Congressman Khanna Says He Personally Experienced Apartheid as Brown American in West Bank

What was said

"I've never felt my race as acutely. You know, I was born in 1976. I grew up in Pennsylvania. Was there a time that someone said, 'Hey, go back to India on a basketball court.' Sure. But by and large in this country, while I'm aware of our history of race, I personally haven't felt it. As soon as I got in to the West Bank, I started to feel it. The first time when I was on the Israeli occupied side of Hebron and I was there with one of my aids, a young guy, Cam Kasy, white Jewish American, Ben Linder, a friend was also Jewish and an Israeli Nadav, a white Israeli and there were the four of us and we were walking and suddenly the guards come up and they don't say anything to the other three people but they single me out and they say, 'Are you the son of Isaac or the son of Ishmael?' meaning am I a Christian or a Muslim and I say I'm a Hindu and they have no idea what that is."

Congressman Ro Khanna described being racially profiled at Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank, where guards singled him out from white Jewish companions to question his religion. He stated he never felt his race as acutely in America as he did in the West Bank, calling the system apartheid through a racialized lens. Khanna emphasized Palestinians face far worse indignities daily.