Links of interest for the week ending in December 26, 2009. A World to Win | Front line | Israel privatises the occupation "This privatisation and globalisation of the Israeli state was kick started by premier Benjamin Netanyahu during his first period in office from 1996 to 1999. During his most recent period as premier, his priority has been to carry out the same process in respect of the occupied territories. Shame on ADC’s racism against Nigerians | KABOBfest "ADC should know that if it is trying to fight racial profiling, pointing out a terror suspect is not Arab is just as bad as pointing out that s/he is–unless the goal is to replace one racist idea of Arabs as the “bad” minority with another racist idea of them as the “good” minority. hawgblawg: Rihanna's "Hard" Video: Supporting the Afghan Surge "At the same time, Bayoumi argues, "African Americans have emerged in popular culture in recent years as the leaders of an American nation and an American empire." Moreover, he says, " this image often revolves fundamentally around the idea of black friendship with Muslims and Arabs, a friendship not among equals but of a modified projection of American power." To simplify, then, the long and venerable tradition of African-Americans opposing US imperialism is increasingly abandoned in favor of a civil rights position of actively participating in all aspects of US life, including US imperialism. Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Barack Obama: all faces designed, or used, to make our empire acceptable, at home, and abroad. (Of course it's not just "faces." It's active involvement and even policy determination.)" Deep South calls in Iran to cure its health blues - Times Online Jesus was a Palestinian and Why it Matters « Muslim Reverie "Despite these facts, there are those who use the color-blind argument: “It does not matter what Jesus’ ethnicity or skin color was. It does not matter what language he spoke. Jesus is for all people, whether you’re Black, White, Brown, Yellow, etc.” While this is a well-intentioned expression of inclusiveness and universalism, it misses the point. Muslims as Model Minority? | KABOBfest The article referenced in this post can be found here: http://www.racismreview.com/blog/2009/12/21/muslims-versus-americans/ Gaza Freedom March Planned for One-Year Anniversary of Israeli Assault "HEDY EPSTEIN: OK. I was born in Germany, and when Hitler came to power, I was eight years old. And my parents quickly realized that Germany was not a place to raise a family under the Nazi regime. And so, they tried to leave Germany and increasingly were more desperate about getting out anywhere in the world. But there was one place they were not willing to go to, and that was Palestine. News: The New GRE, Redux - Inside Higher Ed Article on changes to the GRE exam, beginning in Fall 2011 YouTube - The House is Black / خانه سیاه است, فیلمی از فروغ فرخزاد Forough Farrokhzad's classic 1962 short film/documentary on a leper colony. Iraq Deaths | Just Foreign Policy One million, three hundred sixty-six thousand, three hunded and fifty stolen lives. YouTube - Omar Offendum (USA/Syria) Live at Words Beats Life in Washington DC '09 It’s Time to Get Real: Obama is Wrong « Muslim Reverie "In several debates with fellow Muslims, I’ve been told that the Afghan and Pakistani people “aren’t taking a stand,” so Obama’s military intervention is “justified.” Again, this does a great disservice to the efforts of Afghans and Pakistanis who are risking their lives in combating violent extremism. But it does not help when you’re being attacked by both sides: The Taliban on one hand, and the U.S. military occupation/drone attacks on the other." See what you made me do – On secular ‘honour’ killings – The Stump "The result is that Western ‘honour’ killings – men murdering their partners out of rage at perceived humiliation, deceit, disobedience or whatever – are never named as such. Yet they conform to an individualistic culture, as much as Muslim honour killings do to a monotheistic patriachal [sic] one. The male wounded ego, the enraged self has to be restored to a sense of power – first by violence and then by murder." Qantara.de - Using Irony to Tackle Trauma Good interview with Sinan Antoon. I've only read it in translation, but I`jaam is a beautiful novel - highly recommended. Qantara.de - Language, Poetry, and Singularity "Furthermore, the Arab Jews who immigrated to Israel after its establishment were exposed to a hegemonic Hebrew-Zionist establishment, which imposed its interpretive norms on all cultural communities under the umbrella of leftist liberalism, and at the same time despised and feared the Orient and its culture. The policy of remodelling the identity of Arab-Jewish immigrants in an Ashkenazi image and cultural identity was no different from the British policy in India, which Thomas Babington Macaulay defined in a speech he made in 1834 before the General Committee on Public Instruction. Israel and India, Zionism and Hindutva - [Alternatives International] "To wit, connect the Dalit upsurge in India to the solidarity movement for Palestine. Racism must be understood in broader terms as encompassing various forms of exclusionist ideologies founded not just on biologically or physically determined markers, but also on cultural ones. Thus cultural identity markers, when used for the purposes of institutionalized discrimination, are also to be seen as forms of racist injustice. Both casteism and Zionism come into this category of culturally based discriminations. You do not have to be a Palestinian to empathize with the Palestinian cause. Palestinians are fighting for much more than just their national liberation; they are fighting for progressives everywhere." hawgblawg: Some Myths and Misconceptions about Rai Music (Part One)
Netanyahu wants to substitute what he calls “economic peace” for the peace process. An example of how this works is in the town of Jenin, a Palestinian town now entirely enclosed by the illegal wall. Palestinians on the other side are now being offered day shopping passes to enter Jenin and spend."
More importantly, it’s embarrassingly hypocritical and shameful that an Arab-American organization dedicated to fighting racism and racial profiling (something Arab-Americans and other people of color are quite familiar with) seizes upon this opportunity to dodge the terror lime light rather than to stand in solidarity with other innocent groups of people that suspicion now shines upon."
When you see so many depictions of Jesus as a Western White man with Euro-American features, the ethnocentrism and race-bending needs to be called out. No person is superior to another based on skin color, but to ignore the way Jesus’ Whiteness has been used to subjugate and discriminate against racial minorities in the West and many other countries is to overlook another important aspect of Jesus’ teachings: Love thy neighbor as thyself."
And why was that? Because they were ardent anti-Zionists. And as a child, I didn’t really know what or understand fully what Zionism or anti-Zionism is about. But if my parents were anti-Zionist, so was I. "
Speaking on the educational objectives of the British in India, he called for the creation of a new type of person who would be 'Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.' The Zionist movement succeeded where even the British had failed: in creating a new model of an Israeli who is Oriental in blood and colour, but Zionist and Ashkenazi in taste and in opinions. Also, the Israeli educational system forced the offspring of Arab-Jewish families to accept the Holocaust as their own – sometimes, I can add, as their sole – history and decisive marker of identity. "
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Sunday, December 27, 2009
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4 comments:
A small quibble: Rihanna isn't from the US, she's from Barbados. The article makes a few good points about Af-Ams starting to participate in US imperialism, but it reads too much into that video, especially considering the singer in question is from the Caribbean.
I don't Swedenburg is overanalyzing the video, but pointing it out as part of the co-optation of Black America by imperialists, and to a lesser extent a growing orientalist trend in mainstream hip hop. Your point is valid, but I don't think her origins in real life make interpreting the video any different. Even though Rihanna makes her Caribbean roots clear in her other songs, she is marketed in the United States, and thus is lumped into the vague category of "black" music. In the video, she is clearly associated with a staunchly American institution (the army), not with her place of origin.
i think this post could be discussed in a couple of different ways. there's the historical-political dimension, and then there's the cultural-political dimension. i want to take up the former first by drawing attention to 2 excerpts form the post:
"To simplify, then, the long and venerable tradition of African-Americans opposing US imperialism is increasingly abandoned in favor of a civil rights position of actively participating in all aspects of US life, including US imperialism."
and
"African Americans have emerged in popular culture in recent years as the leaders of an American nation and an American empire."
in my head these get at the crux as well as the problematic of the post.
first, i think it's a grave misstep to place the sins of Condi Rice, Colin Power, Obama, and other middle class blacks on the backs of the whole black community. this is important in addition to the fact that millions of black folks voted for Obama in the belief that he would end the war.
i remember in the uproar concerning Busta Rhymes' song "A-rab Money" a lot of Arab folks were pissed because we didn't want to be associated with the authoritarian lackeys of US Empire that Busta was celebrating. we are not them, in fact, we're fighting against them. these class tensions within the Arab community between ruler and oppressed is present in the black community as well.
failure to discuss the political and historical shifts that have taken place within the black community and its movements leads to these sorts of mechanical conclusions.
the reasons behind the burgeoning of the black middle classes, nonetheless, are important political lessons for all people. broadly they include cracks in race theory that effected prospects for multiracial organizing, repression by the state of principled anti-imperialist black organizations, and the sizable influence of Maoism in addition to the relative weakness of more libertarian Left traditions of that generation, and questions of autonomy from state institutions and organizations.
the danger in ignoring these considerations is exacerbating the long standing tensions between the Arab and black communities which has been constructed as a hierarchy of races in which non-black people of color are offered a bigger piece of the pie than the black community, even if they are still oppressed under white supremacy.
there has indeed been a growth of the black middle classes since the 60s, but the current recession is making waste of that very quickly.
http://gatheringforces.org/2009/09/17/not-a-recession-but-a-depression-for-black-workers/
much of this discussion is speculation, though, without reading the paper itself, but i wonder if the author discusses prospects for anti-imperial solidarity... another key discussion.
on to the cultural-political dimension.
a friend of mine from the Democracy & Hip Hop Project had this to say about the video:
"Perhaps the paper is what's most important, though I haven't looked at it yet. The Rihanna video is obviously a military theme, but the content of the lyrics, including Jeezy's, is pretty standard fare: they have a lot of money and fame, the haters are trying to stop them, and they'll go hard on them like the military. Definitely not a pro-war song. Run This Town was interesting because both the video theme as well as Rihanna's lyrics had this militant, mass struggle ethos, coexisting as it was with traditional mainstream content (money, cars, and haters)."
first, i want to draw attention to the fact that the blogger mentioned the cultural role of black America in supporting US Empire, but then mentions Obama, Condi, and Powel... hardly cultural icons. i could see the argument that Obama is more of a cultural icon in the way his you can find face is plastered on t-shirts. i think my point is that i have a hard time seeing Rihanna and these state rulers on the same playing field.
nonetheless, culture does play a role in both challenging and supporting official society. it's contested terrain. often times everyday folks imbue traditional categories -- sometimes of oppression -- and give them new -- sometimes liberatory -- meaning. it's contradictory.
i'm not sure if this analogy is entirely accurate, but i'm reminded of the way white society and the middle classes attack hip hop and call it degenerate, instead of seeing the liberating potential in the content. "Hustle & Flow" is a great movie that explains this warts and all.
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