The Racist Within

I found myself wondering over a report from Palestine, this morning. In a night of standard Israeli army barbarity, over 200 homes were demolished on the pretext of terrorist' housing. A refugee camp of 50 years was pummelled and, 1700 people were made refugees, ironically from a refugee camp. 18 Palestinian died in the havoc mostly because of indiscriminate firing from the Israeli military and several because they could not get out of their houses in time. Three children under the age of 15 also died. This is just another night for Palestine, existing on the whim of a clearly racist Nation. Yet the only media and newspaper neadlines were about the Wildfire in California. It seems that in this world the only news worth reporting is based upon the nationality of the victim.

I got thinking about September 11, 2003 and how horrified the world was and how awestruck the media had become with the tragedy. It was truly a murderous rampage yet a mass murdering prime minister levelled another Palestinian refugee camp named Jenin and was celebrated by the American President as “ A Man of Peace”. I also recalled a live exchange on BBC with a group from the third world and a group of Americans discussing the events. One of the participants, a Chilean, reminded the group of another September 11 in 1973. When the democratically elected government of Salvadore Allende, was taken over by a US backed military coup headed by General Pinochet whose penchant for murder is examplary. An Americans was enraged at this suggestion and argued that there was no comparison between the two.

So how do we judge or compare human tragedy? It is clear that the media uses a scale to selectively report such atrocities. A scale based on the classic western thought of racism and orientalism. My notions were further reinforced whilst watching a movie that was recently released. It depicted the Arabs as weak and deceitful and it was the American hero who had to make things right.

So I asked myself: has this world changed? Have outlooks and racist ideologues changed? I was then lectured by one of the interactors at Chowk, on the virtues of Multi-Culturalism and how it was not possible for a multi-cultural society to be racist. He then followed on by proposing that the American Invasion in Iraq was the only way to help the Iraqis, as the Arab world does not have any hope within it. This was a very interesting point coming from an American of an eastern origin. He seemed confident in his abilities as a multicultural element of a society to ensure that racism is rooted out and sets up himself, as the example of how non-racist the nation is. Yet in the same breath, and this being the giveaway of the whole argument, he ascribes so blatantly to the western orientalist ideaology and purports its with such fervour. This is an important question for all expatriates in the West. Have we bought into the collective racism of our newly acquired nationalties? Have we become part of the toned down Orientalist ideology of this so-called “ American Century?"

This idea is further reinforced by the widely held opinion that our parts of the world are corrupt and on an individual level we have somehow become incapable of living there and more importantly working there. You will hear oft-repeated statements such as “ The system is too corrupt and I cannot be a part of it” and “ I cannot work there as the environment is so different.” In essence every time we utter such ignorant generalisations we aid that system to become more degraded, more decadent, atleast in our view and our perception. Soon we start believing as diaspora communities in some generally expected rules to view our own nations. This then filters through to the majorities and slowly it becomes the widely held view of an entire region.

Islamic world has had this problem for eons. The Ahmed Chalabis of this world have manufactured scenarios and set of arguments to continuously discredit the Muslim World. Their pact with the Western nterests groups, have become lethal as was demonstrated in Iraq. In general the widely-held views of the western world have been unchanged or worsened. Muslim countries by default are considered to be hot bed of terrorist organisations and activities. Infact, there are mutations of words such as “Islamists” which is now considered to be another word for terrorists. This goes hand in hand with our own view of the “mullahs” and the famous term " Pakistan Army Beards”. In fact today, freedom fighters in Iraq, fighting to ensure that the American invasion does not succeed are considered terrorists by a surprising majority of Muslims in the West.

It is clear that multiculturalism might have prevented or certainly reduced racism within the western societies, yet there is no evidence that this has reduced in anyways the racist and oreintalist outlooks of our acquired nationalities. In fact ample evidence suggests otherwise. The fact the Arab Nationalis is the key to the revival of the Arab world is seen as a decrypt concept that failed in the Nasserite era. I agree with the proponents of the multicultured West, that things are not right in our region and there is chaos. But we do not have the right to bash down issues that we know have deeper significance in the scheme of thing. The question as that non-intellectual Bernard Lewis put in his right wing cookbook is not “What went wrong?” but “Why is the Orientalist Wrong?” A question that we must answer at all cost even to put to rest the Orientalist within us.