece, but first you need a silver Sharpie. If you aren’t going to mince words, then people need to be able to see them clearly.

You talk to your dad about it. The government is horrible, you say, but seeing so many people come together gives you hope. Movements are afoot. “You didn’t grow up in a totalitarian government,” he responds. He doesn’t have to say anything else to assert that you don’t understand.

If you aren’t going to mince words, then people need to be able to see them clearly.
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Your parents don’t want you to drive to the airport — they don’t want you there at all. They’re worried about you getting stuck in traffic, detained, harassed, hurt. “People are crazy,” they say, and emotionally exhausted, you pass out. You don’t think Atlanta will become Tehran, but you also don’t want to argue.

You realize you’ve taken your luxuries for granted far too long. That others have dealt with far worse for far longer.

At work the next morning, your boss cracks a joke about a coworker not being able to come back from France. He’s unambiguously white — they all are.

“Sarra, you’re not a dual citizen, are you?” But you are, and you’re terrified. You’ll probably never get to see certain relatives again — your great aunt will die and you won’t even get to say goodbye. And you make sure to say it in a dry, distraught tone. It must have not worked, though, because those jokes keep coming back.

You’re still mad, three days later, at the airport. Of course, you actually have a reason to be scared. While your group works out a check-in mishap, you flip through family passports. First, you admire yours, and catch the place of birth: CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, USA. Then you thumb through your dad’s. It doesn’t bear a city, just IRAN. It might as well say THREAT. You start breaking down in TSA because your father’s passport bears a word that shouldn’t be heavy. He tells you not to cry, but you’re convinced the law will capsize in a few days and you won’t be able to come back, that he’ll get taken away. The pressure weighs you down like a wrecked car, compacting panic and pushing out tears.

You dad’s passport doesn’t bear a city, just IRAN. It might as well say THREAT.
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You learned early on that being Iranian means you’re always on the defensive. That people will avoid your family and struggle to understand that Middle Easterners share their humanity. Maybe it doesn’t even matter who’s in charge of either country. People learned to hate the country that both is and isn’t yours long before you were born; they’ve just been invited to openly embrace that prejudice once more.

At least, you think, the government can’t take your tears away. So you just keep crying.

“Everywhere I look, Lord / I see FB eyes / Said every place I look, Lord / I find FB eyes / and I’m getting sick and tired of gover’ment spies” — Richard Wright, “FB Eye Blues” (1949)

In an August 1967 document, former director J. Edgar Hoover described the purpose of the FBI’s COINTELPro program: “to expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize the activities of black nationalist, hate-type organizations and groupings, their leadership, spokesmen, membership, and supporters, and to counter their propensity for violence and civil disorder.” A full 22 years before the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI would break into the bureau’s Media, Pennsylvania office and unlock COINTELPro’s secrets, Wright lamented the reality of what was becoming a staple condition in everyday Black life: government surveillance.

Although Wright’s poem discussed “FB eyes” lurking underneath his bed, the introduction of a digital age has helped usher in a shift of what surveillance entails. Stories like Amazon giving facial recognition tools to law enforcement agencies in Oregon and Orlando, and a Black activist being jailed for his Facebook statuses, help to highlight surveillance’s new adaptability, both as a culture and an institution. However, our modern surveillance culture has the worst ramifications for Black Muslims.

Black Muslims are used to being surveilled, and the knowledge that somehow you are being watched has found an uncomfortable, yet sometimes distant, residence in the Black Muslim’s mind. This distance allows for new surveillance methods to grow right beneath the feet of Black Muslims, trapping them where they stand before they even have a chance to move. It provides people with almost a false sense of calm that transforms itself into lowered security.

That mission to expose, disrupt, misdirect, and discredit the activities of Black movements, whatever their nature, has shaped the lives of Black people in America before the name surveillance was assigned to it. But for Black Muslims, the discussion of surveillance is similarly evergreen, and even more pronounced. Black Muslims have been singled out as threats, long before things like the development of the Obama administration’s Countering Violent Extremism program (an entrapment program that piloted in Minneapolis targeting Somali Muslim youth) or the Trump administration’s Muslim Ban. Tracing the position of Black Muslims through America’s history helps illustrate not only how elegantly surveillance can adjust itself with the times, but what that entails for the digital landscape Black Muslims navigate today.

Black Muslims are used to being surveilled.
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Perhaps one of the biggest concerns facing Black Muslims is the ways in which current discourse erases the anti-Black roots of America’s Islamophobia. By ignoring how surveillance draws from policing enslaved African Muslims, Black Muslims are left ignored. Black and Muslim are viewed as two identities, instead of one whole that has always been cast as a threat to the American public.

Some of the earliest examples of the American government surveying Black people, with the intention of disrupting culture and movements for liberation, can be tracked throughout slavery. Although the period is not commonly conjured when Big Brother’s name is invoked, it’s important to trace institutions back to their earliest manifestations. During slavery, Islam had a significant presence; the estimate is that 15 to 30%, or as many as 600,000 to 1.2 million, slaves in antebellum America were Muslim. And often, they were the ones being watched the most.

Within North America, prohibitions based on observances of Islam helped lay the roots for early manifestations of surveillance of Black Muslims. In efforts subtly influenced by tales of African Muslim revolts in Spain’s South American colonies, and an overall effort to control the religion of a people in order to conquer their spirit, American plantations cracked down on Islam among enslaved people. Documents from Sea Island, Georgia, known as the Ben Ali diary, detailed the ways enslaved African Muslims navigated observing their religion under constant watch. There are records of Muslims observing Ramadan, the month of fasting, which includes gathering to break meals and hold nightly prayers. But, for instance, in the Virginia Slave Code of 1723, the assembly of five slaves was considered an unlawful meeting; every state throughout the south had their own versions of this law, to put an end to religious practices and any hopes for rebellion.

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Although laws forbidding gatherings of enslaved people did not specify Islam, the setup of religion throughout chattel slavery positioned Islam and Christianity at odds. Enslaved Africans were allowed to occasionally gather for the purpose of Christian ceremonies and attending worship. Religion existed as a tool to further control and surveil enslaved people. Plantation owners were unable to manipulate Islam, but their familiarity with Christianity presented them with unique opportunities.

The majority of enslaved Muslims were forced to convert to Christianity. But, for some, Christianity presented new avenues for their own, individual freedom. The National Museum of African American History and Culture notes how some enslaved Muslims, such as Lamina Kebe, pretended to become Christians in order to earn safe passage back to Africa under the guise of performing missionary work.

Targeting visible tenants of faith like dietary restrictions and prayer gave way to an early model of surveillance that continues to feed into the surveillance of Black Muslims today. Although that early method did not occur through FB eyes, the intention was the same. More than anything, COINTELPro existed to paint liberation movements as backwards, savage, and threats to the supposed moral superiority of the United States. Attempts to forcefully convert enslaved people or to otherwise stifle Islam arose from similar beliefs.

Targeting visible tenants of faith gave way to an early model of surveillance that continues to feed into the surveillance of Black Muslims today.
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Now, though, surveillance methods have evolved with the times. “FB eyes” don’t need to linger under your bed when your laptops and phones sit prettily on top of it, after all. In political organizing, it’s standard practice to keep all electronic devices, particularly those with microphones, out of meeting spaces; but what about the times we forget that we can be watched? Agencies can infiltrate organizations today, like in the case of the Black Panthers and William O’Neal, but there’s now the assistance of greater technology. While there’s no need to immediately fear tech improvements, there does need to be more discussion about how a digital age has impacted surveillance, particularly for Black Muslims who sit at a heavily targeted intersection.

In 2008, the Combating Terrorism Center echoed this fear with their release of an article titled “Evaluating the Terrorist Threat Posed by African American Muslim Groups.” Although the article in question is now 10 years old, it’s clear that the fear of Black Muslims is still deeply embedded into the American psyche. COINTELPro in the past targeted proto-Islamic institutions like the Nation of Islam. With the release of The Hate That Hate Produced, a 1958 documentary focusing on Black nationalism, Black Muslims gained now spotlight within the media. Black Muslims, as both a religious and political identity, were portrayed as a domestic threat.

It was fear around Black Muslims that dominated discussions. While some of the visibility would later be turned onto non-Black Muslims, that unease around the Black, the unknown, and the uncontrolled has never faded. Black Muslims were seen within their own politicized identity that the state perceived as one of the greatest threats of the time. An FBI report on the Nation of Islam described the group as promoting “fearless and outspoken anti-white, anti-Christian attitudes…As long as racial inequity continues, the militant and arrogant manner of cult members remains a potential threat of violent action.”

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There, it can be seen how the state already formed the idea that Muslims would equal violent action of some kind. That fear was not only rooted in their Muslim identity, but equally promoted by their Blackness.

In October of 2017, a situation reminiscent of the COINTELPro spill occured: An FBI report warning of a domestic terror threat sweeping across the nation emerged. The threat? Black Identity Extremists. And while the concept of Black Identity Extremists, and thus the surveillance of activists, is not new, it’s important to note how social media is used as a method of surveillance within it.

In February of 2018, the ACLU gathered documents which revealed “the Boston Police Department’s Regional Intelligence Center used a social media surveillance system called Geofeedia to conduct online surveillance in 2014, 2015, and 2016.” The BDP used Geofeedia to monitor hashtags like #BlackLivesMatter and words associated with political action, such as protest. In addition, the BDP monitored the use of various, basic Arabic words and the hashtag #MuslimLivesMatter.

Immediately after 9/11, the New York Police Department’s Intelligence Division created a secret spy division to spy on American Muslims in New York City and the surrounding area. Known as the Demographics Unit, they spied on residential, social, and business landscapes. Of the 28 “ancestries of interests” included, American Black Muslims were featured on the list. According to Black Perspectives, NYPD documents revealed that the NYPD Demographics Unit spied on Black mosque attendants and Black imams throughout New York and New Jersey. Methods of surveillance within the Demographics Unit were varied, given the numerous aspects of Muslim life being investigated. But, they included NYPD officers taking pictures and videos of people leaving and entering the mosques and recording the license plate numbers of worshippers attending services. NYPD also operated remotely controlled cameras on light poles aimed at mosques.

Noted as borrowing from the NYPD’s Demographics Unit, the Countering Violent Extremism program launched in Minneapolis and targeted Somali Muslim youth. The program notes the importance of digital surveillance within identifying signs of extremism. “Digital marketing experts have a sophisticated set of tools and methodologies that are proven to work,” writes a Department of Homeland Security document, “such as discovering a range of relevant information, creating, branding and marketing compelling content, and tracking real-world metrics to identify the most effective content for further distribution.”

These various methods of digital surveillance highlight the dangers of being Black and Muslim within digital space. Black Muslims do not simply face the consequences of anti-Blackness and Islamophobia, but they deal with a particular manifestation of the two that works as a single unit. Understanding anti-Black Islamophobia as its own form of violence allows for discourse to broaden itself, without falling into traps such as those painting Muslims as recently racialized victims of surveillance, when the beginnings of surveillance existed with the racialization of enslaved African Muslims.

“I am America. I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me,” Muhammad Ali once said, a direct confrontation to America’s fear of Black Muslims, the unknown and uncontained. America has long feared Black Muslims, and has attempted to allay that fear by keeping close watch. Moving forward, understanding surveillance requires the conversation to focus on digital justice and keeping in mind how the internet serves as a new playground for “FB eyes” to explore.