Rant about Human Zoos and Yoga Enthusiasts

I am currently reading an excellent, yet profoundly depressing, history book called The Kaiser's Holocaust.* I was reading with wonder the description of the European justifications for colonialism from divine superiority of the white people over other races to social Darwinism whereby the very ability of the Europeans to savagely annihilate peoples with their superior fire-power was seen as evidence of the unfitness of such peoples to survive and the justification of their destruction by stronger people, more fit to rule and populate the earth.

Then I came across a description of a phenomenon that startled me. It was not that “freak shows” and “human zoos” were in themselves new to me. We've all heard of the history of shows in European and American cities in the 19^th century where captured people were paraded, sometimes even in a fake setting of their “natural habitat”, for white city-dwellers to ogle at and wonder about their “exoticism”. But this time it created an association that pierced the moral superiority that I'd been feeling while reading.

I had recently watched a documentary called “Milking the Rhino”**, which “examines the relationship between the indigenous African wildlife, the villagers who live amongst this wildlife and conservationists who look to keep tourism dollars coming in.”*** Part of the movie is filmed at a Himba conservancy in the Marienfluss valley in Namibia. There is no denying the fact that the traditional Himba lifestyle will seem exotic to a Westener, even the modern, world-travelled generations.

One particular scene in this fascinating film had totally irked me. It was a discussion between a local conservationist and the owner (or manager) of an eco-tourism lodge that had been set up in the conservancy. The owner (a white woman, of course) was telling the conservationist that he should tell the locals not to whip out their merchandise as soon as they see the jeeps carrying the tourists arriving, but to act more normal, going about their daily business, and interact with the tourists first on a non-commercial basis. She was basically telling him (and the camera) that the white wealthy tourists were coming to ogle at the exotic Himba in their natural habitat, and they should behave like good zoo creatures and succumb to the gaze, rather than try to benefit from these strangers that invaded their village by offering souvenirs to sell to them.

The era of white people wanting to look not just at a lion but also a “Hottentot”**** in their zoos is not over. Now we are just illuminated enough to think that zoos are cruel and wealthy enough to be able to travel to see the lions as well as the Hottentots in Africa for ourselves.

I thought I recognised (and resisted) this tendency in the past. I have always condemned misery tourism to places like North Korea and I was disdainful of the tours that were organised in Windhoek to Katutura, the biggest township, considering them poverty porn. I knew this was not the way to do things, but was I so innocent myself? Are my own interactions with or attitudes towards different cultures any less racist?

It is hard to know what is acceptable these days. On the one hand misery tourism or treating tribespeople as zoo animals is obviously wrong. But on the other hand, we can't be too eagerly embracing other people's cultures either, or we get accused of cultural appropriation. I recently heard that accusation levelled at Western yoga enthusiasts.

I don't think just sticking to our own culture and shutting the doors can be the answer either – and I'm not just saying this as someone who loves her nachos, curry, pad thai, falafels and pizzas and shudders at the thought of a life without the offerings of world cuisine. Understanding others helps us get along, respect others and critically evaluate and sometimes improve our own way of doing things.

So my tentative conclusion is that the key has to be engagement, respect and understanding. I'm not sure I need to know the historical and culinary roots of my nachos in order to enjoy them (hell, I don't know the historical or culinary roots of most of Finnish food), but if I don't love the food for the taste of it or the music for the sound of it or the painting for the look of it – if it rather tastes or sounds or looks exotic to me – then I should investigate further, but in a careful way. I am reminded of the time we visited the hurly-burly of the massive meat market in Katutura in Windhoek and I was watching with a mixture of fascination and horror the way the butchers just hacked up entire animals there, in the open air market, cutting up pieces that were then tossed on the braai and sold to hungry people waiting. I may even have snapped a photo of the forlorn cow head dumped in the corner of the market for flies to feast upon. But I made zero effort to engage or understand why this was the way it was done and what the local people thought of it. I was just another tourists ogling at the exotic customs of the Namibians. Maybe I'll be a bit more aware next time.

*David Olusoga and Casper W. Erichsen, Faber & Faber, 2010.

**David E. Simpson, Kartemquin Films, 2009.

***https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milking_the_Rhino

****A very derogatory term that actually originally referred to the Nama people of Central/Southern Namibia, I have also just learnt.

Rant about African Women Part 1 – Mama Africa

 

I ranted earlier about the western “exoticiation” of everything “black” and the consequent blindness (including my own) to differences within Africa.

 

One area where this has manifested itself very clearly is the creation of the stereotype of the “African woman”.  In the western collective imagination a woman from any part of Sub-Saharan Africa is one of two types.  She is either a physically and mentally imposing matriarch, the “Mama Africa”,* or an oversexualised semi-wild creature, who I will call the “Josephine Baker” for short. 

 

I will rant on this occasion about Mama Africa, and return later to Josephine Baker.

 

Based on my limited experience of spending in total just over half a year in two Sub-Saharan African countries, I would tentatively suggest that there is some truth to the Mama Africa stereotype.

 

Taking as a starting point the undeniable fact that due to structural sexism there are not many women who have managed to make their mark on the world stage to begin with, the European ones are likely to be somehow still soft and “feminine”, no matter how “tough” the job, situation or decision.  This is for example how Angela Merkel or Christine Lagarde come across.  Even Margaret Thatcher would fall into this category, as would Finland’s own Tarja Halonen.

 

This is not the image the impressive African women have.  They are more like Wangari Maathai, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Fatou Bensouda or Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.  It is hard to pinpoint the difference, but these women appear to have an aura that their northern counterparts lack.  It is not just because they are physically more imposing (partially undoubtedly due to their wardrobes – it takes bucketloads of charisma to pull those outfits off, and they always do), but you will have no trouble imagining them taking charge.  Of a situation, of a family, of a country.  European women have to battle much harder to achieve that appearance that instinctively invites confidence.

 

The other thing is that, on a continent many parts of which suffer from more sexism than most of Europe, it was easy to come up with several examples of such impressive women who have put their stamp on the world.  So with the same or lesser opportunities, African women seem to be better at achieving positions of power.

 

There has been no shortage of examples of Mama Africas here in Namibia.  I do not want to belittle the problems arising from sexism that this country is still facing (such as high levels of gender-based violence, traditional roles, lack of educational opportunities etc.), but you see powerful women everywhere.  They are on boards of companies and they run government ministries.  Admittedly I have also met women, like a young university student who told us that she hated studying and really just wanted to marry and become a housewife,** who do not fit the stereotype of Mama Africa, but there are enough Mama Africas (to varying degrees of course) for me to notice it.  The first among equals is Libertina Amathila, whose memoir I am currently reading.  She is an inspirational figure for Namibian as well as other ladies.

 

I have been racking my brain over the past few months to try to understand why this is.  I’d love to be able to export some of that back to Europe, as the sisterhood could and should learn from best practice everywhere.  I don’t want to make any facile and racist assumptions that these women have been molded by their difficult childhoods, since in most cases I know nothing of their childhoods, which may have been overwhelmed by privilege and love.  Probably they have been on very different journeys and would have different stories to tell.  But something about the way capable, bright African women are brought up, or educated, appears to create confident, all-imposing Mama Africas that rock the world.

 

 

*I hope nobody takes this as an offensive term, it is certainly intended with the utmost respect.  I got the idea for it recently when reading a book called Mama Namibia by Mari Serebrov.

**In a weird way this young lady exemplified a positive development from a feminist viewpoint.  It really should be for everyone to decide on their own dreams, and (a) this means that wanting to be a housewife is a permissible future plan, and (b) it is a plan that should be available to women in Windhoek just like it is in Geneva.

Rant about Mud Huts and Witch Doctors

 

I have found myself surprised by Namibia on several fronts.  I have been surprised by how good the roads are.  I have been surprised by how barren the land is, and how there is little local fresh produce, most of it coming from South Africa in exactly the kind of excessive plastic wrapping we buy our fruit and veg in Europe.  I have been surprised by how forward-looking the people are, not holding grudges against their former colonial masters but excited about the prospects for their young country and confident that they will not repeat the mistakes of some of their neighbours.

 

 Why have I been surprised by these and many other things?

 

 Because they are different in Kenya.  Kenyan roads are on the whole dreadful.  Kenya is a lush and fertile country that grows amazing fruit and veg.  Kenyans are, I feel, held back by their bitterness towards the injustice they were subjected to during colonisation.

 

 Kenya is my only other experience of Sub-Saharan Africa.  So I had subconsciously assumed that Namibia would be like Kenya.  This is about as smart as assuming that one knows what Lithuania is like on the basis of having visited Spain.  In other words: pretty stupid.

 

 It made me wonder, though.  Is this a particular, slightly racist, problem we have with Africa, or is it a more general, human reaction?  Or is it just me?

 

 I am beginning to suspect that it is the first of these options.  “Black” (ie Sub-Saharan) Africa has held this special place in the imagination of westeners since the times of Dr Livingstone.  It is exotic and it is mysterious.  But it is all one.  We cannot tell one country from another, let alone one tribe from the hundreds of others that exist.  We assume that all Africans are Masai,* wear loin cloths, live in mud huts and consult their local witch doctor for their medical needs.  They can all run a marathon in two hours flat, in bare feet.  Development since the times of Dr Livingstone has been minimal – not in Africa, but in the mindsets of us westerners.

 

 I would have thought that I was a bit better than the average westener in this regard, but, alas, I was not.  Time for some self-reflection, I fear …

 

 

*Case on point: the tribe that Corinne Hofmann joined, and discussed in her Memoir The White Masai (Die weisse Massaï), was actually not the Masai at all, but the Samburu.  I suppose The White Samburu just wouldn’t have had the same ring to it.

Early Musings about Namibia

First impressions on a few issues to which I will undoubtedly return once I have thought about them a bit more:

“Bureaucracy”:  Let’s just say we did not get the warmest welcome to the country.  I won’t bore you with the story of our visas/permits, but the end result is that we should have been all set to enter Namibia.  Apparently we were not.  The reason why we were not is essentially because the rules are so vague that it is anyone’s guess what is sufficient for the border guards on a given day.  The vagueness provides rich soil for bribery, nepotism and other wonderful things to flourish.  We were in the end ok, but to a large extent thanks to our boss being able to pull some strings.  As great as that was for us, it is obviously not how it should be.  Immigration and home affairs is the hotbed of corruption in many countries, even though much of it could be reduced, with fairly simple methods.  When we entered Egypt a few years ago, there were big signs at the border, in English, telling all entrants what was required for a visa and how much it would cost.  Rules such as this need to be clear, they need to specify what is required, on what basis can an application be denied, how much will it all cost and what is the timeframe within which the decision will be taken.  This all then needs to be publicly and visibly explained wherever necessary, with a number to call if a person has any complaints.  But there may have been a silver lining as our adventures were the last straw for her: our boss is now preparing a memo on necessary reforms to the Minister of Home Affairs.  Watch this space for future developments -- hopefully positive ones.

“Demography”: We naively thought that since the whole country had gone through oppression and the independence struggle, it would not be suffering from the problematic aspects of race relations that its former colonial master and neighbour South Africa is still experiencing.  We were wrong.  I am fascinated by how totally segregated the society is.  There is black / coloured Namibia, then there is Afrikaner Namibia, and at the top of the hierarchy (at least in their own opinion) is German Namibia.  Whites own everything and outside of the context of work, where they must interact with their black employees, the races do not mix.  It has so far been weird, sad and fascinating in equal measures.  On Saturday we were at the Windhoek Country Club for a wine tasting event.  It will surprise nobody that there were no more than a handful of black people among the several hundred guests.  To balance things out, on Sunday we went to an Africa Day exhibition football game between Sundowns (from South Africa) and the local African Stars.  In the stadium of several thousand spectators we spotted three other white faces.  When another traveller we met asked a local white teenager whether he had any black friends, apparently the response was that he didn’t, but this was “not because they were black, but because they had not gone to similar schools or had a similar life, so they just had nothing in common”.  As I said, weird, sad and fascinating.

“Muggings”:  When it comes to safety, we’ve heard some pretty wild stories.  We’ve been told time and again that we are prime targets as not only whites, but as foreigners.  We’ve been advised that carrying bags is stupid, walking is stupid, taking local taxis is stupid … basically everything apart from staying indoors and clutching our money to our chests is stupid.  By contrast, we’ve also been told by a foreigner who has lived here for close to 30 years that she has been mugged once and that was in New York.  Apparently there are many possible reactions.  We’ve met an American couple who rented a house in the leafy suburb, bought a car and basically lived their life here as much as possible as if they were still in the United States, avoiding all contact with the “local” environment to the extent they could.  We’ve also met a backpacker who clearly relished the story of how he was robbed at machetepoint and how he was now on his way to the border region with Angola, because that was the true wild west where it was all happening.  As for us, we’ve decided that we can’t waste our time here being scared.  We walk, we take taxis (there is no other public transport) and we attend “local” places and events.  We already had a taste of the more creative side of business at the football match, where there just happened to be an “altercation” at the narrow exit gate when we were leaving, and during all the jostling the people on both sides of F “accidentally” placed their hands in F’s pockets, as opposed to their own.  We cannot guarantee that we will not be mugged, the best we can aim for is that we will not be carrying anything that we will have trouble parting with if that happens.

Rant about the Truth -- as told by White People

A few months ago I was passing by the Peace Palace, the UN complex here in Geneva.  It is the site of many demonstrations, and on this particular day a group of Tamils was displaying posters with shocking pictures of cruelty, accompanied by slogans of what was happening in them.  According to the descriptions, the picture was in each case that of a Tamil, sometimes a child or a civilian woman, tortured/raped/killed (or all three) at the hands of the Sinhalese.

The allegations in the posters were shocking, outrageous. 

I marched to the info stand and told the gentlemen manning it that I knew what the Tamils had been through during the last months of the civil war in Sri Lanka, and that what had occurred probably amounted to war crimes and crimes against humanity.  I told them that I supported their cause and that they were right to protest in front of the UN, as it was about time the international community did something about the atrocities.

The reason I did this was that I had seen all the images on their posters before.  I had seen them, and the slogans, put into context.  I knew who the kid was (Balachandran, the son of Velupillai Prabhakaran, the founder of the Tamil Tigers), I knew who the woman was (Isaipriya, a Tamil news anchor).  I knew all this because not long earlier I had seen a documentary called “No Fire Zone”, which had made me hate humanity and have nightmares.  If anyone is interested in seeing what people are capable of during civil war, watch this documentary, it is really good.  Even if it will make you feel anything but good.

I don’t know if the Tamils holding the protest outside the UN cared about my expression of solidarity.  But I’m guessing that not all that many passersby gave such unqualified endorsements of their cause.  This is because not many people had seen the documentary.  This fact gave me pause, because if it had not been for the documentary, I would have been quite suspect of the protesters’ claims, outrageous as they were.

Would I not have believed the protesters so easily if I had not seen the documentary, because I, along with many others, have become jaded by fake and manipulated images of atrocities in Syria and elsewhere?  If this is the answer, then it is a healthy one.  In the days where everyone can easily falsify pictures, one should be slightly wary of photographic evidence, especially when emanating from interested parties.  (Even if countries such as Iran or North Korea haven’t quite completed the advanced course on photoshop yet ...) 

Or was it because “No Fire Zone” had been made by – let’s be blunt about it – a bunch of Whities?  Do I trust Whities to tell the truth more than I trust the Tamils actually on the ground, suffering through it all?  A worrying thought, but one that I have not been able to entirely shake.  It is a frustrating example of internalised racism.  Frustrating because (if it is true) I can’t rid myself of it and frustrating because it is so profound.  Somebody please pass the brain bleach, I don’t want to be like this!

On the more important, and less self-important, issue of what happened to the Tamil people and will there be consequences for this, there are some good news.  The UN Human Rights Council passed a resolution on 27 March 2014 to open an enquiry into war crimes in the final stages of the civil war in 2009.  I don’t know if this was because of the Tamil protests or the documentary.  “Who cares?” one could say, the main thing is that something is happening.  Or then again, if the world in general is suffering from collective internalised racism, then that would indeed be a problem.  So let us assume that the UN is not (only) finally reacting because a bunch of white people said so.

Rant about Racist Christmas

It would be mildly put to say that we have “moved on” since my childhood on some of the most overt issues regarding racism.  I don’t know if you have similar examples from your countries, but at least in Finland we kids happily played a card game in which the loser was the one with “Black Pete” (Musta Pekka) in his hand when all the other (white) characters had been united in their families.  Black Pete had no family.  While we played this game we may have been munching on a weird sticky biscuit/candy concoction called “nigger kiss” (neekerinsuukko).  My favourite was the strawberry nigger kiss.

While I cringe writing down these examples, the crowning moment is thinking about the little snot-nosed me standing in the middle of the school yard and shouting “WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BLACK MAN?” while all the other kids run away from me (the black man) screaming.  Because that is of course what kids should do when they see a black man.

Honestly.  This all happened.  Not that long ago.

But at least kids in Finland no longer play “Black Pete” or “who’s afraid of the black man” or eat nigger kisses.

Which is why I was so unprepared to find to my embarrassment and horror that a Finnish Christmas tradition that in my mind clearly belongs in the same camp as the examples above was still going strong last year at least.  It is a little play and it is called “Tiernapojat” (a version of Star boys’ singing procession).  It features four boys (it is played by children of course) who act out the scene in which King Herod is told about the birth of Jesus.  One of the characters is called “Murjaanien Kuningas” (King of the Moors).  Not only does this character not do much else except kneel before King Herod (don’t ask me what this has to do with the birth of Baby Jesus, I have no idea), but he is played by a white kid with his face painted black.  Yeah, that’s right.  A white kid in blackface kneeling before another white kid.  This is how we celebrate Christmas in Finland.

Last year I saw on TV this play being put on at a school somewhere in Finland and I hit the roof.  I hit the roof so hard I immediately started ranting at my mum and dad who were in the room.  In addition, I was so agitated, and so unprepared for my parents’ reaction (=they thought this was a totally innocent Finnish Christmas tradition) that I can’t pretend to having made a particularly coherent argument.  I mostly just screamed at my parents, although they obviously had done nothing wrong.  After a while they got annoyed and started screaming back at me.  So it was all very merry at our little Christmas party!

I still can’t get over it, though.  Earlier this month I was obsessively scanning the Finnish media for signs of awakening to how racist this whole thing is.  Nothing.  Not a peep.  Instead, the main newspaper Helsingin Sanomat reported recently on the Dutch beginning to consider the racist implications of their Zwarte Piet tradition – and at no point did it cotton on to the reporter that maybe there were some parallels to be drawn with our own blackface tradition.  Oh, the irony.  At least the Dutch version brings presents as opposed to KNEELING before a little white dude!

Please somebody tell me that we’re not alone in this, that other countries have similarly embarrassing remnants of some racist crap from decades ago to which everyone continues to be blind...?!?

On a more positive note, I thankfully heard nothing about Tiernapojat around this Christmas, so ours was a lot more peaceful than last year.  I hope yours was too!

Rant about Gypsies

Here are three recent stories from real life:

Story A: Two colleagues are watching a newscast.  The newsreader is talking about the plans of the Italian government to evict (mostly Romanian) Roma from their illegal settlements.  The younger one wonders out loud how this can happen.  The older colleague mentions casually that it is the only way to do policing in Europe.  He knows because his wife works in law enforcement.  “Gypsies” are sought out and targeted, because they just are much more likely to be criminals.

Story B: A mixed bunch of hockey players, from young teens to 42-year olds, are getting off their bus outside a rink.  The coach tells them not to leave anything valuable on the bus.  When one player asks “why not”, the answer, given with a smirk, is “because there is a Roma convention taking place in the building next door”.  A few players giggle a little, and all file out of the bus and head for the rink to prepare for their match.

Story C: A team of football players is out on the town after a victorious tournament.  Loud, boisterous behaviour and drunken antics are accompanied by approving laughter and backslapping.  At one point the teasing is directed at one player, M, and a well known football chant which translates as something along the lines of “M is a gypsy” gets on the way.

This sort of casual racism against the Roma (or Romani*) happens all the time, everywhere, on our presumably modern, civilised continent.  While we mostly understand and abstain from overt racism or other forms of crass discrimination against other minorities, the same rules don’t seem to apply when it comes to the Roma.  I was channel surfing the other day and was pretty shocked to come across a reality TV show on English TV that was called “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding”.  Apart from the fact that the TV company had thought it OK to use the derogatory term “gypsy” in an attempt to draw a humorous parallel with the hit play and later movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, the content continued with the racist theme.  I watched it for about 20 minutes out of some kind of morbid fascination to discover that the bride-to-be looked and acted like a pretty standard English “bridezilla” who has lost a few marbles in the planning of the impending nuptials, but somehow this was all made to sound like it was due to the fact that she was Roma.  And this was all happening on national TV!  The mind boggles.

Casual racism is not rocket science, so if we wanted to stop it, we would.  There is a very simple test to find out whether a stereotype about the Roma is acceptable or not:  Just replace the word “Roma” or “gypsy” with “jewish” or “black”.  If this makes you squirm with discomfort, well then what is being said is racist, whether it is intended as such or not.

But the problem is not just that we casually make such remarks.  It is made much worse because we tolerate them.

Which one is the odd one out of my three stories above?  Story C. 

Stories A and B happened to me.  I was listening to the racist remark in A and the racist joke in B, and said nothing.  In story A I should have told my boss that finding out that this sort of racial profiling is conducted openly by the Swiss police sends shivers down my spine, and not least because it is against the European Convention on Human Rights.  In story B I should have told my coach that I find making racist jokes, especially in front of impressionable teenagers as young as 13, entirely inappropriate.  Instead I shut up.

Story C happened to my other half F.  He challenged his loudmouth drunken football buddies, telling them that this sort of casual racism was just not ok.  Some protestations ensued, a few players defending their actions by saying that it was harmless football banter.  F was having none of it, telling them that racism was never harmless and football should move away from using such chants.  To their credit his buddies listened and took note.  Several constructive conversations about casual racism directed at the Roma have taken place among the team members since.

I just hope that when these situations occur in the future, and they will occur, since the Roma will continue to be the most discriminated minority in Europe for a long time, I will have the courage to act more like F and less like me.  I can’t stop the Italian (or Finnish, for that matter,) police from evicting the Roma from their makeshift camps, nor can I ensure that Romania (or other countries) do not discriminate against Roma children in isolating them from “normal” children and giving them substandard teaching in separate classes.  But what I can do is point out these small, casual, acts of racism, and make these very smart and nice people see what they’re doing, and thus make them perhaps think twice next time.  I will report back on the first occasion I manage to put my own advice into action.

*Romani is the more technically accurate term, since Roma are a sub-group of Romani, but I've stuck with Roma, as it is widely used to denote all of the Romani.

Rant against Funny Women

A few weeks ago I wrote about funny women, and suggested that we feminists could also lighten up a bit from time to time.  British feminist Laurie Perry disagrees.  Writing about Naomi Wolf’s latest book Perry takes a general swipe at the present generation of what she calls “celebrity faux-feminists” who “provoke without challenging” and whose point is “not to challenge patriarchy, but to distract attention away from it”.

Are funny feminists missing the point?  Or worse, more or less willingly perpetuating the problem they are committed to fighting?  What is, more generally, the role of humour in political activism?

I’m a fan of stand-up comedy and good stand-up is often political and risqué.  For example, Finnish-Iranian comedian Ali Jahangiri makes “pizza jokes”, where a part of his routine revolves around a stereotypical immigrant pizzeria owner that speaks Finnish with a “funny” accent.  Or Bülent Ceylan, a hugely popular German comedian, who in shows such as “Döner for one” entertains his crowd with a never ending flow of stereotypes about Turkish immigrants.

First point I need to make is that these are the kinds of jokes that Jahangiri and Ceylan can make.  I cannot, and neither can you unless you are a dark-skinned immigrant in Finland or a German of Turkish extraction.  I can joke about women as bitches, whereas men cannot.  Only a disabled person can make “cripple” jokes, only a gay person can make “fag” jokes and only a holocaust survivor can make holocaust jokes.  Nobody except a person who is personally the butt of the joke can make them,* in every other instance the issue is highly likely to be one of prejudice and offense masquerading as humour.

I would have thought that this was pretty self-evident, but it continues to baffle me how common “rape jokes” are.  (If you don’t believe me, see here, here and here for just a few recent examples.)  So here comes the angry feminist: Stop making them!  They’re not funny!  In fact they’re incredibly hurtful, offensive and threatening!  Only a rape victim can make a rape joke and even that has to be about her (or him, in fairness), NOT about a veiled threat towards the person to whom it is addressed.

Having covered the basics, I get to the second, more important point: Is it funny?  The problem with my two examples of Jahangiri and Ceylan is that they are not very funny.**  They take a stereotype and pander to it.  This is, I think, the problem that Laurie Perry was complaining about in the New Statesman column I linked above.  It is also the problem that Ariel Levy discussed in Female Chauvinist Pigs addressing the emergence of a whole cultural phenomenon whereby men did not have to make stereotypical jokes about women, as women were making them.  That indeed risks distracting attention from the problem, and even reinforcing it.  The thinking goes as follows: Sexual objectification of women’s bodies must be okay, since women are doing it. And in any event, it’s just a bit of fun, a joke, geddit?  Don’t be such a tightarse.  Chillax, get a sense of humour!

Same with the pizza jokes: Immigrants, their accents and the fact that they end up starting fast food businesses because of employment discrimination in Finland cannot be that serious, if Jahangiri is making a joke of it.

A good political joke does not take a stereotype and reinforce it.  It takes a stereotype and turns it on its head, SUBVERTS it.  That is funny, smart, fresh, surprising... and therefore effective as a tool in political activism.  I could give plenty of examples but my present favourite is the hilarious and fiendishly intelligent Chris Rock with this video, made in the run up to the 2012 US presidential election.  He takes the stereotype of white prejudice against a black president and ...

Well, see – and laugh – for yourself.

What's your view?  Are rude and offensive jokes ok?  Where does the line go?  Are there any lines or is everything permitted, as long as it is funny?  Do jokes make a good addition to the activist toolbox?

*Yes, I know that Phyllis Diller’s fat jokes that I linked in my 3 March post fail this test. Darn!

**With the exception of the name.  "Döner for one" is actually a pretty funny twist on "Dinner for one" -- a weird German New Year's tradition.

Rant about AA

There is racism everywhere.  What I’m most familiar with is white-on-black racism, as it occurs in Europe (since this is where I live) and North America (since that is where lots is written about it).  It has always been blatantly obvious to me that racism is very different on the two continents.

In Europe racism is often about fear.  Fear of the “other”, of the “unknown”.  Although Europe as a continent is pretty heterogeneous culturally and linguistically, we all traditionally look quite similar, believe in the same divinity and have a broadly similar system of values.  Enter the “other”: someone who doesn’t look like us, speak like us, dress like us and holds values that may be alien to us.  Clashes were inevitably going to occur.

While the United States suffers from some of the same symptoms and problems as Europe, it appears to be, as the “melting pot”, more comfortable with tolerating, even when not embracing, differences.  American racism is in a way a “purer” form of the illness.  It stems from a long-held belief that the value of people is determined by the colour of their skin.  The traditional stance being that black people may talk the same language as us, believe in the same god as us, have the same values as us, but they’re not like us ... because they’re black.

The experience of my friend K is illustrative:  Having lived several years in different European countries, she moved to the US.  Her black colleagues were baffled when she did not want to join the African-American club at work, telling them that since she was not, in fact, African-American, she did not feel the affinity that united the members of the club.  In the US "blackness" can be much more as well as much less than "just" skin colour.  It is a shared identity that relies heavily on a joint heritage of discrimination and survival.  At the same time, it "labels" people as presumably sharing that identity purely based on their skin colour.  K told me she had never "felt as black" as she did in the States.

Europe’s answer to the problem so far has basically been threefold: (1) Ignore it.  (2) If someone suggests that there is a problem, deny it.  (3) If you absolutely have to admit that there is a problem, tell people to stop it.  Tell them not to be racist.  Then go back to (1).

Not the subtlest or most sophisticated of approaches, I would dare say.

The United States has tentatively embraced affirmative action instead.*  Some of the main reasons were summarised by Justice O’Connor of the US Supreme Court from the testimony of Michigan Law School Professor Richard Lempert in Grutter v Bollinger et al, 123 S.Ct 2325 (2003).  According to Prof Lempert the school sought

“... students with diverse interests and backgrounds to enhance classroom discussion and the educational experience both inside and outside the classroom. ... When asked about the policy’s ‘commitment to racial and ethnic diversity with special reference to the inclusion of students from groups which have been historically discriminated against,’ Lempert explained that this language [purported] to include students who may bring to the Law School a perspective different from that of members of groups which have not been the victims of such discrimination.”

Now I may be a bit dim, but I don’t actually see how someone’s skin colour enhances the educational experience of those around her.  Nor do I see how the fact that people with skin colour like hers have been discriminated against in the past makes automatically her “perspective” different.

However, I DO see that the argument put forward above is perfectly valid where the individual in question truly brings “diversity” and a “different perspective” to a university class, workplace etc, because she IS in fact different – different NOT by colour, BUT by culture, custom, religion, etc.

In other words, affirmative action sounds like a better tool to attack the European than the American brand of racism.  Why has it not even been considered here?

* “Tentatively” not only because not everyone believes that affirmative action works, but also because some measures have been struck down by the Supreme Court as contrary to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.  Predictably the Court has been bitterly divided in some of these decisions, including in Grutter v Bollinger.