Homeland Insecurity, Research Paper Example

This essay will not dispute the notion that learned behaviors, bias, and mindset, each contribute to our perceptions of events, people, and what we see or believe we see of those events and those people. What it will do is define the concept of perception in terms of what we see with our eyes and mind’s eye with respect to people and events. How biases are formed in our own mindset is not the topic of this paper. The knowledge that either we have the mindset or that others, who have helped implant the original misconception and are aware of the existence of the misconception, hope to serve in reinforcing its continued existence.

How are misconceptions or biases formed? This is the realm of psychology and as a generality we can assert that memory recalls what it sees or learns. The degree of accuracy or vividness of the memory being recalled however, is what is at issue. Our minds are like cameras taking snapshots with flashbulbs, in the sense that we make mental images of events or things we select as memories. Depending on the perspective of the viewer, things that appear real to the viewer may not possess the be the same objective reality or truth to all viewers, especially in events that are emotionally charged and haunted by uncertainty. At those times we are susceptible to false impressions or the implantation of biases from external forces depending on our receptiveness. (Neisser)

A lurid example of the aforementioned is immediately apparent for most Americans when we view planes penetrating the glass exterior of the World Trade Centre on September 11^th, 2001. Within hours of that tragic event we were provided with the defining characteristics with which to measure our enemy, by their ethnicity and their religious affiliation. Therein lies the seeds of this particular bias. It is not the notion of one’s culture or religion that germinates the seeds of bias. Those are merely the fuel that bias feeds upon. Rather it is the recognition by ourselves and agencies external to us that would seek to foster such an illusion and which accentuates a biased observer effect whereby two innocent bystanders witness precisely the same event yet have conflicting accounts of what transpired.

Overcoming bias is as easy for humans as it is for salmon swimming upstream to spawn. Though not impossible, it is difficult. Like salmon, we must be diligent in our chosen path, overcome the obstacles that might befall us, which in this case are our personal biases. Once we see this light, though we may continue to be biased, we are on notice to be wary of its existence.

A glaring example of this phenomenon recently occurred in Manhattan with the proposed construction of a mosque near Ground Zero. It is not illogical to conclude that of the people who died on 911, many were Moslem, yet somehow we are coaxed into believing that the men who flew the planes on September 11^th were associates of radical Islam and thus Moslem. Therefore a mosque is not be welcome in the vicinity and is an affront upon those who perished on that day and in the ensuing conflicts both in Afghanistan and Iraq. Fueling that bias is a Florida evangelist threatening Quran burnings if the mosque construction is not halted. (CNN)

A second illustration of this notion has its roots in the Cold War and Senator McCarthy. Who among us has not read the history books nor heard the recitations by our school teachers to hide under our desks or in the bomb shelters our parents built? Those were the days when there was a Red Menace or communist either in or under every bed in the nation. Fifty years later President Reagan, referred to the same threat, the Soviet Union, as the Evil Empire? (March 8, 1983)

Similarly, in 1948, mainland Chinese under the guidance and leadership of Mao Zedong, revolted and seized power from Chiang Kai-shek who fled to Formosa (Taiwan). They called that tiny island Mainland China with a population a fraction of the billion that lived on the mainland and now under the rule of the communists. Our government for decades refused to recognize the existence of China under Mao, as if by doing so Mao, his ideas, and his cohorts might cease to exist. It was only with President Nixon who in 1972 traveled to Peking (Beijing) to normalize relations with the most populous nation on earth. Until then, Red China was a dinner setting that we placed on the table, not a country. Though not in the strictest sense of an agency named homeland security, this falls within the notion of homeland security the ideal.

The media is not innocent in nurturing bias, especially in the post 911 era. Several years ago and predating 911, two Hollywood movies were released. The first was Aladdin, dramatized in 1788 by the Englishman, John O’Keefe, and then a couple of centuries later in a Walt Disney animated cartoon called Aladdin. The other was True Lies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1994. Each of these films has as its villain a terrorist who is well defined as the archetypal Arab, fitting the biased opinions of a public readily accepting such a myth. The latter is aimed at an adult audience while the animated feature targets children as its audience. The villain in each piece is painted black, has a huge hooked nose, and is for most people regardless of their age, typical of the Middle Eastern terrorist we have seen on the nightly news since the Munich Olympics in 1972. Ok already! We get the picture-we’re biased. (Fox. Disney)

Overcoming bias is not easy. Recognizing it in ourselves is the first step. That takes more than knowledge-it takes intelligence and that is something that not all of us possess. It is when we can see that we are looking at a unstable tenet and not a people that we can overcome our bias and prejudice. Still, it is not an impossible dream. I can prove it. In 1861, if a sane man were to claim that one day one hundred years hence, that the president of the United States would be a black man whose father had been born in an African nation called Kenya, he would have been hanged for treason. It is to see the impossible that makes the impossible, possible.

References

Neisser, Ulrich. Memory Observed. (1982) San Francisco: Freeman Loftus, Elizabeth. Eyewitness Testimony (1989) Cambridge: Harvard University Press

CNN. In battle to build mosque near Ground Zero, opponents ask ‘why there?’ . (July 14, 2010)

Accessed on September 17^th, 2010 at http://articles.cnn.com/2010-0714/us/new.york.ground.zero.mosque_1_landmark-status-landmark-preservation-commission-mosque?_s=PM:US

Walt Disney Productions. Aladdin. (1992) Burbank California. 20^th Century Fox. True Lies. (1994). Burbank, California.