your work was on anti-sikh violence, misrecognizing and people assuming men with turbines, for example, were muslim when in fact many of them were sikh. i heard you talking about divisions. is there a possibility of building coalitions around the kind of anti-islamic discourse? yes, what i notice about what s promising today, there s a ground swell of people out there, not just muslim americans, not just sikh americans or people of color, but a ground swell of americans who are tired of a politics of fear. that we are hungry to see ourselves in one another in ways we haven t before. in the last few years, i crisscrossed the country with my film. i ve been to 200 american cities. and when people see a story of a sikh family, remarkable things happened. i remember an african-american man in chicago standing up and pointing to his braids and saying, my braids are my
values. other advertisest have stepped up, including russell simmons. he tweeted just purchased remains spots for all-american muslim next week. keep your money, lowe s, and we will keep ours. we know a place where tossing and turning
on its advertising during a reality tv show because the show is too controversial. now, it s not a body reality show where 20 women date the same guy looking for true love in a hot tub or where the idol rich behave badly. no, no. the show that s causing controversy is about a middle class midwestern family trying to make it in america. lowes home improvement chain pulled its money from something that ought to be the most middle american thing out there. but it s not. because of the identity of those whose story is being told. now, you may have heard of it. it s on tlc. it s called all american muslim. in explaining why lowes s pulled out, in a statement, they read in part, lowe s received a significant amount of communication from this program, p individuals and groups have strong political and societal views on this topic and the program became a lightning rod for many of those views and as a result we did pull our ti advertising on this program.
just as i have to fight for the right of gays to come out of the closet. i have to fight for the right for sieks to wear turbines. stories can save us and bring us hope and make us human to each other. all american muslim is the quintessential form of story telling, a reality tv show. they did something daring, the shore muslim families, as real people. this is the moment we ought to stand up for this story telling to transform the social imagination that has held up muslim americans as muslim terrorists for so long. it never occurred to me that i would be supporting a reality tv show, but i have to say, i am there. valerie, thank you so much for joining us tonight. thank you, melissa. valerie kaur, film writer, with ground swell, which i m affiliated for and is an extraordinary, extraordinary opportunity for a new generation to do political work.
to a public school in a town where her parents paid taxes. in little rock, arkansas, in 1957, that was controversial because of who she was. we know that that s what s going on when someone s identity is controversial. and that s what s going on right now with what should be an utterly noncontroversial reality show about a midwestern family. it s actually our broad climate of anti-islamic rhetoric that creates the controversy. listen to what s being said about muslims in a political context. the statement was, would i be comfortable with a muslim in my administration. i would not be comfortable because you have peaceful muslims and then you have militant muslims. those that are trying to kill us. and so when i said i wouldn t be comfortable, i was thinking about the ones that are try to kill us. we see an increasing number of muslim youth radicalizing in america and attempting plots here in the u.s. or traveling abroad to join groups. an ongoing effort to recruit and radicalize d