Don't fire people for confessing fear of Muslims. from Slate Magazine by William Saletan

Twenty-four years ago, Juan Williams wrote Eyes on the Prize, a companion volume to the documentary history of the civil rights movement. The book, like the series, focused on the movement's leaders. But it also explored white America's difficulty in absorbing racial integration. Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy struggled to reconcile the truth of the movement's principles with the challenge of holding the country together. Martin Luther King Jr. wrestled with Fannie Lou Hamer over the wisdom of compromising with the Democratic Party. When the Little Rock Nine walked into Central High School, onlookers shrieked and wept. It was a long, slow story of fear, debate, and transcendence. This is how we must understand what's happening today with American Muslims. There are obvious differences: Muslim terrorists killed nearly 3,000 Americans on 9/11. But millions of American Muslims who had nothing to do with those attacks, other than losing loved ones in them, are now paying the price in fear and suspicion. And this compounds the difficulty that Muslims, like immigrants and minority religions of previous generations, face in gaining acceptance. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll released last month, Americans expressed a net unfavorable opinion of Islam (49 percent unfavorable to 37 percent favorable), and two-thirds opposed the construction of an Islamic community center near Ground Zero.

Read the full Slate piece here. See also: This Far by Faith: Stories from the African American Religious Experience, Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It, Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary