I recently read in a Newsweek article entitled "Uncivil Rights?" (http://www.newsweek.com/2010/12/14/are-gay-rights-civil-rights.html) a number of comparisons and contrasts of the American Gay Rights movement to the country's earlier Civil Rights movement, and found some of the information I read very surprising. For the record, readers should know upfront that I'm pro-gay marriage, but even so, I was almost swayed by some of the detracting arguments made in the article, which I'll detail shortly. However, it was in thinking over how many people's thoughts incorrectly adhere to "unaltered" qualities of a country (e.g., America is white), which we've recently covered in English class, that I came to understand the fallacy in the arguments of the article, which pointed out the beliefs of many that gay rights issues are not as important, or as deadly, or as "serious" as African Americans' civil rights issues.
The argument that struck me as most convincing in the effort against gay marriage was that it is less serious or pressing than the Civil Rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's-- "There are no "heterosexuals only" Woolworth counters where gays and lesbians can protest segregation," and “There are issues of acceptance, but there is no back of the bus; there are no lynchings." This much is almost true. Although gays don't face nearly as much openly accepted heinous violence as many people within the black community did up until and through the 1960's, there are still gays attacked, discriminated against, ignored within the state laws on employment discrimination, and heckled to the point of suicide throughout the country. No, this isn't as blatantly horrifying at first glance as men in the guises of ghosts of dead confederate soldiers burning African Americans on crosses, but the fact is that that activity was not only accepted, but encouraged, at one point in our history. Movies like The Birth of a Nation http://www.filmsite.org/birt.html end up on the 100 Greatest American Movies list http://www.filmsite.org/afi100filmsA.html and enjoyed great commercial success in their time (even to the extent of raising KKK numbers to record levels in the 1920s), regardless of blatant racist messages and themes. And, not to give a history lesson, the Birmingham police sprayed black youth with high-powered fire hoses and sent dogs upon them in MLK's 1963 Children's Crusade.
So no, current discrimination against gays is not as blatantly and searingly hurtful as blacks experienced during the Civil Rights movement. And we should be cognizant and respectful of that. However, the mere fact that such oppositional activity to the Civil Rights movement would be much more strongly rejected and abnormal in the eyes of an everyday American of 2010 reveals a significant hole in the argument that the LGBT community doesn't deserve the same attention as Civil Rights activists: as a country, we've grown a lot since 1963. And the same crimes are not permitted. We discriminate in new ways. And, because we are more sensitive to discrimination of minorities and are held to a higher moral standard both nationally and internationally than that of the 1950's-60's, lighter offenses have greater impact. In 1963, blacks were segregated in many public establishments within the United States while they remained integrated in Canada and European countries. Today, widely Catholic countries like Spain have officially allowed gay marriage; the United States, as a whole, has not. The outward pressure is strikingly similar. The same reactionary groups are opposing reform and rights for "atypical" Americans. The lessons of the Civil Rights movement have taught us that violent discrimination and legal segregation are unacceptable, but instead of helping the plight of the LGBT community, this has rendered the more legal and "subtle" restrictions of their human freedoms somehow less worthy of our attention and sympathy. In the end, the main problem with this argument is that it assumes an unchanging society.
America's growth in acceptance has come to harm its proponents of social reform; the fact that lynchings don't occur as widely anymore means that other hate crimes and forms of discrimination are less serious. But here's the thing: smaller offenses become bigger issues ethically and societally as we become a more mature and just people. The response to lynchings would be a hundred times more angry today than in the past; that shows how we've grown as a society, and that elevates the significance of every other crime against minorities. Whether you think that restricting gay marriage or discriminating against gays is a crime or not is up to you. My argument, in this piece at least, is that regardless of your view, to truly understand an issue your country is dealing with, you have to constantly update the societal reality of your country. Who makes up the minority groups? What roles do all groups play for the advancement of the overall country? Are the beliefs of the "original" constituency of the nation relevant or controlling anymore in a multi-cultural society? What forms of discrimination are taboo now vs. years ago? Has your country's moral system advanced since half a century ago, and why? These are all essential questions to be answered before one assumes that a wrongdoing of today isn't comparable to one of the past.
Discrimination is discrimination. In the end, it appears that it is simply up to forward-thinkers to evaluate whether or not the country is up to date on how much more tolerant it has become. And, if the country is not so up-to-speed, said thinkers must determine how best to remind a nation of how far it has come while simultaneously championing the work still yet to be done.
Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Humor as an Anti-Discriminatory Tool
I write this post having just found myself laughing out loud at a hilarious French Canadian video on youtube protesting the 2008 move by Stephen Harper (Canada's Prime Minister) to cut funding of cultural events, which greatly concerned the Quebecer people. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFbbwEtrsa8&feature=related. For reasons I'll explain shortly, I cannot upload the video. In addition, I found a very compelling home video from Lebanon, entitled "Being a Domestic Worker: Sri Lankiete Lebanieh." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-dtxEO3GjA&feature=player_embedded. These two videos have an interesting link: they use humorous language as a way to counter discrimination.
I discovered the video about Sri Lankan Domestic Workers in a France24 "observer" article. In French, the video is entitled (translated) "My Sri-Lankan is Lebanese." This tries to bring to light and confront the publicly known and, in many cases, accepted, racist views against domestic workers in Lebanon, who are predominantly Sri-Lankan (in addition to many Ethiopians and Filipinos). So enfonced has the idea of domestic worker-as-Sri-Lankan been in the Lebanese mind, as the Lebanese directors of the film would argue, that in many circles, the two words have come to mean the same thing. A domestic worker is "automatically" a "Sri-Lankan", regardless of his or her origin. The video thus attempts to turn the stereotype on its head: the role of maitresse of the house is played by a woman, who, "coincidentally," is Sri-Lankan, while her Sri-Lankan is actually Lebanese. throughout the film, the trials and travails of a "Sri-Lankan" are depicted, and our Libyan "Sri-Lankan" actually escapes, almost as if from bondage, to remove herself from the discriminatory, derogatory treatment of her maitresse. The directors had hoped, as they describe in the article (which isn't available in English, sorry :[), that the juxtaposition of roles would raise awareness to the maltreatment of domestic workers by the hands of the Lebanese. And they hope that this willl at least begin a cycle of change in the minds of their neighbors. To any effect? It's too soon to tell, but I hope so.
My second video, as I mentioned before, cannot be displayed. I have to be able to say that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is no innappropriate content in the video. The problem is--and the the video makes apparent--that with ignorance come misunderstandings and conflict. The ignorance called out by the video is that of Stephen Harper (the Prime Minister of Canada), who, in 2008, announced a legislation that would cut 45 million dollars from the government funding of arts in Canada. The innappropriate nature of the video is displayed through the the language misunderstanding of Anglophone board members as they inspect a Quebecer man's guitar/concert business, and whether or not it deserves the Canadian government's money. They misunderstand both the lyric of one of his songs, "phoque" (seal), for an incredibly vulgar English swear-word, and his use of the word "p'tite" (which in Quebecer quotidian French mostly deletes the "p" sound) for the vulgar English word for breasts. The Quebecer man is virtually silenced under a curtain of ignorance of language--the only bilingual member of the board is too limited in his comprehension to adequately translate his sentiment in French, and his pronunciation is overtly stereotypical and offensive--and serves as an example of culture being destroyed by people who cannot and would not appreciate the depth of its value to a society. By example, then, this video tries to demonstrate that judgment and prejudice against the fine arts is ignorant, using a theme of satire much more evident in this video than the Lebanese one.
What about you, readers? Do you have examples of humor successfully changing the minds of prejudicial others throughout the world, or even your own community? Is humor and media as criticism a weak resistance to the discriminating elements of society? And, if so, does that void this method of value?
I discovered the video about Sri Lankan Domestic Workers in a France24 "observer" article. In French, the video is entitled (translated) "My Sri-Lankan is Lebanese." This tries to bring to light and confront the publicly known and, in many cases, accepted, racist views against domestic workers in Lebanon, who are predominantly Sri-Lankan (in addition to many Ethiopians and Filipinos). So enfonced has the idea of domestic worker-as-Sri-Lankan been in the Lebanese mind, as the Lebanese directors of the film would argue, that in many circles, the two words have come to mean the same thing. A domestic worker is "automatically" a "Sri-Lankan", regardless of his or her origin. The video thus attempts to turn the stereotype on its head: the role of maitresse of the house is played by a woman, who, "coincidentally," is Sri-Lankan, while her Sri-Lankan is actually Lebanese. throughout the film, the trials and travails of a "Sri-Lankan" are depicted, and our Libyan "Sri-Lankan" actually escapes, almost as if from bondage, to remove herself from the discriminatory, derogatory treatment of her maitresse. The directors had hoped, as they describe in the article (which isn't available in English, sorry :[), that the juxtaposition of roles would raise awareness to the maltreatment of domestic workers by the hands of the Lebanese. And they hope that this willl at least begin a cycle of change in the minds of their neighbors. To any effect? It's too soon to tell, but I hope so.
My second video, as I mentioned before, cannot be displayed. I have to be able to say that, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is no innappropriate content in the video. The problem is--and the the video makes apparent--that with ignorance come misunderstandings and conflict. The ignorance called out by the video is that of Stephen Harper (the Prime Minister of Canada), who, in 2008, announced a legislation that would cut 45 million dollars from the government funding of arts in Canada. The innappropriate nature of the video is displayed through the the language misunderstanding of Anglophone board members as they inspect a Quebecer man's guitar/concert business, and whether or not it deserves the Canadian government's money. They misunderstand both the lyric of one of his songs, "phoque" (seal), for an incredibly vulgar English swear-word, and his use of the word "p'tite" (which in Quebecer quotidian French mostly deletes the "p" sound) for the vulgar English word for breasts. The Quebecer man is virtually silenced under a curtain of ignorance of language--the only bilingual member of the board is too limited in his comprehension to adequately translate his sentiment in French, and his pronunciation is overtly stereotypical and offensive--and serves as an example of culture being destroyed by people who cannot and would not appreciate the depth of its value to a society. By example, then, this video tries to demonstrate that judgment and prejudice against the fine arts is ignorant, using a theme of satire much more evident in this video than the Lebanese one.
What about you, readers? Do you have examples of humor successfully changing the minds of prejudicial others throughout the world, or even your own community? Is humor and media as criticism a weak resistance to the discriminating elements of society? And, if so, does that void this method of value?
Monday, November 29, 2010
Media Influence on the Self
Because of the recurring theme of being unable to know oneself when controlled or robbed of freedom by the government in the memoir "Reading Lolita in Tehran" http://www.bookrags.com/Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran, I've come to wonder how much influence media has on how we view ourselves.
In the United States, we could certainly say that advertisement overload can flood our perceptions of what it means to be, for instance, a proper boy or girl. Television shows and video games can influence the way one perceives violence and sex (for example) and how liberally or conservatively they apply those parts of life into their own personal definition of "self". Media gives us a context within which we continuously update our view of self in relation to other people and lifestyles. If this interaction does not necessarily change one's self-description or definition, it at least does constantly provide them with a challenge of how to apply their own talents and individualities to differing views of life, causing them to either adapt their self-image or endure, keeping the self-image intact.
Personally, I've recently been wondering how musical artists around the world affect our own self-images. People connect to the moody music and lyrics of songs, but does it change the person overall? When a little girl grows up for four years with bright pig tails and pink skirts (not to say that's the ideal, but just to provide an example) and in a year changes all of her wardrobe to black and listens to Rob Zombie for funzies, was it the music that changed her, or was it the events occurring around her--perhaps the influence of a group of friends, the intensity and perhaps sad relationship between her parents--that changed her? And, although her outward image would imply that she has changed fundamentally, who are we to say that we know that who she is on the inside--the real demonstration of self and character--has changed at all? Maybe this was just how her particular mindset adapted to the events around her as a purely natural development.
In a more recent and well-known example, the Colombian artist Juanes http://www.juanes.net/ presented a concert in Havana, Cuba, called "Paz sin Fronteras," or "Peace without Borders" http://www.popmatters.com/pm/article/110360-buzz-is-on-as-popular-colombian-rocker-juanes-to-headline-internatio/ A well-known activist for peace and human rights and founder of an foundation called "Mi Sangre Fundación," which provides Colombian children who fall victim to land mines with new limbs and rehabilitation, Juanes has become a non-partisan leader for peace throughout the Latin American community. In addition to his political/social songs and travails, Juanes is incredibly well known for his songs of love and romance, which automatically reach a larger fan base and have provided Juanes with record-breaking album releases at every opportunity. But in regards to Juanes' Paz Sin Fronteras concert, the goal was to unite Cubans in a showing of peace and music and to bring them attention that they so often lack as a nation isolated by the United States' political schema. The concert was met with protests and death threats from conservative Cubans and praise from those more open to his hopes of peace and openness. And in actuality, the concert enjoyed thousands of attendees for Juanes and his lineup of famous Hispanic music stars.
In such a situation, does Juanes simply offer us another way to look at life, or can we definitively say that this particular concert affected the minds of some individuals enough to give them a new purpose: one of peace, acceptance, and advocacy? I find fascinating the wealth of possibilities; there could simultaneously be the father who never had any definitive view but to survive who is now fueled with a passion for peace, the young girl who goes to a concert to hear good music and comes away put off by the political message, and the American wife who, before, was set in her views but has been caused to rethink her view of Cuban isolation due to the emotional power of the crowd in the concert. Can we say that Juanes, a cultural icon, changed any of these people or their sense of purpose? Or, on the contrary, are these simply newfound opinions brought about by a particular situation that do not, in fact, reflect a fundamental change in the way they naturally think about themselves? With all the blame and controversy placed on cultural superstars in today's media, I think it's certainly a worthy question to ask ourselves.
To what extent are we really, fundamentally changed by the touching art of singers, artists, and other entertainment icons?
In the United States, we could certainly say that advertisement overload can flood our perceptions of what it means to be, for instance, a proper boy or girl. Television shows and video games can influence the way one perceives violence and sex (for example) and how liberally or conservatively they apply those parts of life into their own personal definition of "self". Media gives us a context within which we continuously update our view of self in relation to other people and lifestyles. If this interaction does not necessarily change one's self-description or definition, it at least does constantly provide them with a challenge of how to apply their own talents and individualities to differing views of life, causing them to either adapt their self-image or endure, keeping the self-image intact.
Personally, I've recently been wondering how musical artists around the world affect our own self-images. People connect to the moody music and lyrics of songs, but does it change the person overall? When a little girl grows up for four years with bright pig tails and pink skirts (not to say that's the ideal, but just to provide an example) and in a year changes all of her wardrobe to black and listens to Rob Zombie for funzies, was it the music that changed her, or was it the events occurring around her--perhaps the influence of a group of friends, the intensity and perhaps sad relationship between her parents--that changed her? And, although her outward image would imply that she has changed fundamentally, who are we to say that we know that who she is on the inside--the real demonstration of self and character--has changed at all? Maybe this was just how her particular mindset adapted to the events around her as a purely natural development.
In a more recent and well-known example, the Colombian artist Juanes http://www.juanes.net/ presented a concert in Havana, Cuba, called "Paz sin Fronteras," or "Peace without Borders" http://www.popmatters.com/pm/article/110360-buzz-is-on-as-popular-colombian-rocker-juanes-to-headline-internatio/ A well-known activist for peace and human rights and founder of an foundation called "Mi Sangre Fundación," which provides Colombian children who fall victim to land mines with new limbs and rehabilitation, Juanes has become a non-partisan leader for peace throughout the Latin American community. In addition to his political/social songs and travails, Juanes is incredibly well known for his songs of love and romance, which automatically reach a larger fan base and have provided Juanes with record-breaking album releases at every opportunity. But in regards to Juanes' Paz Sin Fronteras concert, the goal was to unite Cubans in a showing of peace and music and to bring them attention that they so often lack as a nation isolated by the United States' political schema. The concert was met with protests and death threats from conservative Cubans and praise from those more open to his hopes of peace and openness. And in actuality, the concert enjoyed thousands of attendees for Juanes and his lineup of famous Hispanic music stars.
In such a situation, does Juanes simply offer us another way to look at life, or can we definitively say that this particular concert affected the minds of some individuals enough to give them a new purpose: one of peace, acceptance, and advocacy? I find fascinating the wealth of possibilities; there could simultaneously be the father who never had any definitive view but to survive who is now fueled with a passion for peace, the young girl who goes to a concert to hear good music and comes away put off by the political message, and the American wife who, before, was set in her views but has been caused to rethink her view of Cuban isolation due to the emotional power of the crowd in the concert. Can we say that Juanes, a cultural icon, changed any of these people or their sense of purpose? Or, on the contrary, are these simply newfound opinions brought about by a particular situation that do not, in fact, reflect a fundamental change in the way they naturally think about themselves? With all the blame and controversy placed on cultural superstars in today's media, I think it's certainly a worthy question to ask ourselves.
To what extent are we really, fundamentally changed by the touching art of singers, artists, and other entertainment icons?
Monday, November 22, 2010
Drôles de cultures--Identity and Taking Ourselves Too Seriously
Hi everyone! To start things off, I've changed my blog umbrella. I found that the international personal & political significance of language and how we use it to change the world around us has been a theme in what I've written so far, as opposed to what I originally intended my umbrella subject to be. Therefore, I've changed my blog to be about said international language-focused topics. In case anyone is wondering, the title of this blog means "Words that make us think." That last Arabic word there is the verb for "to think", at least as far as I researched. (If, however, the accuracy police declare that particular verb incorrect, please let me know, and I'll gladly change it.)
Now, onto today's topic. On a lighter note than many of my posts, I'd like to discuss how we define ourselves around the world and provide an example of such. This was sparked by my reading of Reading Lolita in Tehran http://www.bookrags.com/Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran in English class recently. The memoir chronicles the learning process and lives of a group of Iranian women in a secret college course on English literature taught by renowned author Azar Nafisi. The students realize the tremendous legal and familial punishment they would likely suffer if anyone were to find out about and reveal this freeing, individualist, Western literature-studying class, but the promise of being able to express oneself and gain knowledge despite the trappings of the current political society proves too attractive for these girls.
Obviously, however, not everybody needs to define or express themselves within such a serious context. Just as a contemporary Persian woman may strive to proudly represent her individuality at home does not mean an American schoolboy feels the same impetus to actualize himself at whatever cost. And in my personal opinion, especially in terms of a national scale, self-deprecating understanding can help people remain down-to-earth and avoid needless, over proud conflicts (World War One, anybody?). I'm not suggesting that nations or people go around making fun of themselves and others simply so that everyone remains on the same level of low self-esteem. Rather, I'm hoping to point out that sometimes heated conflicts arise because people are too proud of a particular part of their identity and choose to overlook their faults. One could argue that even though the United States found itself in a war in Iraq that was technically illegal in the UN's terms, many of its citizens supported the war simply because America is perfect and deserves the ability to overstep international consensus when international consensus rules not in America's favor.
When thinking of how people could take this approach to simmer down pride and nationalism, comedians immediately come to mind. Lewis Black reigns supreme as America's angry comedic man, arguably never satisfied with the policies of our Head of State. Even men who make a business out of representing a certain slant of America (e.g., Jon Stewart) make satire out of the "foolish" concurrent events in the news and politics. And as always, although effective in reaching and bringing sow audiences down to earth, no one comedian ever truly connects with one hundred per cent of the people he/ she could be speaking to (out of all the people watching TV or at the Theatre). So that inevitably leaves one pocket of viewers who will not be simmered down, who will not lighten up their proud sense of identity.
Then, however, we are encountered with the comedians who cross cultural and national boundaries and make judgment calls or deprecating jokes about other countries. Now, there is a thread of philosophy that teaches that the truest image of oneself comes not from his/her biased image within, but from how his/her actions are perceived from the outside. I, for one, think there's some worth to this idea. But what I wonder is if such a philosophy is effective in the hands of comedians.
I'll give an example, and offer it up to anyone who so wishes to respond with his/her own opinion as to whether or not such humor helps or hurts relations worldwide:
There's a webseries on TV5.ca (an international French language website dedicated to television, culture, history, and French linguistics) that releases a weekly show called (translated) "Funny Cultures". It is presented solely by Boucar Diouf, a black man from somewhere in the French colonial diaspora whose mission statement is to "invite us to laugh about our differences in order to better tame them." This week's segment covered the fact that up to 30 % of edible food is thrown away in wealthy countries--avoiding the hungry mouths of poorer, less fortunate peoples as consequence. And from this, Boucar developed his joke: translated, he goes on to say "imagine we had a survey throughout the world asking "what is your opinion about the shortage of food in the rest of the world?" And regardless of the clarity of the question, the investigation amounted to jack squat. In Darfur, no one knew what food was. We asked the question in Western Europe, and no one knew what a shortage was. We asked the question in the former Soviet Bloc, and no one had any idea as to what an opinion was. And finally, we posed the question in the U.S., and guess what: no one knew what the rest of the world was." I personally found the joke funny and, if politically incorrect, at least demonstrative of overall wealth and arrogance in certain pockets of the world vs. others.
But now, I leave it to the reader: Are you truly offended when someone points out your country's weak spots? What about when a comedian makes fun of an individual trait of yours? Do you agree that, no matter how offended you may be, the is almost always something to learn about identity from the outside? And in this case, was Boucar effective in helping us to understand the unequal status of the world without deeply offending anyone's identity?
In case anyone wants to watch Boucar's video, la voici: http://www.tv5.ca/webvideo/droles-de-cultures-c-est-la-famine-qui-fait-immigrer-le-sondage-2434.html
Now, onto today's topic. On a lighter note than many of my posts, I'd like to discuss how we define ourselves around the world and provide an example of such. This was sparked by my reading of Reading Lolita in Tehran http://www.bookrags.com/Reading_Lolita_in_Tehran in English class recently. The memoir chronicles the learning process and lives of a group of Iranian women in a secret college course on English literature taught by renowned author Azar Nafisi. The students realize the tremendous legal and familial punishment they would likely suffer if anyone were to find out about and reveal this freeing, individualist, Western literature-studying class, but the promise of being able to express oneself and gain knowledge despite the trappings of the current political society proves too attractive for these girls.
Obviously, however, not everybody needs to define or express themselves within such a serious context. Just as a contemporary Persian woman may strive to proudly represent her individuality at home does not mean an American schoolboy feels the same impetus to actualize himself at whatever cost. And in my personal opinion, especially in terms of a national scale, self-deprecating understanding can help people remain down-to-earth and avoid needless, over proud conflicts (World War One, anybody?). I'm not suggesting that nations or people go around making fun of themselves and others simply so that everyone remains on the same level of low self-esteem. Rather, I'm hoping to point out that sometimes heated conflicts arise because people are too proud of a particular part of their identity and choose to overlook their faults. One could argue that even though the United States found itself in a war in Iraq that was technically illegal in the UN's terms, many of its citizens supported the war simply because America is perfect and deserves the ability to overstep international consensus when international consensus rules not in America's favor.
When thinking of how people could take this approach to simmer down pride and nationalism, comedians immediately come to mind. Lewis Black reigns supreme as America's angry comedic man, arguably never satisfied with the policies of our Head of State. Even men who make a business out of representing a certain slant of America (e.g., Jon Stewart) make satire out of the "foolish" concurrent events in the news and politics. And as always, although effective in reaching and bringing sow audiences down to earth, no one comedian ever truly connects with one hundred per cent of the people he/ she could be speaking to (out of all the people watching TV or at the Theatre). So that inevitably leaves one pocket of viewers who will not be simmered down, who will not lighten up their proud sense of identity.
Then, however, we are encountered with the comedians who cross cultural and national boundaries and make judgment calls or deprecating jokes about other countries. Now, there is a thread of philosophy that teaches that the truest image of oneself comes not from his/her biased image within, but from how his/her actions are perceived from the outside. I, for one, think there's some worth to this idea. But what I wonder is if such a philosophy is effective in the hands of comedians.
I'll give an example, and offer it up to anyone who so wishes to respond with his/her own opinion as to whether or not such humor helps or hurts relations worldwide:
There's a webseries on TV5.ca (an international French language website dedicated to television, culture, history, and French linguistics) that releases a weekly show called (translated) "Funny Cultures". It is presented solely by Boucar Diouf, a black man from somewhere in the French colonial diaspora whose mission statement is to "invite us to laugh about our differences in order to better tame them." This week's segment covered the fact that up to 30 % of edible food is thrown away in wealthy countries--avoiding the hungry mouths of poorer, less fortunate peoples as consequence. And from this, Boucar developed his joke: translated, he goes on to say "imagine we had a survey throughout the world asking "what is your opinion about the shortage of food in the rest of the world?" And regardless of the clarity of the question, the investigation amounted to jack squat. In Darfur, no one knew what food was. We asked the question in Western Europe, and no one knew what a shortage was. We asked the question in the former Soviet Bloc, and no one had any idea as to what an opinion was. And finally, we posed the question in the U.S., and guess what: no one knew what the rest of the world was." I personally found the joke funny and, if politically incorrect, at least demonstrative of overall wealth and arrogance in certain pockets of the world vs. others.
But now, I leave it to the reader: Are you truly offended when someone points out your country's weak spots? What about when a comedian makes fun of an individual trait of yours? Do you agree that, no matter how offended you may be, the is almost always something to learn about identity from the outside? And in this case, was Boucar effective in helping us to understand the unequal status of the world without deeply offending anyone's identity?
In case anyone wants to watch Boucar's video, la voici: http://www.tv5.ca/webvideo/droles-de-cultures-c-est-la-famine-qui-fait-immigrer-le-sondage-2434.html
Monday, November 15, 2010
Responsibility Across Languages
As someone who speaks two languages and strongly attempts to understand and use another (Spanish), I don't typically find that I'm inhibited from much information by a lack of comprehension of another tongue. That is, unless I search news in Chinese, Arabic, etc.--languages that do not use a Roman alphabet and that do not have fundamental relationships to widely-spoken romance languages. I can go onto a French website, a British website, and to some extent a Spanish one, and understand what's going on in a given article enough to come away with a greater global understanding/ perspective. The thing is, although such focus on language is prominent in places like Western Europe, where taking more than one foreign language in High School is frequently the norm, the same cannot be said for the population of the United States.
Unfortunately, as a nation trying to retain its hold as a global superpower (and the sole global superpower on top of it), the United States faces a drop in legitimacy if its people remain complacent in regards to learning or understanding other people's languages. If the global political-economic arena was not as it currently appears, with nations rising out of relative 2nd-world status/lack of global influence to take larger powers down a couple pegs bit by bit, then this would not be an issue, necessarily. The American people could and have, in large part, gone around using English as a lingua franca without feeling pressured to learn another nation/region's language. But as U.S. power becomes challenged more and more, there is a well-thought sentiment that recognizes the pragmatic and respectful need for Americans to learn more languages. Yet even as this field of thought sprouts and flourishes, the rise of the Internet and universal, translatable communication arises; does the accessibility and translatability of the Internet make our new need to learn other people's language a non-need again?
In my opinion, no. Although the Internet can translate (with some efficiency) almost any worded document, and many news sites come in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic versions with a simple click, there are still large pockets of valuable cultural information, in only native tongues, that slip through the cracks. Many of us have used google docs to, say, translate an English letter into Spanish for a pen pal, but this "many of us" group also knows how awkward those messages come out in the target language. And if you didn't know that, simply try translating Don Quixote into English on Google Translator--prepositions vary by languages and we do not have the same idiomatic phrases. (Example: In French, it rains ropes, not cats and dogs.) So with information that cannot be perfectly translated or that is not translated at all, what do we do? Do we simply assume that the minds that publish things in our own language provide us with equally valuable information, of the same subject, and just hope it's all out there for us to find out our leisure?
Well, no, because primarily, that's arrogant. Assuming that anything of value is published in English as well as its native tongue represents a haughty sentiment from which I recommend we all estrange ourselves. Also, let us not forget that understanding someone else's language can help us understand new aspects and opinions on history, which we know is necessary to learn in order to intelligently plot the future.
In an example relating to history, we frequently (and in my case, very recently, with the reading of The Poisonwood Bible) discuss the Congo when learning about European colonization in school. I personally have learned that the Congo is an African country that has long had interactions with European nations, was humanly manipulated and decimated, in parts, by the Belgian colonial machine, and has endured horrendous economic & military manipulation by its own Congolese government almost since inception as an independent nation. But we very infrequently hear about what the state of the Congo is now from a Congolese person. Why? In large part, Congolese people don't speak English. Sure, you can read an article in Time magazine about the after-effects of Mobutu's regime, but that is largely secondhand knowledge and information. Firsthand knowledge comes from communication from a person who has lived the environment, who in this case would speak either French, Lingala, Kikongo, or one of various other languages represented in the Congo. I have a video here that demonstrates my point http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UmCoYsENkc&feature=related. In it, a Congolese comedian does his sketch for a francophone audience in "Festival Juste Pour Rire." While demonstrating his political undercurrent of whites being afraid of blacks, and, in the example of the book "Tintin au Congo" http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2009/08/21/2009-08-21_too_racey_for_kids_offensive_tintin_book_depicting_africans_as_monkeys_banned_fr.html, a racist work nonetheless accepted and part of a widely loved series of French Belgian (Wallonais) books, we get a view of a modern Congolese citizen that is direct and accurate . He (comedian Eddy King) is a relatively wealthy Congolese man, which is not necessarily the norm, but to say that his opinion is less valid or demonstrative of Congolese people is ignorant of the personal intricacies that make us individuals. To even approach understanding the full breadth of a nation, one must accept all its peoples, socio-economic representatives, and cultural non-pluralities. And, finally, in this case, we cannot do so without the understanding of a specific foreign language.
In a world where legitimacy is increasingly determined by how well you can communicate and understand the needs and powers of others, knowledge of a foreign language roars to the forefront as a necessity. With the rise of the Internet, many things are written in English, but not everything is. And frequently, the real grit of culture--the life juice, the quotidian struggle and beauty, the political beliefs-- are not out there in all their individuality in the language most conducive to anyone who might be listening. To foster positive international relationships, we have to put forth the effort to understand others just as much as they wish to be understood; after all, as the self-espoused wealthiest nation in the world, with the most access to news, technology, and travel, isn't it much easier for us to put forth this necessary effort? Let's be responsible here. Let's own up to our undeniable resources and capability and learn more languages.
Unfortunately, as a nation trying to retain its hold as a global superpower (and the sole global superpower on top of it), the United States faces a drop in legitimacy if its people remain complacent in regards to learning or understanding other people's languages. If the global political-economic arena was not as it currently appears, with nations rising out of relative 2nd-world status/lack of global influence to take larger powers down a couple pegs bit by bit, then this would not be an issue, necessarily. The American people could and have, in large part, gone around using English as a lingua franca without feeling pressured to learn another nation/region's language. But as U.S. power becomes challenged more and more, there is a well-thought sentiment that recognizes the pragmatic and respectful need for Americans to learn more languages. Yet even as this field of thought sprouts and flourishes, the rise of the Internet and universal, translatable communication arises; does the accessibility and translatability of the Internet make our new need to learn other people's language a non-need again?
In my opinion, no. Although the Internet can translate (with some efficiency) almost any worded document, and many news sites come in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic versions with a simple click, there are still large pockets of valuable cultural information, in only native tongues, that slip through the cracks. Many of us have used google docs to, say, translate an English letter into Spanish for a pen pal, but this "many of us" group also knows how awkward those messages come out in the target language. And if you didn't know that, simply try translating Don Quixote into English on Google Translator--prepositions vary by languages and we do not have the same idiomatic phrases. (Example: In French, it rains ropes, not cats and dogs.) So with information that cannot be perfectly translated or that is not translated at all, what do we do? Do we simply assume that the minds that publish things in our own language provide us with equally valuable information, of the same subject, and just hope it's all out there for us to find out our leisure?
Well, no, because primarily, that's arrogant. Assuming that anything of value is published in English as well as its native tongue represents a haughty sentiment from which I recommend we all estrange ourselves. Also, let us not forget that understanding someone else's language can help us understand new aspects and opinions on history, which we know is necessary to learn in order to intelligently plot the future.
In an example relating to history, we frequently (and in my case, very recently, with the reading of The Poisonwood Bible) discuss the Congo when learning about European colonization in school. I personally have learned that the Congo is an African country that has long had interactions with European nations, was humanly manipulated and decimated, in parts, by the Belgian colonial machine, and has endured horrendous economic & military manipulation by its own Congolese government almost since inception as an independent nation. But we very infrequently hear about what the state of the Congo is now from a Congolese person. Why? In large part, Congolese people don't speak English. Sure, you can read an article in Time magazine about the after-effects of Mobutu's regime, but that is largely secondhand knowledge and information. Firsthand knowledge comes from communication from a person who has lived the environment, who in this case would speak either French, Lingala, Kikongo, or one of various other languages represented in the Congo. I have a video here that demonstrates my point http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UmCoYsENkc&feature=related. In it, a Congolese comedian does his sketch for a francophone audience in "Festival Juste Pour Rire." While demonstrating his political undercurrent of whites being afraid of blacks, and, in the example of the book "Tintin au Congo" http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2009/08/21/2009-08-21_too_racey_for_kids_offensive_tintin_book_depicting_africans_as_monkeys_banned_fr.html, a racist work nonetheless accepted and part of a widely loved series of French Belgian (Wallonais) books, we get a view of a modern Congolese citizen that is direct and accurate . He (comedian Eddy King) is a relatively wealthy Congolese man, which is not necessarily the norm, but to say that his opinion is less valid or demonstrative of Congolese people is ignorant of the personal intricacies that make us individuals. To even approach understanding the full breadth of a nation, one must accept all its peoples, socio-economic representatives, and cultural non-pluralities. And, finally, in this case, we cannot do so without the understanding of a specific foreign language.
In a world where legitimacy is increasingly determined by how well you can communicate and understand the needs and powers of others, knowledge of a foreign language roars to the forefront as a necessity. With the rise of the Internet, many things are written in English, but not everything is. And frequently, the real grit of culture--the life juice, the quotidian struggle and beauty, the political beliefs-- are not out there in all their individuality in the language most conducive to anyone who might be listening. To foster positive international relationships, we have to put forth the effort to understand others just as much as they wish to be understood; after all, as the self-espoused wealthiest nation in the world, with the most access to news, technology, and travel, isn't it much easier for us to put forth this necessary effort? Let's be responsible here. Let's own up to our undeniable resources and capability and learn more languages.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Poisonwood Bible and the Legitimacy in Naming
In The Poisonwood Bible, a now-married Leah finds herself living in the changing political climate of the Congo. Post-Lumumba's death, post Tshombe-expulsion, post-Tshombe re-entry by the orders of Kasavubu, post-Kasavubu firing Tshombe after he wins election, and now, finally, post-military overthrow by Minister of Defense Mobutu. Mobutu, as the story often goes, becomes mad with power over his tenure as Dictator of Zaire. But he begins with intensions that seem legitimate at the beginning--to rename the cities and colonial street names of the old Congo to better represent Sub-Saharan kin and history--but soon drift off course, spiraling into nonsensical and oxymoronic manipulations of language. In the context of Poisonwood, however, Leah finds herself (on page 446) grapppling with the beginning of Mobutu's name-changing legislation. Her thoughts come off as such:
Change all the names of cities on the map-->Become more African.
Understandable.
Change the African name of "Congo" to Zaïre...to make the nation "African-er".
This makes much less sense. But at least we can understand where Mobutu may have been coming from. Mobutu wanted to have an African name never used or manipulated or misspelled by Europeans.
Then, however, the ball was really dropped, when Mobutu decided to call the period of African reclamation of the Congo “l’authenticité” (authenticity, in case you were doubtful). Leah, a speaker of Kikongo, Lingala, and French, likely saw that this was oxymoronic. The term used by Mobutu to call upon the re-Africanization of the Cong—achem, I mean...Zaïre, is French. Not Kikongo. Not Lingala. Not Tshiluba, not Kingwana. .
Leah very clearly demonstrates her lack of respect for these changes, highlighting not only nonnative language use by Mobutu, but also a disrespectful glossing-over of political events, noting, "But what is authentic about it, I keep asking Anatole. Kinsasha's main street is Boulevard the 30th of June, in memeory of that great Independence Day carefully purchased by thousands of pebbles thrown into bowls and carried upriver. How authentic is that? What really became of that vote is another matter, not memorialized in any public place I can see. There is no Boulevard Janvier 17 Mort de Lumumba."
What the book brings up here is obviously that choice of not only physical language but the language of that which one chooses to depict in history is very powerful in setting a background for the day-to-day life of a nation's people. Even, as in this case, for setting up an inauthentic background. This point caused me to wonder, however, where does the government split with the people in terms of language, and why? When claiming to represent the people who were oppressed, why make official the language of their oppressors (French), the language that a markedly small portion of the 55%-61% literate country even knows how to or bothers to speak ? Is this simply to keep legitimacy in the realm of international politics, to claim that the government can communicate in a prominent world language, and that it is thus deserving of attention?
Such reasoning would surprise me, considering Mobutu reduced his government to a kleptocracy in which the Dictator leeched its people’s income for his own good (which entailed palaces, cars, and other luxuries). The great extent of this illegitimacy was exemplified in Mobutu’s defaulting on all his loans to (ex-colonial overlord) Belgium in 1989 (), cancelling development programs in the country and worsening the economic disparity of Zaïre’s populace.
What good is caused, and who does a leader truly represent, when such a leader declares a colonial, non-native, language (which, in this case, brings back memories of terrible manipulation and mutilation, which is not a typo) official? To what extent can the historical removal of nation-changing events (like Lumumba's assasination) in street signs (and, subsequently, a large part of the public sphere) be powerful in controlling the collective memory and thought in a particular society? I know of friends' parents who grew up learning inaccurate, government-fabricated history in their classrooms; they were shocked to learn the truth upon leaving their home nation's education system. In this case, as depicted in the Poisonwood Bible, I think the manipulation and misuse of language demonstrates a particularly powerful example of unjust control by the government.
Whether Mobutu was entirely effective in his manipulation of language or whether he can really be given all the blame for the subsequent pight of the Congolese could be contested, I suppose. Who is to say whether the widely-despised Mobutu achieved his goal of blindfolding the people to his kleptocracy, erasure of history, and international illegitimacy? Who is to say that, if he did succeed, it wasn't the concurrent American government's fault nearly as much as Mobutu's, being that they would support anybody but the somewhat-socialist Lumumba, whose dedication to peace was apparently of no great testament to his worth as a leader? And of course, one could always argue that none of this would have occured without the vicious colonial rule over the Congo by the Belgians. But that's all essentially speculation, and one could always argue that no one could have predicted the full extent to which Zaire would be manipulated by its own leader after Belgium's departure. However, what can definitively be said, as Leah later points out, is that with so much wrong done linguistic, economic, and political levels, and with so many parties involved, that "We have in this story the ignorant, but no real innocents."
Change all the names of cities on the map-->Become more African.
Understandable.
Change the African name of "Congo" to Zaïre...to make the nation "African-er".
This makes much less sense. But at least we can understand where Mobutu may have been coming from. Mobutu wanted to have an African name never used or manipulated or misspelled by Europeans.
Then, however, the ball was really dropped, when Mobutu decided to call the period of African reclamation of the Congo “l’authenticité” (authenticity, in case you were doubtful). Leah, a speaker of Kikongo, Lingala, and French, likely saw that this was oxymoronic. The term used by Mobutu to call upon the re-Africanization of the Cong—achem, I mean...Zaïre, is French. Not Kikongo. Not Lingala. Not Tshiluba, not Kingwana. .
Leah very clearly demonstrates her lack of respect for these changes, highlighting not only nonnative language use by Mobutu, but also a disrespectful glossing-over of political events, noting, "But what is authentic about it, I keep asking Anatole. Kinsasha's main street is Boulevard the 30th of June, in memeory of that great Independence Day carefully purchased by thousands of pebbles thrown into bowls and carried upriver. How authentic is that? What really became of that vote is another matter, not memorialized in any public place I can see. There is no Boulevard Janvier 17 Mort de Lumumba."
What the book brings up here is obviously that choice of not only physical language but the language of that which one chooses to depict in history is very powerful in setting a background for the day-to-day life of a nation's people. Even, as in this case, for setting up an inauthentic background. This point caused me to wonder, however, where does the government split with the people in terms of language, and why? When claiming to represent the people who were oppressed, why make official the language of their oppressors (French), the language that a markedly small portion of the 55%-61% literate country even knows how to or bothers to speak ? Is this simply to keep legitimacy in the realm of international politics, to claim that the government can communicate in a prominent world language, and that it is thus deserving of attention?
Such reasoning would surprise me, considering Mobutu reduced his government to a kleptocracy in which the Dictator leeched its people’s income for his own good (which entailed palaces, cars, and other luxuries). The great extent of this illegitimacy was exemplified in Mobutu’s defaulting on all his loans to (ex-colonial overlord) Belgium in 1989 (), cancelling development programs in the country and worsening the economic disparity of Zaïre’s populace.
What good is caused, and who does a leader truly represent, when such a leader declares a colonial, non-native, language (which, in this case, brings back memories of terrible manipulation and mutilation, which is not a typo) official? To what extent can the historical removal of nation-changing events (like Lumumba's assasination) in street signs (and, subsequently, a large part of the public sphere) be powerful in controlling the collective memory and thought in a particular society? I know of friends' parents who grew up learning inaccurate, government-fabricated history in their classrooms; they were shocked to learn the truth upon leaving their home nation's education system. In this case, as depicted in the Poisonwood Bible, I think the manipulation and misuse of language demonstrates a particularly powerful example of unjust control by the government.
Whether Mobutu was entirely effective in his manipulation of language or whether he can really be given all the blame for the subsequent pight of the Congolese could be contested, I suppose. Who is to say whether the widely-despised Mobutu achieved his goal of blindfolding the people to his kleptocracy, erasure of history, and international illegitimacy? Who is to say that, if he did succeed, it wasn't the concurrent American government's fault nearly as much as Mobutu's, being that they would support anybody but the somewhat-socialist Lumumba, whose dedication to peace was apparently of no great testament to his worth as a leader? And of course, one could always argue that none of this would have occured without the vicious colonial rule over the Congo by the Belgians. But that's all essentially speculation, and one could always argue that no one could have predicted the full extent to which Zaire would be manipulated by its own leader after Belgium's departure. However, what can definitively be said, as Leah later points out, is that with so much wrong done linguistic, economic, and political levels, and with so many parties involved, that "We have in this story the ignorant, but no real innocents."
Monday, October 25, 2010
Romance
This week, I am focusing on the word romance.
Wait!--before you turn on the Barry White theme music, know that this is a commentary on the diversity and commonality of language. In fact, the fact that many readers would simply assume I'm about to talk about peoples' love lives is a testament to the point I will attempt to make: as one word (like "romance") can sometimes demonstrate, the umbrella of new meaning, significance, and societal and cultural history--that languages demonstrate simply by existing as they are--is a testament to how seriously we ought to take the study of language and how intrinsically it is linked to the developments of our collective history.
Alright, back to romance. Well, this may be cheating, but it all began with the word romanz, the name of the language spoken in France (and, due to conquests made by Frankish King Clovis, parts of northern Italy and Spain)as priests responded to the increasingly spoken language of the people, "Roman"--not Latin. This language, "Romance", would not only develop the proto-French that would spawn the langues d'oil (North and Western France and Belgian Wallonia) and langues d'oc (Southern & Southeastern France)--named as such for their different ways of pronouncing Latin "hoc", meaning "yes" in that era--that would entually give birth to modern French, but would also, in its reunion with Nordic languages (that would become Norman, the original language of a very famous Normandie, France) irreversibly change the history of English.
No, English is today not a Romance Language. BUT--linguists still argue today as to whether it is closer to a quarter or a half of English vocabulary words are loaned from the Normans (and, thus, French). (By the way, all these statistics can be found in the fascinating book "The Story of French", by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow). Famous English writer Chaucer is the descendent of chaussiers (shoemakers); the Norman-English of Old England spoken by kings and, soon, court jesters would actaully give France some of its earlier anglicisms (e.g., the cardinal directions of the compass). Perhaps the only system of language not mutually saturated by each others' tongues was that of the days of the week: English retained its profoundly Norse religious term-influence (e.g., Thursday is Thor's day, Wednesday is Woden's/Odin's day http://www.crowl.org/lawrence/time/days.html). And that's only a few of the seven mostly Norse-related days per week! There is no doubt that with very little exception, Romanz and its linguistic compatriots had a tremendous, ingrained effect on the way the rest of Western Europe describes itself, both linguistically and historically, post-Roman Empire. The very word itself has come to symbolize its orignial meaning and more, displaying the essence of what it is for a word to weave itself through the linguistic and cultural adaptations of various peoples until it becomes a multi-faceted, ineffaceable parola franca.
The word "romance" has come to modify the noun, "language", implying a southwestern European origin; to describe a specific language that developed into the international French of today's world; and to imply love-and-affection-centered stories, movies, music, and certain amiable but hopeless people (no, I don't mean all people of romantic mindsets, but rather the specifically "hopeless romantic" types). And, essentially, the number of meanings to Romance's name are a testament to the utter permeability of our history to the mechanisms and growth of language. In the end, the transformation and retranslation of the word "romance" shows us that one can learn history witout necessarily studying linguistics and the history of communication, but in studying said story of contact and communication, one necessarily hits two birds with the proverbial stone--or, rather, the "pierre", both stone and a well-known French name. Why? Look it up!
Wait!--before you turn on the Barry White theme music, know that this is a commentary on the diversity and commonality of language. In fact, the fact that many readers would simply assume I'm about to talk about peoples' love lives is a testament to the point I will attempt to make: as one word (like "romance") can sometimes demonstrate, the umbrella of new meaning, significance, and societal and cultural history--that languages demonstrate simply by existing as they are--is a testament to how seriously we ought to take the study of language and how intrinsically it is linked to the developments of our collective history.
Alright, back to romance. Well, this may be cheating, but it all began with the word romanz, the name of the language spoken in France (and, due to conquests made by Frankish King Clovis, parts of northern Italy and Spain)as priests responded to the increasingly spoken language of the people, "Roman"--not Latin. This language, "Romance", would not only develop the proto-French that would spawn the langues d'oil (North and Western France and Belgian Wallonia) and langues d'oc (Southern & Southeastern France)--named as such for their different ways of pronouncing Latin "hoc", meaning "yes" in that era--that would entually give birth to modern French, but would also, in its reunion with Nordic languages (that would become Norman, the original language of a very famous Normandie, France) irreversibly change the history of English.
No, English is today not a Romance Language. BUT--linguists still argue today as to whether it is closer to a quarter or a half of English vocabulary words are loaned from the Normans (and, thus, French). (By the way, all these statistics can be found in the fascinating book "The Story of French", by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow). Famous English writer Chaucer is the descendent of chaussiers (shoemakers); the Norman-English of Old England spoken by kings and, soon, court jesters would actaully give France some of its earlier anglicisms (e.g., the cardinal directions of the compass). Perhaps the only system of language not mutually saturated by each others' tongues was that of the days of the week: English retained its profoundly Norse religious term-influence (e.g., Thursday is Thor's day, Wednesday is Woden's/Odin's day http://www.crowl.org/lawrence/time/days.html). And that's only a few of the seven mostly Norse-related days per week! There is no doubt that with very little exception, Romanz and its linguistic compatriots had a tremendous, ingrained effect on the way the rest of Western Europe describes itself, both linguistically and historically, post-Roman Empire. The very word itself has come to symbolize its orignial meaning and more, displaying the essence of what it is for a word to weave itself through the linguistic and cultural adaptations of various peoples until it becomes a multi-faceted, ineffaceable parola franca.
The word "romance" has come to modify the noun, "language", implying a southwestern European origin; to describe a specific language that developed into the international French of today's world; and to imply love-and-affection-centered stories, movies, music, and certain amiable but hopeless people (no, I don't mean all people of romantic mindsets, but rather the specifically "hopeless romantic" types). And, essentially, the number of meanings to Romance's name are a testament to the utter permeability of our history to the mechanisms and growth of language. In the end, the transformation and retranslation of the word "romance" shows us that one can learn history witout necessarily studying linguistics and the history of communication, but in studying said story of contact and communication, one necessarily hits two birds with the proverbial stone--or, rather, the "pierre", both stone and a well-known French name. Why? Look it up!
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
"Tough Love" in the World of Illegal Immigration
In English class we've recently been circling over the subject of when helping becomes hurting. In the example of the Baptist Price family in the novel The Poisonwood Bible, ignorance of native Kikongo cultural customs hurt both the relationship between the two sides (the Prices and the villagers) and the very survival of the Prices themselves.
I've often wondered if the current confrontationalist, fence-building stance of US immigration policy has had this same effect: if, in trying to assure our laws are upheld and that Mexico's agricultural lands and border towns (where most immigrants to the States come from http://www.ackland.org/education/k12/handoutpdfs/Mexico.pdf) remain populated and economically self-sufficient, we have actually hurt our relationship with Mexico and the communities that celebrate the cultures on both sides of the border. I have often tried to think up (assuming I can even slightly comprehend the legal complexity of the issue) an effective, integrationalist reform for our current immigration policy.
I've come up short every time, I assure you. Oftentimes in this subject, two opposing sides essentially come dance around the bare bones of each of their sentiments: "I like Mexicans and they're good for the enrichment of our culture and you're a racist!" or "They're culturally different, they don't pay taxes, and they don't speak my freakin' language! How am I supposed to accept that with open arms?" In my search for a solution to perhaps bridge a gap between these two battling sentiments (in their simplest form), I've often let my own views get in the way. But in the end, we need a way to appeal to both sides, and I think I may have recently stumbled upon at least a shadow of that type of solution.
BBC News published an article in 2009 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7879206.stm) detailing a new tactic used by "La Migra" (US Anti-Illegal Immigration Agents) to prevent migrants from attempting the dangerous borderr crossing. Their method? A CD called "Migracorridos" whose songs emulate Mexican ballads called "Corridos". Their songs' intended message? That the terrible fact of border crossing isn't necessarily the illegality of it, but rather the harm that can be done to the immigrants themselves. Somber messages bear foreboding messages such as: "Cada dia mueren tres personas en la frontera. Nunca es el coyote./ Every day three people die on the border; the coyote is never one of them." Coyotes are alien traffickers who frequently leave immigrants in trucks to die out in the desert after they've collected all their money for the passage. In 2008 alone, 390 immigrants died along the way.
This CD, given its applicability to many border families and anyone wishing to immigrate, has actually been played throughout various Mexican radio channels. The government has not announced publicly that the songs played are their brainchild, but even if they had, the message that many listeners connect to would be the same. In wondering whether or not I agreed morally with this type of solution (aiding both the US's immigration issue and purportedly the lives of Mexican citizens), I first had to get over the fact that the CD's intent is to reduce immigration. It is achieved through a (likely real) veil of sympathy for immigrants, as Agent Rodriguez points out, "What we try to tell them is that this is not worth it, they should think about their families." I'm not sure whether or not the actual driving emotion here is sympathy for the families involved. In the end, we can only take the government's word; in a sense, they have done a noble, albeit covert, deed in using methods of the target culture to try to ameliorate the situation. I'm not sure if this is subtle manipulation or simply another honest reason why illegal immigration should not occur. Again, we as citizens can only "know" what we are told in this case, and it seems to be a rightly justifiable method to me.
Has it worked? Has our government found at least a path towards solving this problem within a sound realm of ethics and respect for the other side? As the article points out, more than one hundred thousand less people were arrested between 2007-2008. Perhaps the song method has died out since then. But at least for now, we can take solace in the knowledge that "La Migra" has not only taken steps to understand its "targets", but would also rather not have targets at all--and to an extent, that drop of arrests by +100,000 shows that they have succeeded. In an issue as complicated as this, success will be very difficult to clearly define. But if your definition of success involves more depth than simply placing a wall between your country and those who desire to make a better life inside of it, then perhaps we are closer to accomplishing immiration reform than we've been lead to believe.
I've often wondered if the current confrontationalist, fence-building stance of US immigration policy has had this same effect: if, in trying to assure our laws are upheld and that Mexico's agricultural lands and border towns (where most immigrants to the States come from http://www.ackland.org/education/k12/handoutpdfs/Mexico.pdf) remain populated and economically self-sufficient, we have actually hurt our relationship with Mexico and the communities that celebrate the cultures on both sides of the border. I have often tried to think up (assuming I can even slightly comprehend the legal complexity of the issue) an effective, integrationalist reform for our current immigration policy.
I've come up short every time, I assure you. Oftentimes in this subject, two opposing sides essentially come dance around the bare bones of each of their sentiments: "I like Mexicans and they're good for the enrichment of our culture and you're a racist!" or "They're culturally different, they don't pay taxes, and they don't speak my freakin' language! How am I supposed to accept that with open arms?" In my search for a solution to perhaps bridge a gap between these two battling sentiments (in their simplest form), I've often let my own views get in the way. But in the end, we need a way to appeal to both sides, and I think I may have recently stumbled upon at least a shadow of that type of solution.
BBC News published an article in 2009 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7879206.stm) detailing a new tactic used by "La Migra" (US Anti-Illegal Immigration Agents) to prevent migrants from attempting the dangerous borderr crossing. Their method? A CD called "Migracorridos" whose songs emulate Mexican ballads called "Corridos". Their songs' intended message? That the terrible fact of border crossing isn't necessarily the illegality of it, but rather the harm that can be done to the immigrants themselves. Somber messages bear foreboding messages such as: "Cada dia mueren tres personas en la frontera. Nunca es el coyote./ Every day three people die on the border; the coyote is never one of them." Coyotes are alien traffickers who frequently leave immigrants in trucks to die out in the desert after they've collected all their money for the passage. In 2008 alone, 390 immigrants died along the way.
This CD, given its applicability to many border families and anyone wishing to immigrate, has actually been played throughout various Mexican radio channels. The government has not announced publicly that the songs played are their brainchild, but even if they had, the message that many listeners connect to would be the same. In wondering whether or not I agreed morally with this type of solution (aiding both the US's immigration issue and purportedly the lives of Mexican citizens), I first had to get over the fact that the CD's intent is to reduce immigration. It is achieved through a (likely real) veil of sympathy for immigrants, as Agent Rodriguez points out, "What we try to tell them is that this is not worth it, they should think about their families." I'm not sure whether or not the actual driving emotion here is sympathy for the families involved. In the end, we can only take the government's word; in a sense, they have done a noble, albeit covert, deed in using methods of the target culture to try to ameliorate the situation. I'm not sure if this is subtle manipulation or simply another honest reason why illegal immigration should not occur. Again, we as citizens can only "know" what we are told in this case, and it seems to be a rightly justifiable method to me.
Has it worked? Has our government found at least a path towards solving this problem within a sound realm of ethics and respect for the other side? As the article points out, more than one hundred thousand less people were arrested between 2007-2008. Perhaps the song method has died out since then. But at least for now, we can take solace in the knowledge that "La Migra" has not only taken steps to understand its "targets", but would also rather not have targets at all--and to an extent, that drop of arrests by +100,000 shows that they have succeeded. In an issue as complicated as this, success will be very difficult to clearly define. But if your definition of success involves more depth than simply placing a wall between your country and those who desire to make a better life inside of it, then perhaps we are closer to accomplishing immiration reform than we've been lead to believe.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Re: "Is Obama's Record Better Than It Looks?"
When discussing the true value of Obama's record since taking office, the question must be asked of those in the conversation: "Where are your expectations?"
There are some people who were uninformed and assumed Obama would turn the United States into a socialist police state. They thus cry wolf every time Obama cites a non-conservative idea of his and complain when he continues a previously conservative-run venture (e.g., the War in Afghanistan) and experiences serious difficulty. There are also some people who wer uninformed to the extent that they believed Obama's presidency would somehow immediately end all their economic and social struggles, just because he represented something other than a conservative white majority. You may have seen such a person here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI&feature=related
My guess is, she still has to pay her mortgage.
Sweeping generalizations aside, there are specific faults of Obama that everybody had been able to point out. Big businesses have been bailed out, but Main Street (that beautiful, coveted, "real-America" main street) still hurts economically. Around Sept. 23rd, unemployment benefits claims rose by 12,000, topping off at around 465,000 (a message from the Labor Department) http://hotair.com/archives/2010/09/23/initial-jobless-claims-still-bouncing-around-a-2010-average/.
By the way, I am certainly not an economics expert and will not attempt to be for this post. But that statistic looks, rather undeniably, less than ideal.
Is it as bad as when "everyone was worried back then," Walt says? http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/09/28/credit_where_its_due_is_obama_s_record_better_than_it_looks
No. That's my opinion, at least. We have a President who, for the most part, recognizes the need to adapt certain systems to the flow of global events and the trends of the American system (e.g., broken Healthcare), not one who ignores any opportunity for equal cooperation with other nations and rejects the call for acceptance by the nations' growing minorities (e.g., latinos).
Could anyone please join me in contemplating the sheer political awkwardness and mishandling of the Park 51 Islamic Center controversy if it were in the hands of George W. Bush?
But coming back to the issue at hand--the true effectiveness (or lack thereof) in Obama's record--it all depends on your expectations of the President. If you'd hoped he'd reverse Bush's mistakes (if that's how you view them) in these two years, slow down. I'm not sure any leader of such a complicated and vocally contentious political system which influences the votes of one of the most diverse national populations currently in existence could "fix" the multitude of economic, military, and political issues left in Bush's wake. In addition, if you were hoping Obama would be MORE liberal, then you face the fact that things are bad enough as it is with unilateral adversity to Democratic proposals in Congress by Republicans. Politically, no matter how critical of the Bush administration he may get, he cannot afford to let everything Bush-era (closed-door deals with influential industies, big business bailouts) go; the era of the Tea Party, firing up more and more voters, has bereaved him of that luxury.
If you wanted him to be more conservative (somehow, some way), then you are simply out of luck. The man has to stick to some of his political principles.
My questions to Walt are: Are we really to assume that Obama's difficulty in causing sweeping reform shows a lack of impetus on his part to fire on all cylinders? Many people say that he hasn't reached across the aisle enough to ensure the bipartisanship needed for reform. Is that statement valid, when the opposite party would rather dilute and end the reform he's trying to cause in the first place? How does a president expected to follow up on "promised" reform work with a party that, from day one, has refused to cooperate with his proposals on the basis, essentially, that he is a strong Democrat?
There are some people who were uninformed and assumed Obama would turn the United States into a socialist police state. They thus cry wolf every time Obama cites a non-conservative idea of his and complain when he continues a previously conservative-run venture (e.g., the War in Afghanistan) and experiences serious difficulty. There are also some people who wer uninformed to the extent that they believed Obama's presidency would somehow immediately end all their economic and social struggles, just because he represented something other than a conservative white majority. You may have seen such a person here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P36x8rTb3jI&feature=related
My guess is, she still has to pay her mortgage.
Sweeping generalizations aside, there are specific faults of Obama that everybody had been able to point out. Big businesses have been bailed out, but Main Street (that beautiful, coveted, "real-America" main street) still hurts economically. Around Sept. 23rd, unemployment benefits claims rose by 12,000, topping off at around 465,000 (a message from the Labor Department) http://hotair.com/archives/2010/09/23/initial-jobless-claims-still-bouncing-around-a-2010-average/.
By the way, I am certainly not an economics expert and will not attempt to be for this post. But that statistic looks, rather undeniably, less than ideal.
Is it as bad as when "everyone was worried back then," Walt says? http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/09/28/credit_where_its_due_is_obama_s_record_better_than_it_looks
No. That's my opinion, at least. We have a President who, for the most part, recognizes the need to adapt certain systems to the flow of global events and the trends of the American system (e.g., broken Healthcare), not one who ignores any opportunity for equal cooperation with other nations and rejects the call for acceptance by the nations' growing minorities (e.g., latinos).
Could anyone please join me in contemplating the sheer political awkwardness and mishandling of the Park 51 Islamic Center controversy if it were in the hands of George W. Bush?
But coming back to the issue at hand--the true effectiveness (or lack thereof) in Obama's record--it all depends on your expectations of the President. If you'd hoped he'd reverse Bush's mistakes (if that's how you view them) in these two years, slow down. I'm not sure any leader of such a complicated and vocally contentious political system which influences the votes of one of the most diverse national populations currently in existence could "fix" the multitude of economic, military, and political issues left in Bush's wake. In addition, if you were hoping Obama would be MORE liberal, then you face the fact that things are bad enough as it is with unilateral adversity to Democratic proposals in Congress by Republicans. Politically, no matter how critical of the Bush administration he may get, he cannot afford to let everything Bush-era (closed-door deals with influential industies, big business bailouts) go; the era of the Tea Party, firing up more and more voters, has bereaved him of that luxury.
If you wanted him to be more conservative (somehow, some way), then you are simply out of luck. The man has to stick to some of his political principles.
My questions to Walt are: Are we really to assume that Obama's difficulty in causing sweeping reform shows a lack of impetus on his part to fire on all cylinders? Many people say that he hasn't reached across the aisle enough to ensure the bipartisanship needed for reform. Is that statement valid, when the opposite party would rather dilute and end the reform he's trying to cause in the first place? How does a president expected to follow up on "promised" reform work with a party that, from day one, has refused to cooperate with his proposals on the basis, essentially, that he is a strong Democrat?
Monday, October 4, 2010
Body, Spoken and Cultural Language: Speak Them All Lest You Be Interculturally Mute
The Western, democratic world has all the answers for the rest of the world just as much as the Prices of The Poisonwood Bible do for the Congolese. What exactly do I mean? The fictional Prices, a family lead by a devout, evangelical, Baptist Reverend-patriarch, moved into the 1950's Belgian Congo with the general intent to baptize and save the poor, sinning natives. Then the natives could live their lives with God's love and acceptance; then Reverend Price could be as holy and close to God as possible, a true spreader of the faith.
Peu importe that the Prices could neither speak French nor Kikongo, the true spoken language of the village people. No matter that they took no time to understand the people whom they were planning on converting, that their own survival was more important than providing supplies to the impoverished. Saving the soul was a much more fulfilling act for the Congolese than nourishment, basic supplies, or in-depth understanding and respect anyway, right? After all, "What could we give them? We hadn't given a single thought to them wanting earthly goods, in our planning ahead. We'd only brought things for ourselves." There was no way for young Leah to even communicate: "These children have nothing to do with je suis, vous etes...And from day one I have coveted it bitterly...I imagined myself shouting "We like Ike!""
The human brain can make us do any number of things to oppose the unknown. And, granted, the similarity between young Leah's frustration with the mutual incomprehension and lack of appreciation does not fully complete a comparison between the Prices' mission and the foreign policy of the Western world (namely the U.S.) However, we as a nation can learn from the Prices' travails and missteps. Their provider in the very foreign Congo, Mama Tataba, has left. The chief has openly discouraged all villagers from accepting Baptism from the Reverend. Services are held, but anyone who attends is unenthusiastic or waiting for the meal that will occur immediately afterward. As if, on a larger scale, foreign policy directors and position holders promoting the spread of democracy do not find similar issues on their hands. In the increased search for terrorists in the Pakistani borderlands, a U.S. chopper accidentally killed three Pakistani officers ; the Pakistani government has since closed that border to U.S. troop movement (which is, all the same, expected to be re-opened rather soon). It was a bad mistake, but is something to be understood given the U.S.'s dangerous mission and hefty goal in the region: to uproot and destroy all terrorist threats. The problem here, as with many foreign policy issues, is that countries simply do not speak the same language. I'm not talking about the language that Leah fears little children use to make fun of her ivory, Belgian-like skin (although I plan on discussing literal language barriers in later blogs); I'm talking about the type of bare-bones communication of each other's essential values, desires, and cultures. The U.S. and Pakistani governments' shaky relationship comes from the fact that the U.S. must use Pakistani territory to wage a seemingly endless war against terrorism (an idea), while the Pakistani government seeks to expel terrorists, continue on with its society productively, and simply keep its citizens from getting caught in the crosshairs between political allies with no cultural ties and political enemies with a very similar culture. The fact that Pakistanis on the streets and in government may be worried about the fact that the U.S. is waging a war with no end in sight on their soil does not seem (note: an educated opinion, not claiming to be truth) to be affecting the strategy of American involvement.
Examples of lack of consideration of the other side's essential desires and cultural language of what is truly essential to survive are evident in our recent history. While many Americans and American government see democracy as the ultimate lifeblood of a fruitful societal existence, other cultures, having been oppressed by outsiders (of caste, country, religious sect, etc.) have proven to hold different systems for gaging what they want out of government representation. The United States government's desire to provide democratic rights to all peoples is ideologically noble. All the same, people have, to our surprise, taken these new democratic reigns to steer their governments in a non-democratic, non-secular direction: "The groups with the greatest success at the ballot box have usually been those appealing to nationalist sentiments or, more dangerously, to ethnic identities. In Iraq, despite attempts by American democracy-promotion groups to support new parties and train their leaders, the viable contenders in the current contest, as in 2005, are still the religious parties formed in exile in opposition to Saddam Hussein" ( ).
On a grander scale than the Prices, American government faces an issue in how to best direct its foreign policy in correlation to the views of foreign societies. We offer democracy and/or stabilization (through military involvement) to various regions, and sometimes expect or hope our chosen nations to comply by electing democratic, Stars & Stripes-loving leaders. But to maintain respectful (and thereby successful) relationships with said nations, and to truly represent the ideals of representative democracy, we have to allow them to define themselves through whichever leader they please (assuming the leader doesn't resemble a specific Ahmedinejad or Jong-Il). This is the only way of truly being fluent in a cultural language: having knowledge of a culture's reason for a certain type of government and then learning how to interact with, not dominate, said leader or system. In a world increasingly independent of the whims of U.S. foreign policy, we have to learn to adapt, not resist. The Price family has not exactly learned this lesson, and their status as minority has come to far overshadow their initial status of welcomed royalty.
Yes, it would help if the Prices spoke Kikongo and if all appropriate U.S. foreign relations officers spoke Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Spanish, Mandarin, and/or French. But understanding a nation's needs and how they can pair with (not be overshadowed by) your own country's needs prevents the conflicts of misunderstanding (which is more dangerous than shouting "I Like Ike!" in this big a stage), nationalism, and ideological polarity. And what partnership survives that ordeal?
Peu importe that the Prices could neither speak French nor Kikongo, the true spoken language of the village people. No matter that they took no time to understand the people whom they were planning on converting, that their own survival was more important than providing supplies to the impoverished. Saving the soul was a much more fulfilling act for the Congolese than nourishment, basic supplies, or in-depth understanding and respect anyway, right? After all, "What could we give them? We hadn't given a single thought to them wanting earthly goods, in our planning ahead. We'd only brought things for ourselves." There was no way for young Leah to even communicate: "These children have nothing to do with je suis, vous etes...And from day one I have coveted it bitterly...I imagined myself shouting "We like Ike!""
The human brain can make us do any number of things to oppose the unknown. And, granted, the similarity between young Leah's frustration with the mutual incomprehension and lack of appreciation does not fully complete a comparison between the Prices' mission and the foreign policy of the Western world (namely the U.S.) However, we as a nation can learn from the Prices' travails and missteps. Their provider in the very foreign Congo, Mama Tataba, has left. The chief has openly discouraged all villagers from accepting Baptism from the Reverend. Services are held, but anyone who attends is unenthusiastic or waiting for the meal that will occur immediately afterward. As if, on a larger scale, foreign policy directors and position holders promoting the spread of democracy do not find similar issues on their hands. In the increased search for terrorists in the Pakistani borderlands, a U.S. chopper accidentally killed three Pakistani officers ; the Pakistani government has since closed that border to U.S. troop movement (which is, all the same, expected to be re-opened rather soon). It was a bad mistake, but is something to be understood given the U.S.'s dangerous mission and hefty goal in the region: to uproot and destroy all terrorist threats. The problem here, as with many foreign policy issues, is that countries simply do not speak the same language. I'm not talking about the language that Leah fears little children use to make fun of her ivory, Belgian-like skin (although I plan on discussing literal language barriers in later blogs); I'm talking about the type of bare-bones communication of each other's essential values, desires, and cultures. The U.S. and Pakistani governments' shaky relationship comes from the fact that the U.S. must use Pakistani territory to wage a seemingly endless war against terrorism (an idea), while the Pakistani government seeks to expel terrorists, continue on with its society productively, and simply keep its citizens from getting caught in the crosshairs between political allies with no cultural ties and political enemies with a very similar culture. The fact that Pakistanis on the streets and in government may be worried about the fact that the U.S. is waging a war with no end in sight on their soil does not seem (note: an educated opinion, not claiming to be truth) to be affecting the strategy of American involvement.
Examples of lack of consideration of the other side's essential desires and cultural language of what is truly essential to survive are evident in our recent history. While many Americans and American government see democracy as the ultimate lifeblood of a fruitful societal existence, other cultures, having been oppressed by outsiders (of caste, country, religious sect, etc.) have proven to hold different systems for gaging what they want out of government representation. The United States government's desire to provide democratic rights to all peoples is ideologically noble. All the same, people have, to our surprise, taken these new democratic reigns to steer their governments in a non-democratic, non-secular direction: "The groups with the greatest success at the ballot box have usually been those appealing to nationalist sentiments or, more dangerously, to ethnic identities. In Iraq, despite attempts by American democracy-promotion groups to support new parties and train their leaders, the viable contenders in the current contest, as in 2005, are still the religious parties formed in exile in opposition to Saddam Hussein" ( ).
On a grander scale than the Prices, American government faces an issue in how to best direct its foreign policy in correlation to the views of foreign societies. We offer democracy and/or stabilization (through military involvement) to various regions, and sometimes expect or hope our chosen nations to comply by electing democratic, Stars & Stripes-loving leaders. But to maintain respectful (and thereby successful) relationships with said nations, and to truly represent the ideals of representative democracy, we have to allow them to define themselves through whichever leader they please (assuming the leader doesn't resemble a specific Ahmedinejad or Jong-Il). This is the only way of truly being fluent in a cultural language: having knowledge of a culture's reason for a certain type of government and then learning how to interact with, not dominate, said leader or system. In a world increasingly independent of the whims of U.S. foreign policy, we have to learn to adapt, not resist. The Price family has not exactly learned this lesson, and their status as minority has come to far overshadow their initial status of welcomed royalty.
Yes, it would help if the Prices spoke Kikongo and if all appropriate U.S. foreign relations officers spoke Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, Spanish, Mandarin, and/or French. But understanding a nation's needs and how they can pair with (not be overshadowed by) your own country's needs prevents the conflicts of misunderstanding (which is more dangerous than shouting "I Like Ike!" in this big a stage), nationalism, and ideological polarity. And what partnership survives that ordeal?
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Despite Ahmadinejhad's anti-American rhetoric, he's actually increasing western solidarity.
Hey everyone! To open things up and make all this clear, my blog's goal will sometimes be to calm people down and sometimes be to shake people up. Usually, this means the stream of thought or belief I'm highlighting is a minority; I'll be attempting to make clear all the things big, common (and usually sensationalist) media glosses over, and hopefully reveal a level of depth that has also not been touched on. I will not solely represent the minority for the sake of it; my post will attribute itself to whatever view needs recognition for those who are skimming over the lessons we could be learning from other cultures and out past.
As a quick example, the work has already been done for me in the "Ground Zero Mosque" "scandal". By now, luckily, most people who care to know are in fact aware that said building is neither a mosque nor being built on Ground Zero. And simply put, almost all Americans who can remember that day have had it affect them in some harsh way that they would rather not be reminded of; my sister's current fiancé was in one of the towers on 9/11 and narrowly escaped before the towers fell. Still, when we look outside our own sphere of collective American memory and remorse, we see a world that is increasingly powerful and educated, hoping that we hold our American ideals to the standard at which they are written: in this case, that freedom of religion and assembly means so for all people in this nation. They also demand a world leader--if the United States wishes to hold this position for long-- that will look at the bigger, social picture, which in this case would note that refusing to allow the Center to be built would be lumping all Muslims in a negative pile--in the one location where the most progress of intercultural understanding should ideally be made.
These arguments (regarding the Islamic Center specifically) have been made for me, but given their effectiveness in moving past basic emotion to help us illuminate the real issues at the heart of this situation, I will try to reflect their style of inward reflection. I will be coupling this dedication to revealing the hidden meaty issues with specific historical allusions as well.
One last bit: President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated his belief today in a UN Summit that the U.S. government was at least partially behind the 9/11 attacks. And while he believes to be representing the views of many, unluckily for him, any government of power was not openly of said opinion. Led by the US delegation, the British and other delegations simply walked out on his speech. One may fear Ahmadinejad's rhetoric; many loosely connect his hatred for Jews, denial of the Holocaust and now, apparently, the innocence of the U.S. government as a cause of the 9/11 attacks, and create an image of a new, extremist, Hitler-esque dictator of sorts. The thing is, Hitler made it fully clear that he wanted territories back. The allies knew he was recreating the German Army and had grand aspirations. But then, the Allies appeased that particular dictator. Now, the balance of world power is noticeably not on the side of leaders like Ahmadinejad. UN sanctions continue, and if he is veiling a desire for nuclear weapons under his buzz phrase, "nuclear energy for all, nuclear weapons for none," then the US and its allies have called Ahmadinejad's bluff. Having disrespected the government whose President at one time said he would be open to negotiations with Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader seems to truly lack the ability to choose his words wisely or convincingly. That man with the swastika was known for just the opposite.
Don't worry too much; removing Ahmadinejad's credibility isn't even our job anymore.
As a quick example, the work has already been done for me in the "Ground Zero Mosque" "scandal". By now, luckily, most people who care to know are in fact aware that said building is neither a mosque nor being built on Ground Zero. And simply put, almost all Americans who can remember that day have had it affect them in some harsh way that they would rather not be reminded of; my sister's current fiancé was in one of the towers on 9/11 and narrowly escaped before the towers fell. Still, when we look outside our own sphere of collective American memory and remorse, we see a world that is increasingly powerful and educated, hoping that we hold our American ideals to the standard at which they are written: in this case, that freedom of religion and assembly means so for all people in this nation. They also demand a world leader--if the United States wishes to hold this position for long-- that will look at the bigger, social picture, which in this case would note that refusing to allow the Center to be built would be lumping all Muslims in a negative pile--in the one location where the most progress of intercultural understanding should ideally be made.
These arguments (regarding the Islamic Center specifically) have been made for me, but given their effectiveness in moving past basic emotion to help us illuminate the real issues at the heart of this situation, I will try to reflect their style of inward reflection. I will be coupling this dedication to revealing the hidden meaty issues with specific historical allusions as well.
One last bit: President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated his belief today in a UN Summit that the U.S. government was at least partially behind the 9/11 attacks. And while he believes to be representing the views of many, unluckily for him, any government of power was not openly of said opinion. Led by the US delegation, the British and other delegations simply walked out on his speech. One may fear Ahmadinejad's rhetoric; many loosely connect his hatred for Jews, denial of the Holocaust and now, apparently, the innocence of the U.S. government as a cause of the 9/11 attacks, and create an image of a new, extremist, Hitler-esque dictator of sorts. The thing is, Hitler made it fully clear that he wanted territories back. The allies knew he was recreating the German Army and had grand aspirations. But then, the Allies appeased that particular dictator. Now, the balance of world power is noticeably not on the side of leaders like Ahmadinejad. UN sanctions continue, and if he is veiling a desire for nuclear weapons under his buzz phrase, "nuclear energy for all, nuclear weapons for none," then the US and its allies have called Ahmadinejad's bluff. Having disrespected the government whose President at one time said he would be open to negotiations with Ahmadinejad, the Iranian leader seems to truly lack the ability to choose his words wisely or convincingly. That man with the swastika was known for just the opposite.
Don't worry too much; removing Ahmadinejad's credibility isn't even our job anymore.
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