PASSING:

Muslim woman for a day (Andrew Marra, October 20, 2002, Palm Beach Post)

The stares and the second-takes were inevitable the minute Mary Peterson stepped onto the South Fork High campus Thursday morning.

They were expected. Even desired.

Peterson's dress, after all, was not the typical student fare. The 17-year-old senior of Scottish and Irish descent had put aside jeans and T-shirts for the burka, the traditional garb of Muslim women. [...]

It was a bold sociological experiment that Peterson, a student in the school's International Baccalaureate program, concocted while her Theory of Knowledge class was studying Islam last month -- quite a change of pace for the teen who teaches Sunday school at a nondenominational Christian church, takes pictures as a hobby and often spends weekends in the movie theater or at the mall with her friends.

What would it be like, she had wondered, to be a traditional Islamic woman for a day? [...]

She counted some 10 people throughout the day who were openly rude to her or gave her a negative vibe.

"They're ignorant," she said. "They're uneducated about the differences in lifestyle."

That's an excellent start towards understanding discrimination. Now dress like a Hassidim and attend a school in Pakistan, Palestine, or Saudi Arabia for a day and see how the "vibes" are. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 20, 2002 2:39 PM