Documenting Prejudice: The Valarie Kaur Story

By Angilee Shah, WireTap. Posted August 24, 2004.

Valarie Kaur was a junior at Stanford University the day of the September 11th attacks. Four days later Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh immigrant from India, was murdered in front of his gas station in Mesa, Arizona by a man who claimed he was taking revenge. Although the two didn’t know one another, Kaur and Sodhi’s stories were soon to intertwine. Three years later, after a long and educational process, Kaur is now deep in the work on a documentary film inspired by Sodhi’s death, called, “Divided We Fall: Americans in the Aftermath.”

Kaur, a third-generation Sikh herself, says Sodhi was only “a friend of a friend” and yet she found the news of his death paralyzing. Soon Kaur’s email inbox flooded over with words of caution and news about hate crimes around the country. Sikh men wear turbans and are known for their non-violence, but Sodhi’s murderer had no doubt seen images of Osama Bin Laden and other turban-wearing Arabs who were involved in the attacks. Indeed, incidents of hate crimes against Sikhs, Muslims, and other South Asians were on the rise. At the same time, President Bush was sending out messages of a so-called “united America” all over the airwaves. Kaur felt the contradiction; what she saw on television did not match the violence she was learning about from her home in Clovis, California.

At first, she retreated to her bedroom, reading Harry Potter books and enjoying their happy endings. “My country was under attack. My community was under attack,” Kaur says. That semester, she had received a scholarly grant to travel to Punjab, India to collect oral histories with her 18-year-old cousin, Amandeep Singh Gill. Her university, however, informed her that it was too dangerous. So Kaur was left with a camera and a vacant semester. Kaur knew she didn’t want to go back to Stanford; she didn’t want to turn her back on what was happening in the world. So she emerged from her room three days later with a new plan: She would travel the country and document the stories of Sikh Americans in the post-9/11 climate.

Just a Couple of Kids With a Camera

Kaur was riddled with doubt as soon as the idea for the trip came to her mind. Her cousin wears a turban and she wondered: How safe could it be to follow hate crimes around the country? She had no film experience and was unsure about what to do with the footage she collected. Would Sikh Americans trust her enough to tell her their stories? She asked herself, “Who am I to do this?”

In the end it was Kaur’s Sikh faith that convinced her to document these stories, to not let them be forgotten. Naam Daan Isnaan is a sacred Sikh hymn, which Kaur takes to mean, “To realize yourself, you must act.” And act, she did.

“We just followed the news,” says Kaur. From September, 2001 to January, 2002 she her cousin-cameraman traveled up and down the length of California, then to Arizona and the site of Sodhi’s murder, and finally to New York and Washington, D.C. “At the time, we saw ourselves as objective journalists behind the camera,” Kaur says. Yet she found that it was impossible to pretend that they were not also part of the story. In a D.C. train station, for instance, when a man screamed, “Go home!” the two followed him with their camera and continued the dialogue. In New York, while conducting an interview on the street, a passerby yelled, “Hey terrorist! Take off that turban!”

“Things like that made us realize that we weren’t detached,” says Kaur.

This incident motivated the pair to collected story after story of harassment, fear, and violence. They spoke to a Sikh businessman in New York who not only ran from the collapsing towers, but from a group of people who chased him, accusing him of terrorism. They spoke to a woman in San Diego who was stabbed by men who told her to go back to her own country. Kaur and her cousin even recorded some people admitting that they have felt fear or prejudice against Sikhs because of their turbans. Kaur eventually did get to go to Punjab as well, but instead of collecting oral histories, she went to visit the widow of Balbir Singh Sodhi, to whom she asked one question: “What do you want to say to the people of America?” The widow’s answer was surprising to Kaur. “Tell them thank you for caring,” she said.

A Director Joins the Team

Angilee Shah, 22, is a recent graduate of UC Berkeley and a freelance writer in Southern California.

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