say things like, "aren't indian women beautiful?"

This is a guest post by Epi Tales, who writes at a blog of the same name, where this post also appears. She writes of herself, "I can’t stop reading. I hate life unless I'm being propelled through the pages of a book in parallel to my 'real' life. As a kid, I read Harriet the Spy, and I was infatuated with the idea of writing. Constantly. Insatiably."


After all the internet hoopla following Joel Stein's "My Own Private India", I am more confused than ever about the racism I experience. The silver lining is wittiness, specifically Kal Penn's now-famous, incredibly sarcastic retort published on the Huffington Post.

Hold on, I’ve got some nostalgia, bear with me: all these mentions of Edison, NJ engender some serious gastronomical and linguistic longing. Walking into restaurants or sweet shops with my then-fiance, I was never addressed in English, only Hindi. It never felt presumptuous, rather inclusive, with the undertone of “I know you know this” and “we share something, whatever part of India you’re from”. Isn’t there some comfort in that?

Now I’m walking around Seattle, which is white enough to find an Indian interesting, yet cosmopolitan enough not to call me a dothead (I think this term is out of vogue anyway). Instead, I find hilarious, yet racist, moments. Last weekend, my mother and father-in-law were browsing jewelry in a booth at the Freemont fair. A kindly older man looks up and says, “Do you speak Hindi?” to which I answer, “yes”. He tries out a few phrases on us, and his accent is respectable. He tells us about his time in India. I groan inwardly -- why is it that every non-Indian male who starts a conversation with me seems to have an insatiable urge to tell me about that one time they were in India? Or how they know Ravi Shankar? Or how I must eat ‘such spicy food’? Yes, one billion of us possess miraculous abilities to eat food spicier than anything you could comprehend. And we’re uniformly spiritually advanced yogis too. Then they want to go to India. And close the conversation by saying how I’m beautiful because I’m Indian. Oh, and throw in an Aishwarya Rai reference, as well as the one Bollywood flick they’ve ever seen.

I’m still rolling my eyes when we leave the dry shelter of the jewelry booth, pressing forward in the now-familiar Seattle drizzle. A curly brown-haired young hippie-looking guy, holding a guitar, loudly addresses us in Hindi, “NAMASTE! Sabkooh sapna hai” except that we could not understand his Hindi, due to his accent. We turn towards him, confused.

“I think he said, ‘sabkooch samne hai’ [everything is in front of you]”, I ventured, to my MIL.

“Wait, really? Not ‘sabkooch apna hai’ [everything is mine],” she responded. Apparently exhausted with our own conjecture, we turn back to the hippie-looking, guitar-holding guy, and ask, “wait, what did you say?”

“Do you guys speak Hindi?” Whoa. There’s that line again. Is this how Seattle-ites greet strangers?

“Yes, of course. What were you saying?”

“Everything is a dream,” he responded. Oh goodness, I thought to myself, he’s starting to flirt, and I am standing here with my in-laws. Who hits on someone with her parents watching? (And, for the record, I wear a wedding ring on my left hand). Polite banter followed about -- guess what -- Ravi Shankar. Eager to end this rain-soaked insipidity, my MIL and I turn to leave. He then turns conspiratorially to my FIL and comments, “aren’t Indian women beautiful?” Really? This dialog actually took place out of a comic strip?

More comedy: at my office, anytime someone speaking to me refers to a project in India or Indian food, they gesture towards me.

While I’m grateful that these anecdotes are neither traumatic nor hate driven, they constitute racism in that I am viewed first and foremost as my race. Similar to how dripping water can wear away rock, or how well-being erodes when faced with verbal abuse (just ask the French government), these small barbs injure a sense of individuality and belonging over time. Place the idea of complete assimilation in this context, and it quickly becomes obvious that integration cannot happen without an accepting environment.

Looking back at the ill-placed Time piece, I can’t quite get angry at Joel Stein even though his piece does an astoundingly good job at missing the point. He opens with “I am very much in favor of immigration everywhere in the U.S. except Edison, N.J.” (italics added) where he explicitly condemns a particular branch of immigrants. He then insults them, saying:

In the 1990s, the not-as-brilliant merchants brought their even-less-bright cousins, and we started to understand why India is so damn poor.

Then he admits that Indians have helped his precious hometown survive economically.

Stein continues to demonstrate his complete ignorance, blessed as he may be with his titular “own private India”, by saying that one billion Indians are “familiar … [with] instruct[ing] stupid Americans to reboot their Internet routers.” If you ask the vast majority of Indians about routers, they might stare at you blank-faced. India is not all Bangalore and high-tech. Still though, reading about Stein’s sense of dislocation when his “town is totally unfamiliar to me [him]” draws real sympathy, even from a member of the group he feels so threatened by -- but isn’t this the reason for all the aphorisms about change? And isn’t this perceived threat the most neatly circumscribed definition of xenophobia? And this is precisely why the scars of immigration remain, even two generations later. But this comes full circle: this is also what Stein and these immigrants share, in addition to the more tangible, crowded space of Edison, NJ.

Calling Stein’s perspective or my experiences offensive isn’t the right word -- nothing that’s outlined here is blatantly mean-spirited, just severely misguided. To my boys, the idea that any generalization can be made about Indian women, i.e., half of a billion people, is indescribably ludicrous. And Stein: nice blinders -- are they hip right now? Because so is the other side of the story.

think that because openly declared white supremacy is marginalized now, racism is dead

Comedian John Oliver of "The Daily Show" is at it again, making light of racism in Africa. Last year, he provided a pungent example of hipster racism during an interview with Zachary Muburi-Muita, the Kenyan Ambassador to the United Nations. In that skit, Oliver tried to get his Kenyan interviewee to admit he misses the good old days of white colonialism. Oliver's white hipster irony became insufferable when Muburi-Muita objected to Oliver's trivialization of such a serious and painful subject, and Oliver just kept going, with what amounted to a rude and (truly) ironic racist joke.

Yesterday, Oliver struck again. In the following skit, he rides the World Cup bandwagon to South Africa, pretending to be a tourist on the hunt for "the good stuff" -- "vintage" racism, in the forms of hardcore bigotry and "real live race riots!"

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

www.thedailyshow.com

The joke here is that although Oliver seems to search high and low, interviewing both black and white people, he just can't find racism anywhere -- "No matter where I looked, I couldn't find a single racist!" Until, that is, he encounters the lunatic, far-right fringe, in the form of a whacky, self-declared white supremacist. Oliver then lets Dan Roodt, an "activist for an all-white, separate nation," spout some ugly nonsense about crime and IQ differences and so on.

The problem with this skit's central joke is that it's based on a false premise. Oliver is playing a fool who doesn't realize something that everyone else supposedly knows, but that something actually isn't true; the skit's false premise is that racism is now effectively dead in South Africa. It's not.

What this skit does, in typical white-liberal fashion, is individualize racism. The far more damaging and insidious form -- institutional racism, a form very much alive in South Africa -- goes ignored.

In 2008, the country's Commission for Employment Equity released the results of a study of institutional racism. The commission's chair, Jimmy Manyi, said then that racism in South Africa "still rages":

"The only difference is that previously it was more overt, but now it has assumed sophisticated forms in day-to-day work practices," Manyi said.

Handing over the annual 2007/2008 report to Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana, Manyi said the "finite data" received from large employers showed the "gross under-representation" of Africans, Coloureds and people with disabilities in the top three levels of management and that Whites dominated.

"Institutional racism continues to reign supreme," he said.

"The actual data we are getting from the companies is telling us that the people who are benefiting from recruitment and promotions in the majority are white," he said.

The report also shows that while South Africa's "Economically Active Population" is about 88% black, their proportion at top management levels in 2007 was only 28.8%. Affirmative Action policies have been in place as a corrective, in terms not only of race, but also disability and gender. However, Manyi said, "Only white women seem to be benefiting disproportionately in terms of this legislation [which allows for affirmative action] and black women are really lagging behind" (the report thus resembles results in the U.S., where the largest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action have also typically been white women).

I often enjoy the more biting satire of "The Daily Show," including that of John Oliver. However, when the topic of race comes up on the show, so do my hackles (though I do think their "Senior Black Correspondent," Larry Wilmore, consistently skewers white racism effectively). Laughing at hardcore racists might work to further marginalize them, but it's also a way of ignoring more refined, significant, and damaging forms of racism.

quotation of the week (w.e.b. du bois)

(a currently available t-shirt,

at a site to which I will not link --

Hipster Irony? Or Arab Trader Argument?)

In 1920, in the aftermath of World War I, W.E.B. Du Bois published a searing essay, "The Souls of White Folk." The following excerpt seems especially relevant in light of today's "news" (even as fools rush in to deny the relevance of this "news"). Du Bois describes how white people considered the "world war" an especially horrible war in part because the white people in it killed other white people -- instead of just exploiting, abusing, and killing the usual victims, darker peoples. Du Bois also had a clear eye for how darker peoples fit into the standard white logic of war:

War is horrible! This the dark world knows to its awful cost. But has it just become horrible, in these last days, when under essentially equal conditions, equal armament, and equal waste of wealth white men are fighting white men, with surgeons and nurses hovering near?

Think of the wars through which we have lived in the last decade: in German Africa, in British Nigeria, in French and Spanish Morocco, in China, in Persia, in the Balkans, in Tripoli, in Mexico, and in a dozen lesser places -- were not these horrible, too? Mind you, there were for most of these wars no Red Cross funds.

Behold little Belgium and her pitiable plight, but has the world forgotten Congo? What Belgium now suffers is not half, not even a tenth, of what she has done to black Congo since Stanley's great dream of 1880. Down the dark forests of inmost Africa sailed this modern Sir Galahad, in the name of "the noble-minded men of several nations," to introduce commerce and civilization. What came of it? "Rubber and murder, slavery in its worst form," wrote Glave in 1895.

Harris declares that King Leopold's regime meant the death of twelve million natives, "but what we who were behind the scenes felt most keenly was the fact that the real catastrophe in the Congo was desolation and murder in the larger sense. The invasion of family life, the ruthless destruction of every social barrier, the shattering of every tribal law, the introduction of criminal practices which struck the chiefs of the people dumb with horror -- in a word, a veritable avalanche of filth and immorality overwhelmed the Congo tribes."

Yet the fields of Belgium laughed, the cities were gay, art and science flourished; the groans that helped to nourish this civilization fell on deaf ears because the world round about was doing the same sort of thing elsewhere on its own account.

As we saw the dead dimly through rifts of battle smoke and heard faintly the cursings and accusations of blood brothers, we darker men said: This is not Europe gone mad; this is not aberration nor insanity; this is Europe; this seeming Terrible is the real soul of white culture -- back of all culture -- stripped and visible today. This is where the world has arrived -- these dark and awful depths and not the shining and ineffable heights of which it boasted. Here is whither the might and energy of modern humanity has really gone. . . .

Manifestly it is expansion overseas; it is colonial aggrandizement which explains, and alone adequately explains, the World War. How many of us today fully realize the current theory of colonial expansion, of the relation of Europe which is white, to the world which is black and brown and yellow? Bluntly put, that theory is this: It is the duty of white Europe to divide up the darker world and administer it for Europe's good.

This Europe has largely done. The European world is using black and brown men for all the uses which men know. Slowly but surely white culture is evolving the theory that "darkies" are born beasts of burden for white folk. It were silly to think otherwise, cries the cultured world, with stronger and shriller accord. The supporting arguments grow and twist themselves in the mouths of merchant, scientist, soldier, traveler, writer, and missionary. Darker peoples are dark in mind as well as in body; of dark, uncertain, and imperfect descent; of frailer, cheaper stuff; they are cowards in the face of Mausers and Maxims; they have no feelings, aspirations, and loves; they are fools, illogical idiots -- "half-devil and half-child."

Such as they are civilization must, naturally, raise them, but soberly and in limited ways. They are not simply dark white men. They are not "men" in the sense that Europeans are men. To the very limited extent of their shallow capacities lift them to be useful to whites, to raise cotton, gather rubber, fetch ivory, dig diamonds -- and let them be paid what men think they are worth -- white men who know them to be well-nigh worthless.

Such degrading of men by men is as old as mankind and the invention of no one race or people. Ever have men striven to conceive of their victims as different from the victors, endlessly different, in soul and blood, strength and cunning, race and lineage. It has been left, however, to Europe and to modern days to discover the eternal worldwide mark of meanness -- color!

There is a chance for exploitation on an immense scale for inordinate profit, not simply to the very rich, but to the middle class and to the laborers. This chance lies in the exploitation of darker peoples. It is here that the golden hand beckons. Here are no labor unions or votes or questioning onlookers or inconvenient consciences. These men may be used down to the very bone, and shot and maimed in "punitive" expeditions when they revolt. In these dark lands "industrial development" may repeat in exaggerated form every horror of the industrial history of Europe, from slavery and rape to disease and maiming, with only one test of success -- dividends!

This theory of human culture and its aims has worked itself through warp and woof of our daily thought with a thoroughness that few realize. Everything great, good, efficient, fair, and honorable is "white"; everything mean, bad, blundering, cheating, and dishonorable is "yellow"; a bad taste is "brown"; and the devil is "black." The changes of this theme are continually rung in picture and story, in newspaper heading and moving picture, in sermon and school book, until, of course, the King can do no wrong -- a White Man is always right and a Black Man has no rights which a white man is bound to respect.

There must come the necessary despisings and hatreds of these savage half-men, this unclean canaille of the world -- these dogs of men. All through the world this gospel is preaching. It has its literature, it has its priests, it has its secret propaganda and above all -- it pays!

There's the rub -- it pays. Rubber, ivory, and palm oil; tea, coffee, and cocoa; bananas, oranges, and other fruit; cotton, gold, and copper -- they, and a hundred other things which dark and sweating bodies hand up to the white world from their pits of slime, pay and pay well, but of all that the world gets the black world gets only the pittance that the white world throws it disdainfully.

Small wonder, then, that in the practical world of things-that-be there is jealousy and strife for the possession of the labor of dark millions, for the fight to bleed and exploit the colonies of the world where this golden stream may be had, not always for the asking, but surely for the whipping and shooting. It was this competition for the labor of yellow, brown, and black folks that was the cause of the World War. Other causes have been glibly given and other contributing causes there doubtless were, but they were subsidiary and subordinate to this vast quest of the dark world's wealth and toil.

Colonies, we call them, these places where "niggers" are cheap and the earth is rich; they are those outlands where like a swarm of hungry locusts white masters may settle to be served as kings, wield the lash of slave drivers, rape girls and wives, grow as rich as Croesus and send homeward a golden stream. They belt the earth, these places, but they cluster in the tropics, with its darkened peoples: in Hong Kong and Anam, in Borneo and Rhodesia, in Sierra Leone and Nigeria, in Panama and Havana -- these are the El Dorados toward which the world powers stretch itching palms.


cf. the apostasy of John Perkins and Major General Smedley Darlington Butler. Can you recommend others?

displace non-white peoples and put their cultures on display in zoos

This is a guest post written for swpd by Shannon Joyce Prince.

Ota Benga, a Congolese pygmy who was featured
in a 1906 human zoo exhibit at
New York City's Bronx Zoo.

The Houston Zoo has proudly announced a new project, The African Forest, which is set to open in December, 2010 if we don’t put a halt to it. According to the Zoo’s website, The African Forest is not just about exhibiting "magnificent wildlife and beautiful habitats. It's about people, and the wonderful, rich cultures that we all can share." Actually, The African Forest is about exhibiting and teaching inaccurate Western conceptions of African indigenous cultures in a place designed to exhibit and teach about animals. The African Forest is also about making and keeping African indigenous peoples conservation refugees.

Fairs, exhibitions, and zoos that showcase, market, or teach about non-white peoples as though they were animals are called “human zoos.” Human zoos allowed and still allow targeted non-whites to be redefined as animals in Western, European, or First World spaces, in order to justify past, current, or planned white  mistreatment of non-white peoples in the non-white peoples’ homelands.

According to the Houston Zoo’s website, The African Forest includes an “African Marketplace Plaza,” selling gifts from “from all over the world” and offering dining with a “view of giraffes"; a “Pygmy Village and Campground,” showcasing “African art, history, and folklore,” where visitors can stay overnight; “Pygmy Huts,” where visitors will be educated about pygmies and “African culture,” hear stories, and be able to stay overnight; a “Storytelling Fire Pit”; an “Outpost” where visitors, while getting refreshments, will view posters “promoting ecotourism, conservation messages, and African wildlife refuges”; a “Communications Hut and Conservation Kiosk,” where “visitors will use a replicated shortwave radio and listen in on simulated conversations taking place throughout Africa”; a “Rustic Outdoor Shower,” representing the fact that the fictional “Pygmy Village” “recently got running water,” where children can “cool off”; a section of the “Pygmy Village” where children can handle “African musical instruments and artifacts”; and “Tree House Specimen Cabinets.” which showcase “objects, artifacts, and artwork.”[i]

Stuff White People Do: Misconstrue Africa

Africa is not a monolith. Africa is a continent of fifty-three nations and even more cultures. So while one may speak of a Ugandan forest, a Yoruba marketplace, or Xhosa culture, Africa is such a diverse continent that the idea of, for example, an “African marketplace” is meaningless.

The Houston Zoo’s website specifies that “The African Forest” is really the “central African forest,” but just as Africa is not a monolith, so central Africa is also not a monolith. Central Africa contains Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda. Therefore, it’s problematic that in a website video, the Zoo refers to “the culture of central Africa” as though there were only one.

The ironic part of representing all Africa in the context of the central African forest is that certain aspects of both Africa in general and central Africa in particular are conspicuously absent from this “everything but the kitchen sink” approach. For example, why are the large cities, skyscrapers, boutiques, and movie theaters of Africa missing, while The African Forest shows off the village that just got running water? I am emphatically against the idea that there is anything less modern about a “Pygmy hut” than a glass and steel tower, but the Zoo is only showing aspects of Africa that fit Western stereotypes of “primitivism.”[ii]

Stuff White People Do: Frame Africa Ignorantly and Inaccurately

1) The Zoo proclaims on its website, “The African Forest will transform the way Houstonians view the world by providing visitors with a glimpse into the remote forests of central Africa and the distinctive people that call it home. By understanding and appreciating the challenges these people face, we will be better equipped to work with them to preserve our fragile world and to make it a better place for future generations.”[iii]
2) A spokesperson for the Zoo stated in the Houston Chronicle, “This delves into habitat; conflict between man and the wild.”[iv]
3) The Zoo also says in its description of The African Forest that the project contains an “Outpost” where visitors, while getting refreshments, will view posters “promoting ecotourism, conservation messages, and African wildlife refuges.”
4) Finally, the Zoo’s blog states, “To that end, the Houston Zoo’s conservation efforts will focus on developing wildlife, habitat, and human community support programs … If the ability for native people to coexist with their habitat is taken away from them without offering a sustainable solution, then wildlife and habitat conservation efforts are bound to fail…”

Let’s start with the Zoo’s first quote, which basically exhorts visitors to take up the White Man’s Burden. Africans have millennia of knowledge on how to care for their environments, but we’re the ones in the position to tell them what to do. Apparently, the only reason to learn about African cultures is to control them.

The next problem with that quote is that it's gallingly hypocritical. Is it primarily Africans or Westerners who own polluting industries, mining industries, the corporations that use the resources that are mined, and the corporations that create toxins -- all of which threaten the well-being of animals and people alike?

The hypocrisy of the Zoo’s quote is tied to the fact that when Western entities decide they want to “help” the environment or animals, too frequently they do not change their own behavior, but rather declare they are helping by dominating Africans’ and/or indigenous peoples’ lives and behavior. In “Reflections on Distance and Katrina,” Jim Igoe of Dartmouth College[v] says, “Exxon Mobil is also sponsoring part of conservation interventions initiated by the African Wildlife Foundation,” which means that “local people targeted by this intervention are being encouraged by the African Wildlife Foundation and the Tanzanian government to enter into agreements and sign things that they don’t fully understand.” This “transforms these landscapes from peopled landscapes to those dominated by wildlife, which has made them attractive to private investors at the expense of locals. It also provides Exxon Mobil, and many other corporations that sponsor conservation interventions, with tax breaks and a valuable green public image enhancement.”

Inaccurately framing the culture or cultures being exhibited in a human zoo is tradition. The Houston Zoo's upcoming African Forest dares to teach the zoo's patrons that indigenous Africans are in conflict with wildlife, but falsely claiming that indigenous Africans harm animals is a well known tactic to violate their human rights and drive them from their traditional lands -- often in cahoots with organizations such as the World Bank, NGOs, and corporations.

Survival International notes that “the Aka, like all of the 'Pygmy' peoples in Central Africa, are under threat…huge areas of good forest have been turned into parks or wildlife reserves that are guarded by armed thugs who beat up the Pygmies and drive them out of their ancestral hunting grounds. And yet the Pygmies are the real guardians of the forest. As their proverb explains: 'We Aka love the forest as we love our own bodies' ” (italics mine.)[vi] To learn more about pygmy and other African and indigenous peoples’ views on conservation see this endnote.[vii]

Now refer to the third quote. Let’s examine ecotourism first. According to Lee Pera and Deborah McLaren,[viii] tourism “has been promoted as a panacea for ‘sustainable’ development. However, tourism's supposed benefits … have not ‘trickled down’ or benefited Indigenous Peoples. The destructiveness of the tourism industry … has brought great harm to many Indigenous Peoples and communities around the world…”

They also say, “It is no coincidence that those who have lost their lands … are forced into service-sector employment in the tourism industry and are increasingly dependent on the whims of the global market and the corporations which run it” (italics mine.)

McLaren adds, "Global tourism threatens indigenous knowledge and intellectual property rights, our technologies, religions, sacred sites, social structures and relationships, wildlife, ecosystems, economies and basic rights to informed understanding; reducing indigenous peoples to simply another consumer product that is quickly becoming exhaustible" (italics mine.)

Georgianne Nienaber writing for central African (Rwandan) newspaper The New Times states, “The story of tourism in Africa causes one to weep… a tragedy in which western businesses sent most of the money back home to the colonialist developers… Foreign workers held the most lucrative management positions, reducing the local ‘service providers’ to little more than slave labour…”[ix]

A paper published by the Forest Peoples Programme in conjunction with the United Organisation for Batwa Development in Uganda -- the Batwa pygmy people’s own organization -- quotes a Mutwa pygmy as saying, “Don’t mix us with other people, leave us separate and help us.”[x]

Now let’s examine the last two things the “Outpost” in The African Forest promotes: “conservation messages and African wildlife refuges.” Conservation in Africa and the creation of wildlife refuges on the continent are notorious for the frequent creation of “wildlife refugees.” This means that African governments, Western businesses, and NGOs violate the human rights of Africans, decide they have no right to their traditional lands, and literally make them refugees alongside, for example, refugees of war. In other words, in Africa it’s common for conservationists to create refuges to conserve wildlife by simply kicking Africans out.

As I noted earlier, the African Wildlife Foundation partnered with Exxon Mobil to displace Tanzanians. An employee representing Exxon Mobil Corporation is on the Houston Zoo's Board of Directors.

Exxon is known for the Valdez Oil Spill, the Brooklyn Oil Spill, and the Greenpoint Oil Spill, and despite its eagerness to support the Houston Zoo and create a wildlife refuge in Tanzania, the company is currently harming endangered gray whales. As if its crimes against nature weren’t enough, the company is currently being accused of sharing responsibility for " Indonesian Military Killings, Torture and other Severe Abuse in Aceh, Indonesia” such as rape and murder, according to the International Labor Rights Forum.

An employee representing Shell Downstream, Inc. is another of the Zoo’s board members. Royal Dutch Shell is a multinational petroleum company notorious for committing crimes against humanity, abusing African indigenous people, torturing people, and poisoning the environment. This is the company that is widely believed yet never has admitted to helping facilitate the execution of legendary environmental and indigenous rights leader Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other indigenous Ogoni Nigerians who protested the theft of Ogoni land for oil extraction. The company was condemned by the Nigerian High Court and activists as recently as 2005 and 2008 for “violating the constitutional ‘rights to life and dignity.’ ” Shell, in addition to its other crimes against human rights, creates conservation refugees.[xi]

And lest I forget, one of the Zoo’s donors is Chevron.[xii] As you might expect, Chevron also makes indigenous people conservation refugees.[xiii] Furthermore, Chevron is currently being sued for 27 billion dollars by an indigenous Amazonian community whose rainforest was polluted by the corporation’s oil-drilling.[xiv]

The conservation refugee problem is so bad that, according to Mark Dowie, hundreds of thousands of people have been made refugees due to conservation and conservation refuges. Beyond the fact that making people refugees in the name of conservation is evil -- it doesn’t even help conservation. As Mark Dowie says in Paradigm Wars, “90 percent of biodiversity lies outside of protected areas. If we want to preserve biodiversity in the far reaches of the globe, places that are in many cases still occupied by indigenous people living in ways that are ecologically sustainable, history is showing us that the most counterproductive thing we can do is evict them.”[xv]

Refer back to the Zoo’s fourth group of quotes. The Zoo freely states that indigenous people’s right to coexist with their habitat is being “taken” from them. And, as can be expected, they promise to throw a few scraps to indigenous peoples as a consolation prize for violating their human rights. But what do “sustainable solutions” for indigenous people really mean? As Jim Igoe says, after being made refugees in the name of conservation by one of the Zoo’s donors, Exxon Mobil, Tanzanians were then told “their only way out of poverty is to become junior partners in conservation-oriented business ventures on grossly unfavorable terms.” This treatment is the rule, not the exception, when it comes to treatment of conservation refugees, according to Mark Dowie.

So let’s sum things up: The Houston Zoo, which is funded by corporations notorious for destroying the environment, harming wildlife, violating human rights, and creating conservation/wildlife parks by making Africans and other indigenous peoples conservation refugees, is creating a human zoo called The African Forest that supports and promotes the creation/continuation of conservation parks and the attendant perpetuation of the conservation refugee crisis.

Please consider opposing The African Forest, human zoos, and the creation/perpetuation of the conservation refugee crisis in one or more of the following ways:

1. Tell the Houston Zoo you are against The African Forest human zoo and the creation of conservation refugees as well as the continuation of the conservation refugee crisis by contacting the Houston Zoo here: http://houstonzoo.com/contact/. Tell the Houston Zoo that you will boycott zoos that host human zoos and/or make/keep Africans conservation refugees. Be sure to send a copy of your message to nohumanzoo@yahoo.com so that we have a record of your letter in case the Zoo doesn’t respond and to prevent the Zoo from deciding to claim that no one is protesting.

2. Send your name and, if you want, affiliation to nohumanzoo@yahoo.com if you want to be put on a petition stating, “We, the undersigned, do not support The African Forest human zoo, the creation of conservation refugees, or the continuation of the conservation refugee crisis.”

3. Raise awareness about The African Forest through your website, blog, email list, livejournal, etc. and encourage others to write the Zoo and sign the petition.

Please be aware that, naturally, the letter you send or your signature on the petition may be made public.


The original version of this paper is thirty nine pages as long and has much more information. If you would like the full version of this paper email nohumanzoo@yahoo.com.

Thank you so much for your help!


Notes

[i] http://www.houstonzoo.org/naming-opportunities/, http://www.houstonzoo.org/attachments/wysiwyg/3/NamingOppsFeb3.pdf

[ii] Some might argue that features of urban life wouldn’t be appropriate to include as urban dwellers do not live in harmony with nature. That argument ignores the fact that The African Forest teaches the lie that rural indigenous Africans in fact don’t live in harmony with nature either.

[iii] http://www.houstonzoo.org/en/photos/albums/v/63

[iv] http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/breaking/6551657.html

[v] At the time his paper was written, he was affiliated with the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

[vi] http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/93

[vii] http://www.forestpeoples.org/documents/conservation/uganda_review_cbd_pa_jan08_eng.pdf, http://www.forestpeoples.org/documents/conservation/bases/p_to_p_project_base.shtml#english, http://www.forestpeoples.org/documents/ifi_igo/wb_ips_uganda_may00_eng.shtml, and other resources on http://www.forestpeoples.org/index.shtml

[viii] http://www.planeta.com/planeta/99/1199globalizationrt.html

[ix] http://www.nextbillion.net/news/ecotourism-greedy-lover-or-savior, Nienaber cites (Pera and McLaren, Globalization, Tourism and Indigenous Peoples: What You Should Know About the World's Largest Industry, www.planeta.com)

[x] http://www.forestpeoples.org/documents/ifi_igo/wb_ips_uganda_may00_eng.shtml

[xi] http://commonsblog.org/archives/000578.php

[xii] http://www.houstonzoo.org/donors/

[xiii] http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/161/

[xiv] http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9EPOS7O0.htm

[xv] Again, in the interest of keeping this long essay from being any longer than necessary, I encourage those wanting more information on conservation refugees to read Mark Dowie’s work in Orion Magazine, and his book Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict Between Global Conservation and Native Peoples.

travel to other countries in order to "experience the people's pain"

An swpd reader sent the following email, in the hopes of hearing from other readers about what she describes:

My best friend's boyfriend (white) has recently revealed to me that, if he were ever in South Africa, he would want to live in the townships for a week in order to understand what the black South Africans go through, and "to see what $20 would do." He thinks that such an experience would make him a better person. Having to listen to him talk about this stuff made me really uneasy, but I didn't know how to articulate why it made me so uneasy. (Also, the reason he wants to go to South Africa in the first place is because he wants to enjoy the rugby and cricket there.)

However, on the flipside, one of my teachers recently told us about why he teaches, and one of the reasons were his experiences with the disparities in standards of living in India. My teacher, an Indian who grew up in the U.S., decided to go to Calcutta as a young adult specifically in order to be "shocked." I felt uncomfortable when I heard this, but I don't know if that's because I had just had the discussion with my friend's boyfriend. I'm still trying to figure out whether a PoC who goes to another country to be "shocked" is in a completely different scenario that a white person who goes to another country to be "shocked." (However, since my teacher here is an Indian going to India, there are of course other nuances.)

Do you think she's right to find either or both of these travelers in search of other people's pain off base?

And have you encountered other travelers (or wannabe travelers) like this? If so, what did you think?


Update: Thanks to commenter Sean for the following related video, "Gap Yah," by a British comedy group, The Unexpected Items:

associate primitiveness with naturalness

This is a guest post by Lisa Wade, who's one of the hard-blogging sociologists at Sociological Images (where this post first appeared), as well as an assistant professor at Occidental College.


A reader alerted us to a make-up brand called Primitive that makes and sells natural lips sticks, glosses, and pencils. Describing their company, they write:

The company is drawing on familiar associations of primitiveness with naturalness.  We were natural “for centuries,” but have now somehow graduated from naturalness, such that we need to make a special effort to recapture the simple, intelligent, real, and honest beauty of our foremothers.

So, Primitive romanticizes our primitive past while making a questionable assertion about the relationship between time and naturalness.  In addition, the names of their products locate primitiveness in some parts of the (modern) globe and not others:

The products are named after places that are, almost exclusively, in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the South Pacific.  In a previous post I introduced the idea of “anachronistic space.”  I wrote: “Catherine MacKinnon coined the term ‘anachronistic space’ to refer to the idea that different parts of the globe represent different historical periods.”  In this case, Primitive is counting on our associating a (romanticized) primitiveness with only some places and not others.  It’s 2010 in Mali and Morocco.  They don’t represent our own past, they represent unique modernities.  And the places left out of these product names — largely North America and Europe — don’t represent the future.  They are not wholly modern societies that have shed their primitive past; they, just like all societies, are a mixture of old and new stitched together to form the present.

————————————

For more instances in which anachronistic space appears, see our posts on representing the fashion of the Surma and Mursi tribes and Wild African Cream.

And for more on the social construction of the modern and the primitive, see these posts: “Africans” as props for white femininity, Union Carbide brings modernity to the world, primitive Australia cures modern ills, women as carries of tradition and progress, representing the Middle East, equating modernity with permissiveness, and civilizing the Pueblos.

devalue non-white experience and expertise about non-white countries

This is an email-turned-guest-post by Nomunfo, who writes of herself, "I am of mixed heritage, my dad is black and mom is white but I consider myself a black African. I was born in Liberia but have lived in Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ghana, and South Africa."


I've been a long time lurker on your blog and I really do enjoy reading the posts and comments. There's something that has been troubling me, and I seem to get a mixed reaction from my friends and worry if I'm overacting.

First a few things about myself. I recently completed my masters program at a prestigious UK university and I am very well traveled. I also speak two languages (French and English). I was born in Africa and lived there for 15 yrs (in several countries too) before moving to the States for high school and college and settling down in Europe. I recently applied for a position at an international institute in Germany that was looking for a research assistant for their Africa Department. I applied but found out a few (2) weeks later I had not received the position.

I browsed the page two weeks later to find out who had been selected over me, and it was a girl who was completing her Ph.D. I searched for work she had done and scholarly publications and found that she had done quite some research on the continent, but had never been there. So I spoke to my friends and asked them if it was fair to pick a Ph.D student who had never been to Africa over a Master's student who had lived in several African countries.

Most of my white friends believed that because she had a Ph.D and had published works that she was more qualified than myself. I told them that this is something White People tend to do, hire a white person who has never spent a day on the continent instead of someone who has lived in that part of the world. My best mate said I was being completely unfair to this girl who I did not know and was bitter about not being selected.

I will admit that I was a bit hurt because I do believe I was adequately qualified for that role. Now I worry that I may have overacted and that I should accept that this girl is way more qualified than I am.

Are my friends right?

The reason I concern myself with such issues is that very often, the continent and its people are painted in unfavorable manners. Having lived there, I understand the politics and the issues people face. I've still got family there. Often time what upsets me is that most of the people (in the World Bank, UN, IMF) implementing policies that affect most countries in Africa have not lived on the continent and do not grasp how these policies affect generations.

Anyway I feel like I am ranting. Hope you can offer some advice.

Nomunfo

PS....Feel free to post this on your blog. I would like to get some feedback from your very insightful and intelligent readers.

---

What do you think, dear readers?

Since Nomunfo asked for my thoughts, here's what I wrote in return -- I kept it brief, because I'm sure readers here have more experience with such situations than I:

I don't think you were being paranoid. Unfortunately, it seems that you can't know for certain why she was chosen and not you, but I think it's likely that white/Western ways of knowing were privileged unjustly over your more experiential knowledge. Also, I think your white friend displayed a common white tendency, which is to rather arrogantly explain away the probable racism that a black person is trying to point out -- a terrible irony, because the black person is actually more likely to know what is probably racism than the average white person is!

I look forward to hearing what readers have to say, and I hope it all helps you sort through your situation.

insist on telling people of asian descent about their own asian experiences

This is a guest post by Jennifer, who blogs at Mixed Race America.  Jennifer -- who recently did a series of posts about her travel in the Southern U.S. with "Southern Man" -- describes herself as a "30-something professor of contemporary  American literature and Asian American literature interested in issues  of social justice and specifically how to create spaces to talk  comfortably (and sometimes uncomfortably) about race."


My intent during this road/research trip I'm making around "The South" was to blog about it every night. But I have been pretty tired the last few nights -- long nights driving and then long days of sight seeing and information gathering. So I'm a bit delayed in my narrative, but that's OK -- I don't need to share every single detail on this blog about what I'm doing!

But I did want to share a bit about our time in Sewanee, TN. I went there, or rather that area, to do research at The University of the South in Sewanee, TN -- an old and revered liberal arts college of the south, as its name clearly implies. There really isn't any place to stay in Sewanee itself, so Southern Man and I made our way to a lovely bed and breakfast inn in Cowan, TN, The Franklin-Pearson Hotel, run by Jared Pearson.

When we got to the inn we were tired (over 8 hours in the car), hungry, and a bit cranky. Or maybe this was just me. Jared directed us to a restaurant, High Point, in nearby Monteagle. I wish I brought my camera because the house that the restaurant was in was a beautiful old stone house, apparently financed by money from Al Capone - -he used the house as part of his bootlegging operations! So there are apparently all these hidden entrances and trap doors and false walls -- at least that's what the brochure to the house said.

Now the thing about small towns in the South is that people love to talk to you. For example, Jared, our innkeeper, told us all about the politics of the town-gown divide between the University of the South and the local communities (something quite common in many small town college communities). And our waiter at the restaurant told us all about the history of the restaurant. And while I was doing research in the archives, Southern Man went to a coffee shop where he met local residents and the owner of the cafe, who also shared all sorts of stories with him about Sewanee and the surrounding area. This is part of what it's like to travel in small towns in the South. People like talking to you.

And for the most part, I've grown accustomed to this. My natural demeanor whenever I travel, whether on an airplane or by car, is to put on a polite face, but one that suggests I am not interested in conversation or small chit chat. Because especially when you are on an airplane, you DO NOT want to get trapped next to the woman who is going to talk to you the entire flight across the continental U.S. about her mother issues (this happened to me once) or the guy who is trying to hit on you and who actually keeps bothering you, even when you have your laptop up and your headphones on (again, another true story).

But after living in "The South" for a few years, I've learned that this is part of the culture of many communities here -- and after all, when in Rome.

However, no matter where I am, I'm never comfortable with a conversation that begins with this opening salvo:

"What part of Asia are you from?"

At the end of our dinner (which was quite good--I had scallops and Southern Man had a NY strip and we ended the evening with creme brulee--YUM), when Southern Man went to the restroom, an older gentleman who had been sitting with his wife (she also was not at the table when he broached me) asked me, "What part of Asia are you from?"

Now, I should tell you that the room that we were in was the size of a small dining room and there were only half a dozen tables in it, and during our meal there was only one other occupied table -- the one with this older white couple -- they looked to be in their late 60s. It was clear that they were listening to our conversation, because at a certain point when we talked about what we were going to be doing when we got to Memphis, the woman chimed in and said, "Oh we're from Memphis! It's lovely -- you should go in May!" Southern Man thanked her -- I didn't even make eye contact with her, I mean, we were in the middle of a conversation and the entrees hadn't come yet and I didn't want to open the door for having to talk to this couple all night long (they seemed the type who would invite you to join them at their table and we were both at 4-tops).

Anyway, this OWM (older white male) asks me the question that I dread -- the variant of "Where are you from/what are you" -- because that's really what he wants to know -- he wants to know what I am. Because since he's been eavesdropping on our conversation all night, he would have picked up on the fact that I have no discernible accent, and since I talked about my research and was working out with Southern Man the different components of my class at Southern U., it should have also been clear that I was not a visiting foreign professor.

So I looked at him, unblinkingly, and asked him to repeat the question -- I was really stalling for time because I wasn't sure how I wanted to answer him -- it was late, dinner was over -- we were waiting for the check. He repeated the question -- admitted that he had been listening to our previous conversation (I had been talking about my grandfather and his life in China earlier, as well as the research that a friend of mine is doing in Cambodia around issues of the tribunals for the former Khmer Rouge and the killing fields), and he wanted to know whether I was from Asia.

I think a quick glance at me would tell you that I appear to be Asian and probably Asian American. Again, he didn't want to know about whether I was from Asia -- there was another motivation behind his line of inquiry -- and perhaps, in hindsight, my 6th sense also told me this from non-verbal cues -- his absolute confidence in how he posed the question -- his assumption that it was OK to talk to me and ask me this question.

So I told him that I was from California and that I consider myself to be Californian. He then moved on to asking me where my parents are from -- he wasn't phased by me putting him off. And I said that my mother was from Jamaica -- which was actually the wrong tactical move to make because I kid you not, his eyes LIT UP and he leaned in towards me and squinted and said,

"I never would have guessed by looking at you!"

At this point his wife had rejoined him, and I realized my error in trying to throw him off -- that it was only going to reinforce his exoticization of me and my family, so I said,

"No, you wouldn't probably because she's Chinese Jamaican."

At this point I was hoping he would drop it and leave me alone -- I was not smiling and clearly not enjoying out tete-a-tete. But that's the thing about white privilege -- it means that those actively employing it -- and I would put this OWM in that category -- don't care about what YOU want -- he only cared about what HE wanted to get out of the conversation.

And what he wanted to demonstrate to me, and perhaps to remind his wife was that he had traveled all over Asia, including Cambodia -- yes, he had heard us talking about Cambodia, he said -- and then he proceeded to list ALL OF THE ASIAN COUNTRIES that he had been to and that he had been to Cambodia DURING THE WAR WHEN HE WAS IN THE MARINES.

AGHHHH!!!!!!

This was now THE WORST because not only was I accosted by an OWM, but it turns out that he's a Veteran of the war in Viet Nam and he wants to regale me with bombing stories of Cambodia and to tell me about all the Asian countries he went back to visit over the war (he said that specifically -- that he went back to Asia after the war to see what had happened to it after he left).

Now, I am not trying to diss veterans. I'm sure this man has his share of PTSD stories and that there is a genuine interest that he has in Asia since he has a connection to it that is unique.

However, I don't need to be part of his therapy and I certainly didn't want to hear his stories or to be the conduit for launching into what he was doing in Asia, during and then years after the war.

Luckily Southern Man came back and we quickly left the restaurant. And Southern Man asked me why I didn't turn the tables and ask him and his wife where they were from -- but the truth is, these people wouldn't have gotten the sarcasm -- I would have had to have been really direct and said, "why aren't you asking my white partner where he is from -- why are you focusing on where I'm from?" and as confrontational and direct as I can be, I really just wanted a nice dinner out after a long day of driving and didn't feel like having to deal with having to educate the older white couple about their white privilege.

But it does give me some food for thought and it does make me wonder next time I'm asked this question and it starts to head into the territory of "look at all the Asian countries I've been to!" whether I won't flip the conversation around to the real motivation behind why I'm being asked this question, or whether I won't just simply speak my truth and tell my interlocutor that s/he is making me feel like an orientalized object and I don't want to continue talking with them anymore because I'm not feeling comfortable with their line of questioning.

Which brings up an interesting question for all of us: when we are faced with this kind of weird racial crap, why don't we get more aggressive?

claim that analyzing the ways of white folks is a waste of time (because there are more important things to analyze)

In the course of running this blog, I've come to understand at least two things much better than I did before -- common white tendencies and the broader context in which they occur. That alone has been worth the time and effort to me, but I sometimes wonder what other people get out of this blog.

Regarding the former understanding for myself, "common white tendencies," I've come to see that I myself am more likely to feel, think, and act in racist ways than I realized; I have a lot of common white tendencies, and in order to be a person whose actions are better aligned with his principles, I need to keep working on them. Regarding the latter understanding, "context," I've come to see that racism is so entrenched in my country (the U.S.) and in others, and so pervasive, that I now routinely describe the social order in a way that I didn't before -- I describe it as "de facto white supremacist."

Recently, my use of that phrase tripped up David “Oso” Sasaki, a blogger who linked approvingly to a guest post here. Here's what happened -- and I'm describing it all because I'd like to ask you about what happened. In that swpd post, "K" wrote about her annoyance with white travelers who pursue "authenticity," especially while traveling in non-white countries.

Oso's post, on his blog El Oso, is an interesting meditation on, as I read it, the folly of seeking "authenticity," especially in a world where a misleading sense of the authentic is increasingly manufactured and sold to us. Oso would know, it seems, as he's apparently a very seasoned traveler.

"I highly recommend the post," Oso writes of K's swpd piece, because it "does a great job of treating authenticity as a commodity, which increasingly it is."

So far so good. But then Oso wrote something that I felt compelled to respond to, and I'd really appreciate your response to my brief exchange with Oso, and especially to his final comment below, which includes a condemnation of swpd itself.

After praising K's discussion of white travelers, Oso wrote,

But, as per usual, I disagree that seeking authenticity in other cultures or treating it as a commodity is limited to only whites. One commenter on the post linked to a New York Times article [which] shows that the same search for authenticity in China is leading yuppie Han Chinese to amusement parks celebrating ethnic minorities like the Dai people. 

I think a lot of readers here would describe this as an example of the Arab Trader Argument -- Abagond's useful term for the problematic pointing-out of other people who also do some of the things that white people do. I left a comment on Oso's post that said, more or less to that effect,

To say, as I do on my blog, that white people have some common tendencies is not to say that no one else has this or that said tendency as well. Rather, it’s worth pointing out that when white people do them, they do them within in an ongoing, de facto white supremacist context. That makes their doing them different from other people’s doing them.

Oso got tripped up on a phrase within that comment, and so he asked in return, "It’s been a while since I roamed the hallways of ivory tower ethnic studies so you’re gonna have to break that one down for me. What exactly does that mean? And how does it differ from what some future Chinese theorist might call 'an ongoing, de facto Han supremacist context'?"

If you're still reading, please hang in there -- I do have something to ask you about. Oso's comment below, especially, got me to thinking about just why I run this blog, and how it may or may not be valuable for various readers.

After explaining what I mean by "de facto white supremacy," I replied to Oso,

I’m just describing the West, including the U.S., as a place that in effect favors whites and disfavors, disregards, delegitimizes, and discriminates against non-whites, at systemic and individual levels. I raised the point [about your post] because I don’t see the value of pointing out that other people also do some of the objectionable things that white people do. In fact, when white people do that kind of pointing out, they’re often doing that in order to deflect attention being paid at the moment to white racism. “But he did it too!” is a playground excuse that should have no place in serious discussions of white racism (not that I necessarily think your pointing out that “other people do it too” was quite that kind of deflection -- or was it?)

Does that make sense?

So finally, here's Oso's comment in return, in which he ends up denouncing a blog (that is, swpd) to which he'd initially linked in a positive way.

What do you think? 

Is Oso making an effective critique below of swpd?

If you're a regular reader of "stuff white people do," what brings you back?

And, does anything in Oso's critique point to ways that you think swpd could be improved (assuming you don't agree with him that it should be shut down)?

Oso wrote,

I take issue with the guest post on your blog -- and with most of the content on your blog in general -- because I don't think that focusing on a critical perspective of just one ethnicity is useful for shaping our thinking about how we can create a more just society.

From what I've read it seems to me that your blog often insinuates that only whites are maliciously discriminatory. If that is the case than those of us who are anti-discrimination should focus all of our efforts on promoting cultural change among the white community. But, throughout my travels I've found that urban, white americans are some of the least discriminatory people I have met. And I mean that both on the surface (panic attacks when deciding between saying "black" or "african american") and deep down (most likely to have close friends of other ethnicities and to think deeply -- as you do -- about legacies of ethnic relations).

I think that one of the illusions of urban, white America -- especially those who don't have many friends of other ethnicities -- is that other groups are not as discriminatory when they are often more discriminatory. It's complex. Dark skinned blacks discriminate against light skinned blacks, and vise versa. Mexicans in Los Angeles discriminate against Guatemalans. And people all over Latin America whisper in your ear "but don't blacks cause a lot of problems in your country?" And that's just ethnicity. When I was in India during 9/11 several hindus told me that the USA should not allow muslims to enter.

My real issue with the framing of your blog (again, at least what I've seen) is that ethnicity is just one of many variables that factor into how we discriminate. Class, religion, taste, geography, accent: depending on the person and situation these factors often transcend ethnicity when we shape our identity and when we discriminate. One of the things that bothers me with soundbites like "what white people like" or "what white people do" is that they are really discussing class and not race. They are describing a demographic that is upper-middle class, urban, and college educated. For whatever reason most of my friends are some ethnicity other than white and just about everything you and the "stuff white people like" guy write applies to them just as much as it applies to me. By claiming that these behaviors and tastes are "white" rather than "urban middle class" you're opening my friends up to criticisms from working class members of their ethnicity that they are "acting white."

Everyone is racist, and whites are surely included. And you're right, when whites are racist it is within a context of centuries of oppressive white racism, which is why it is less acceptable and why you obsess over it. But whites are told that they are racist all the time. You're not changing any minds with what you write. As you can see in the comments on your blog you are either preaching to the choir or you are making people more defensive, more entrenched. You are patient and explanatory in your responses, but I believe you're doing a disservice by only focusing on one small aspect of discrimination. So much social analysis in this country focuses on the "red state-blue state" divide or on race. And in doing so we lose track of just how increasingly divisive class can be. I have a hunch that, like me, you have a diverse group of friends in terms of ethnicity, but that all of them are middle class and almost all are college educated. That is increasingly common, and will become even more common, and it's where we should focus our attention.


I try to learn from criticism. As I told Oso at his blog, I appreciate his thoughtful critique -- even though I obviously disagree with his main point, since I do still run this blog, and I do still focus on white people and de facto white supremacy.

I'd appreciate any responses you might have, about whatever value swpd has for you, and, if you have any suggestions, about how you think it could be improved.

falsely distinguish between (white) expats and (non-white) immigrants

This is a guest post by Daniel Cubias, who blogs at The Hispanic Fanatic. Cubias also writes a column for the Huffington Post, and he writes of the Hispanic Fanatic, who may or may not be an alter-ego, that he "has an IQ of 380, the strength of twelve men, and can change the seasons just by waving his hand. . . . the Hispanic Fanatic is a Latino male in his late thirties. He lives in California, where he works as a business writer. He was raised in the Midwest, but he has also lived in New York."


The waiter approached our table and recited the specials in a flowery French accent. Because I live in Los Angeles, I assume that every waiter is an actor, especially ones who are speaking with outrageous inflections.

But as it turned out, he was the real deal. Over the course of the dinner, he informed us that former Parisians constituted most of the restaurant’s staff. Evidently, the owner was from France, and he liked to help his fellow countrymen get started in this country.

“So you’re an expatriate,” I said.

“Oui,” he answered.

Now, I’m certainly not going to claim that the French are wildly popular with Americans. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that people in this country were ordering freedom fries.

Strangely enough, I don’t recall anybody asking for a freedom kiss. But I digress.

The point is we can all agree that Europeans, in general, receive kinder greetings here than do people from Latin America. In fact, it’s in the very terms we use.

The French waiter was an expat. It’s a word that evokes a daring and exotic nature, an upscale sensibility. It’s a positive term.

In contrast, we refer to Guatemalans and Colombians and Ecuadorians as immigrants. That word conjures up a lot of connotations, but most of them, alas, are not positive.

What is the reason for this dichotomy?

Certainly, legality has something to do with it. I presume that the French waiter has a work visa. The Mexican busboy, in contrast, may not. But as I’ve written before, the self-righteous screeching over the “illegal” part of the phrase “illegal immigrant” doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It’s a point, yes, but a minor one.

The differentiation, according to one unimpeachable source, “comes down to socioeconomic factors… skilled professionals working in another country are described as expatriates, whereas a manual laborer who has moved to another country to earn more money might be labeled an ‘immigrant.’”

It’s an arbitrary, even unfair, definition. But it’s accurate.

Still, that doesn’t explain the difference fully. For example, we would never call someone a Mexican expatriate, even if she were a successful businessperson like the owner of the French restaurant. She is forever an immigrant.

At its most basic level, the reason that we view Frenchman and German women and British people as expats, rather than as immigrants, is because we like them better. We respect them more.

It’s right there in the language.

It works the other way too. Any American adult who chooses to live abroad is an expatriate (with the possible exception of Peace Corps volunteers). It really doesn’t matter if you bum around Europe for years or head up the international office in Hong Kong. If you’re an American living in a foreign land, you’re an expat. You won’t be called an immigrant unless a native resents your presence, and even then, you’re more likely to be called “gringo,” “yanqui,” or “member of the invading imperialist army.”

There is, of course, a long history of Americans moving abroad to have their art better appreciated, or at least to sleep with people who have more interesting accents. It’s the Lost Generation of Hemingway, and the Beat Generation of Kerouac, and the Brooding Generation of Johnny Depp (he lives in France, you know).

So perhaps I will do my part and live out that dream I have about moving to London. It might be amusing to see the British try to figure out if I’m an American expatriate or a Latino immigrant.

Perhaps I would be both.

make non-white people feel marginalized in their own countries

This is a guest post by Doreen Yomoah, a vagabond currently living in Ghana. She's also a founding mother of the Women’s Liberation Army, a motley crew of women scattered throughout the globe who are sick of injustice and planning to do something about it.


I currently reside in Accra, Ghana, where I am a citizen and a member of the ethnic majority (the Ga). However, this is the first time I’ve even been in Ghana since I was 7 (and the first time I’ve lived here since I was one). One day, I was at a bar and met a white woman. My hair was in cornrows. I ran into her later, when my hair was in twists. When we met, she started going on and on about how interesting and intricate African hair is, and how she “wishes she could do that with her hair.” ( I could write a whole other post on white girls telling me how they “wish they could do that with their hair,” and then turning around and putting their hands in my hair like I'm a goddamn dog and asking me stupid questions like “where is your real hair?” It’s in my pocket. Where the hell do you think it is?)

I asked this woman if she really wanted to sit for eight hours to have her hair done, and she expressed shock and disbelief, asking if that was really what it took. Then she went on to say how “new” and “trendy” my hairstyle was, and I told her that braiding and twisting have been around for CENTURIES, and that my hair was no more interesting than hers was. She once again expressed shock to find out that braids aren’t a new style, and reluctantly agreed that my hair was no more interesting than hers.

This fawning and seemingly complimentary commentary about our hair is just another way to other black people. It’s as though she sees her hair as being “regular” hair, and our hair is some weird, exotic, abnormal characteristic. But when you’re in a country where the vast majority of its inhabitants possess (naturally, although a ridiculous percentage of women are relaxing their hair) a certain phenotype and you don't, you’re actually the one with the “weird” hair, not us.

On another occasion, my cousin and I went to a pub frequented by expats, and I swear to Gryffindor, when we walked in, I could hear crickets chirping. Every single patron in the place was white (with the exception of one Asian American woman), and every single server was black. It felt more like 1958 in Birmingham, AL, rather than 2009 in Accra, GH. The white patrons all looked at us as if to say “What are these negroes doing in here?”

“Oh hell, no,” I thought. It’s one thing for me to feel unwelcome and uncomfortable when I am in a bar in America, but there is no way I am going to be made to feel like some kind of an intruder into your “whites only” space in my OWN DAMN COUNTRY.

My third example of this phenomenon -- of white othering of non-white people in non-white contexts -- didn’t take place in Ghana, and it didn’t happen to me. When I was in China, I was tutoring a young Korean girl who attended American school. One day, she asked me why we look different and I explained that over thousands of years, people developed physical characteristics that helped them adapt to the environment around them, such as people developing darker skin to help protect them from the sun, and people developing lighter skin to help them absorb more of the sun’s rays in places where there is an inadequate amount of sun. She then asked what environmental factor led to her developing an epicanthic fold.

Now, not being an evolutionary biologist, I really didn’t know the answer to that, but I was pretty concerned that we were in East Asia, where she was a member of the racial majority (although obviously of a different nationality and ethnicity) and that many, many people (if not most) have that phenotype. And yet, she was still being made to feel like there was something about her eyes that was “different” and wanted to know the reason why she had it. I suspect it had something to do with the population of her school, as she went to the America school in Shanghai (which is overwhelmingly white), and I suspect they had created a microcosm of America there, where once again, people who are members of the racial majority in the country still get othered once they are at school. On a different occasion, one of my (white) colleagues made some comment about Asian people having “funny eyes” and I thought “no, asshole. We’re in CHINA. You’re the one with the funny eyes.”

Finally, here in Ghana, I was sitting one time with two white friends. Let’s call them Bill and Leila. Bill’s (white) colleague spotted him and said hello to him. He DID NOT EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE MY PRESENCE, made eye contact with Leila, and then smiled and greeted her. Bill then introduced the both of us to his boss who reluctantly and half-heartedly shook my hand. When he was leaving, he once again did not acknowledge me and said “bye” to Bill and Leila.

When I tried to point out to the other two what had just happened, they enacted the common white tendency to talk over people of color in order to explain away incidents of racism. This man is in charge of a major American governmental organization whose work primarily focuses on development, and I’m wondering what he's doing here if he has such little respect for the people he is supposed to be helping (although if he had bothered to speak to me, he would've learned that I'm not a local and most of the developments being made aren't things that I've been deprived of anyway), and if he just assumes that any black person he sees isn’t even worth talking to or even acknowledging.

So basically, while non-white people are considered people of color in majority white nations (whether the nation’s indigenous population is white, or if it became majority white through colonialism and genocide), in nations where we are the indigenous population and/or the racial majority, we shouldn’t be seen as “people of color.” We should be seen and treated with the same kind of treatment that “normal” people get in their own countries, and receive the same kind of courtesy that we extend to foreigners (which is something that white people fail to do to POC in their own countries, whether the POC are foreigners or locals who were born and bred in the country).

Has anyone else experienced this othering at the hands of white people, even in situations when they are in the ethnic or racial majority? What do you do or say about it, if anything?

force people of color to bring along racial baggage during vacations

  

This is a guest post for swpd by fromthetropics:


I went sandboarding with an Asian friend a few days ago in a little town 1.5 hours away from the Australian city that I live in. I’m Asian too. And I found it amusing how we reacted to some things while on the trip. It reminded me of an earlier post by macon entitled "swpd: go on racially trouble-free vacations." Of course, since he's white and I'm not, our vacationing experiences were very different. The opposite, to be precise.

(about-australia.com)

As my friend and I drove into a car park at the foot of the sand dunes, I noticed that the people parked next to us were looking our way and saying stuff to each other. I got anxious, and I thought out loud, “Are they looking at us? Why? Are we parked in the wrong place? Is it my car? Is it because it's a sedan while everyone else's is a 4WD? Does it look out of place? But this is the only car I own. Or are they looking at the guys behind us?”

As my thoughts ran on like that, I had a flashback to the time when I went to a country town with my family, and we came across Asians tourists who were loud and seemed unaware of how out of place they or their white Mercedes looked in that small town. It made me wonder how out of place we may have looked (perhaps less than them, but still).

I think this sensation that I experienced in both situations is what W.E.B Dubois famously referred to as “double-consciousness”:

It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.

Before I came across Dubois, I used to call it “split vision.” I made up that term because I needed words to describe how I felt. I would sometimes be with a group of Asians, but my consciousness would then step outside the group, and look at my group with a white person’s eyes. And I would then think, “Man, we must seem so weird and out of place.”

Then I would try to shake it off, and get my consciousness to step back into the group where my body was, and I would say to myself, “Forget about what people think, and just enjoy the moment.”

So my friend and I got out of the car and walked up the dunes for some sandboarding. We never did find out why or whether it was even us that those white people in the car were looking at. It was nice to know that there were at least two other Asian groups there (there were no other poc groups) who were enjoying themselves. I thought, if they’re enjoying it, surely we can too.

Later, we took a break and sat with our legs hanging off the edge of our open car boot. We were chatting and eating some grapes when we noticed a ‘ranger’ (security) pick-up driving slowly by. Then it stopped near our car. I became anxious again.

I said to my friend, “Why is he stopping? Is it because of us? Are we doing something wrong?” She said, “Maybe we’re not allowed to eat here?”

Not allowed to eat in an open air space like that sounded like an utterly ridiculous reason, but still, I echoed her concern as I wondered the same. I said, “Oh gosh, there was a sign at the entrance that told us to make sure we read the ‘important’ sign in the car park area. But I haven’t read it because I didn’t notice any such signs. Maybe it says there what we’re not supposed to do.”

As I said this, I scanned the car park area for signboards. I didn’t see any. I worried that maybe the signboard was on the other side and I had missed it on the way in. Then I had a few flashbacks, one of which was of the time when my family encountered an obviously racist incident during an out of town trip.

After a few minutes, I was relieved when the ranger left without a word. As we finished sandboarding and began leaving the area, I looked around again to check for the ‘important’ signboard. I saw none. I again felt relieved, because we apparently hadn't missed anything.

But then I wondered why I felt so insecure with the presence of a security car. Wasn’t I supposed to feel more secure, knowing that they were there to stop troublemakers? Surely, I should know that two (Asian) women eating grapes don’t look like troublemakers.

When writing about his very different sensations during a trip to Indonesia, Macon wrote, “I now see that having been trained into whiteness made me feel especially entitled to go wherever I liked, and to do pretty much whatever I pleased when I got there, as long I was willing to pay for it.” He also quoted Shannon Sullivan, who says about the different ways that whites feel about themselves in such situations, “As ontologically expansive, white people consider all spaces as rightfully available for their habitation of them.”

But for me, it was the opposite. I was well aware that I was in someone else’s ‘territory’, and that some people might not like my presence, or that I might have done things which were seen as different and conspicuous, just because of what I am. In my case, this different kind of self-awareness meant that I used to avoid out of town trips out of discomfort. But this time around I thought I’d take a plunge, overcome my fears, and so off we went to the dunes. Yet, I was still not free to feel fully at ease.

On the trip home, we bought a soft-serve cone at a park. We didn’t want too much, so we asked for two chocolate dipped baby cones. I hadn't had a chocolate dipped one in a long time, and it was my friend’s first. The elderly white man serving us noticed that my friend was Japanese from the way she spoke, and he started telling us a story about some previous Japanese customers.

He was very friendly, but my first thought was, “Oh no, did we do something embarrassing?” By ‘we,’ I mean everyone who I had never met but who looked ‘Asian’ (a big chunk of the world’s population).

He told us that when the Japanese tourists come in a big bus, they either all order the same thing, or none at all. “Fair enough,” I thought, “it’s kinda typical and it doesn’t offend anyone anyway. No sweat there.”

Then he went on, and told us how a group of Japanese youths ordered one cone and asked for six spoons. I wasn’t surprised but I thought, “Oh shit.” For some reason I put on a surprised look and said, “Noooo, sixxx???” to indicate that I didn’t ‘approve’ of such behavior (not that I cared too much about the behavior itself, though I did think six spoons for one cone was a bit much and embarrassing indeed, except that it has a tendency to give ‘us’ all a bad name). I did this in case he was sharing the story to indicate how cheap or weird Asians were; it wasn't the first time I had heard white people mention the exact same scenario with other food.

He wasn’t finished. He went on to share another story, but this time with a bunch of Chinese customers who shared a cone among the five or six of them. I did the same drill and showed disbelief.

Wide-eyed, I said, “Did they each order some after they tried it?”

“Nah,” he said.

“Are you serious?” I added, to make sure that I put enough of a distance between myself and them.

"They said they go around the world trying ice creams everywhere they go," he said, "and they said that ours is the best one they’ve tried so far."

The story had a positive spin to it, so I quickly took advantage of the positive note and said, “So we’re getting the world’s best ice cream, eh?”

We praised his ice cream, thanked him, and walked off, lest he had a whole stock of ‘Asian’ stories tucked away under his belt.

It turned out to be a trouble-free trip. We ran into quite a few extremely friendly and helpful (white) people. We had sand in our shoes, all over our bodies (even in our ears), and in the car. Plus, I have a ‘redneck’ where I forgot to put sunblock on. We had an awesome time.

But I was bemused at how the littlest thing would trigger a defense mechanism in me. And each time it was triggered, I would get flashbacks of the racially-troubled vacations I had had in the past. Also, it didn’t help that I read this once I got back home. Nor does it help to hear from a friend who recently moved to a small mining town that racism is rife there.

On the ride back, my friend had pointed out the kangaroo road signs warning us to be cautious in case our mascot pops onto the road out of nowhere. She hasn’t been in Australia long, so she asked me if I had ever seen a wild kangaroo on the road. I told her no.

“So why do they have these signs?” she asked.

“I dunno. I guess if you live out in the country for long enough you’ll see a wild one pop out onto the road every so often,” I answered. Otherwise it would be a waste of government money putting up and maintaining all those signs.

I wonder if the way POCs automatically analyze situations for racial overtones is similar to the function of those kangaroo road signs -- if, for those who have lived in that terrain long enough, racism and Othering does happen enough times to warrant a defense mechanism, for the sake of staying physically and emotionally safe?

carelessly exoticize and "other" food

This is a guest post by Johanna, who blogs at Vegans of Color: "This blog was started (by me, Johanna, with the encouragement of some friends) to give a voice to vegans of color. Many vegan spaces seem to be assumed (consciously or not) to be white by default, with the dialogue within often coming from a place of white privilege. We’re not single-issue here. All oppressions are connected."


Vegan Cookbooks: Helping Folks Eat the Other

I’ve written before about exotification in discussions around vegan food, but it’s something I’m always thinking about & that has come up a lot lately. This year I’ve set myself a goal to cook at least one recipe from the many cookbooks I own. Hence I’ve been scouring them more than usual.

Has anyone else noticed that a staple of many a vegan cookbook is a recipe for African Peanut Stew or African Yam Stew or something similar? I’ve also seen (though less frequently) recipes for, say, Asian-Style Tofu or whatever. I cannot recall ever seeing a cookbook featuring anything like European Bean Soup. Is it because to most vegan cookbook authors/food bloggers, it would be preposterous to assume that there is anything universal or overarching about the many countries that make up Europe, or their cuisines? And yet we don’t often see the same distinction granted to countries in Africa.

"African" stew? Is the recipe from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa? Is that tofu done Chinese-style, Japanese, Filipino? Never mind the many variations even within those categories (just to preclude comments along the lines of “But hey, lots of countries in Africa do that kind of stew / lots of Asian countries use tofu!”).

Another thing I’ve seen not infrequently in vegan cookbooks & food blogs is the following construction:

“[Non-English ingredient or recipe name] must be [non-English language] for ‘delicious’!”

I also spotted this recently at Food Fight, who guess that "Mahalo is Hawaiian for ‘fake Almond Joy."

Oh, how cutesy. How patronizing. We don’t know what those funny foreign languages mean but we sure do love their grub!

The obsession with authenticity is another thing. This, like all the food othering in this post, is not limited to vegans, of course. My white boss (a one-time vegetarian turned omnivore due to happy meat, I might add) once praised my lunchtime curry because it “smelled really authentic.” She then went on to bemoan how she couldn’t manage to cook Indian food “authentically.” I squirmed, & said something about how surely what mattered most was whether she liked what she cooked. This only served to encourage her to rattle on about how important it was to get food “authentic.”

Anyway, there are countless examples of vegan recipes that stress their authentic nature. One I stumbled upon recently was in The Urban Vegan, in a recipe for “Blue Mosque Ayran,” which apparently is a drink you can find “at any cafe or from any street vendor in Istanbul.” I’ve never been to Istanbul, so perhaps I’m missing something in how this drink would be connected specifically to mosques (whose architecture are often held up as images of the exotic & dangerously foreign, I note), much less how the recipe in the cookbook is “so refreshingly good that the imam would definitely approve.” I dunno — has anyone ever seen an Italian recipe touted as being so delicious that the priest would approve?

I did some Googling & found that a common Turkish recipe is Imam Bayildi — which apparently means “The imam fainted” (when he tasted the recipe). I didn’t really see any other references to the imam having a lock on what is authentic Turkish food or not, but if someone knows differently, please let me know. I wonder if the Urban Vegan knew of this particular recipe & made a deliberate reference to it, or if it was just an example of throwing in something seen as “exotic.”

On the same page of that cookbook, by the way, is a recipe for “Political Biscotti.” The recipe notes that cafe culture frequently features both biscotti and political discussion. The biscotti are political because they contain both carob & chocolate, two flavors about which “people tend to be very ‘either/or’”:

They are always considered separately, as two distinctive flavors that were never meant to come together, sort of like Palestine and Israel. … The dates [in the recipe] act as a sort of sticky-sweet peacemaker, a culinary UN if you will.

Yeah. She went there. The bloody oppression of Palestinians reduced to a clever comment about biscotti.