laura.fo

I very much liked this entry about Rachel Corrie. Almost immediately after her murder people were saying her case was "only getting attention because she was American," which would have bordered on a useful analysis if 1) her case really did get a lot of attention (it didn't), 2) the Palestinian conflict had been some secret unheard-of issue until SHE was killed in it (it wasn't), 3) Palestinian activists had by and large been annoyed that she was hogging the spotlight (they most emphatically were not), and/or 4) she'd been some random tourist gunned down by accident (in which case her citizenship really would serve as the ONLY newsworthy aspect of the story).

It's #3 that interests me most, because I've been thinking about cultural appropriation lately, and wondering when, exactly, "solidarity" crosses the line into "co-opting someone else's movement," and, alternatively, when the fear of co-opting someone else's movement becomes a convenient excuse for NIMBY politicking and a general lack of engagement with systems of oppression that don't impact one personally. The more I try to look at this from an outsider's perspective (European & Arab, because that's what I know best) the more the fact that this is even the concern (obsession?) that it is in the United States is — I want to say "cool" but I'll leave it with "interesting." Because in Europe I have found this xenophobic thing going on wherein "oh dear, am I overly interested in the Zapatistas?" probably just doesn't arise as a pressing issue, and Arabs, in my experience, have been far more likely to interpret a lacklustre commitment to, say, the Palestinian cause as evidence of lack of interest at best and complicity with The Man at worst, rather than as "respectful distance." I've tried to explain the cultural appropriation fear to Middle Eastern friends who haven't lived in the U.S. and I swear, they think I'm making it up and ask me if I'm Jewish. Of course this doesn't apply to everybody everywhere and that view certainly has problems of its own, but it's at least indicative of the the fact that "I'm afraid of speaking for you" is not a dominant concern with everyone on the globe.

But this has emerged as big issue within American leftish groups, and I've been thinking about why that is. For one thing there's the problem of cheap and crude materialism, e.g. Elvis, or people who think Madonna invented 'vogue' as a verb. (I'd argue that Eminem doesn't fall into that category, but that's a diatribe for a different day.) Then there's the irritation that you feel when you waste time and energy defending something only to have it go mainstream in 10 years, e.g. someone gets fired for wearing dreadlocks but later they show up in Cosmo on white girls – how trendy! – or you're a lesbian who lost your kids over being out, and now that they're grown up and you missed out on raising them you see that it's hip to be queer, especially temporarily, rockthefuckon, you-go-grrrl etc. Even if you intellectually know that the problem isn't, technically, with the people who are embracing whatever it is you suffered for, but rather with those who made you suffer in the first place, it's hard to be gracious about someone else's superficial commitment to something you were totally dicked over for Back In The Day. And then there's also — and I think this is the crux of it — the fact that embracing the aesthetics of queer/black/Hopi is not the same thing as fighting the oppression of those communities, and can in fact go hand in hand with oppressing them. It's why the phrase "I have lots of black friends!" is so irritating — because no one ever says that unless they're arguing something racist and claiming to do it ON BEHALF OF African-Americans. In the specific case of the Middle East, "learning" about "the Arabs" was often done with the explicit intent of collecting information for the British.

But even Edward Said, who literally wrote the book on this, has argued like a broken record for the need to solidify connections with the Western (specifically American) Left. Reading his stuff in the Egyptian press is almost funny because he's constantly introducing the idea that there really is a non-imperialist contingent of Americans who are receptive to the idea of Palestinian autonomy, to the notion that Muslims != terrorists, to the idea that the U.S. military is overbloated and does more harm than good — presumably to an audience who doesn't hear much of this. He's as aware as anyone of the fact that American aid to Israel is the great enabler of the occupation, and when he's not writing for the Egyptian press he's writing for the Americans in an attempt to convince them of such. All that effort does not sit well with the notion that he believes members of Group X are inherently, by virtue of their citizenship or ethnicity incapable of studying or advancing the cause of Group Y, and in fact he's criticized those who've read him that way.

Which brings me back to Rachel Corrie, and the attack on her motives. First there was the "why would someone be so naive?" argument. I can almost dismiss that because it comes from those who were never invested in the Palestinian cause in the first place; when they say "why would she be so naive?" what they usually mean is "why would a perfectly good WHITE AMERICAN (i.e. a person who matters) give her life for some dumb shit overseas (i.e. for people who don't matter)? She deserved what she got." Calling her naive allows her detractors to retain some air of authenticity, i.e. "no, really, I would do that, if I thought it would help" without actually engaging the issue or investing any personal commitment to its outcome. This is not to say that anyone with a sufficient commitment to Palestine should and would have gone off and joined the International Solidarity Movement specifically, but rather that people who have a longstanding interest in human rights and who can understand her motives are not, by and large, the same people spewing the "dumb bitch" argument.

But I take more seriously the charge of a sort of racism in her actions, that she was "relying" on her "white privilege" to "save her" and that this is some kind of zero-sum game where mourning her necessitates not-mourning Palestinians who've died under similar (or harsher) circumstances.

My problem with this is that Rachel Corrie was an activist who by her own admission was well aware that she could be killed for actions, that if she wasn't it would be because the Israelis were too afraid of media attention in the West and not because they Loved Her Personally, that this was a racist policy, and, most importantly, that, under the circumstances, Palestinians were using Israeli racism strategically by aligning themselves with her organization. That last bit is where I think there's no great honor in dismissing her murder because of her nationality. Her death got more attention in the West than that of most individual Palestinians' did, but it didn't get a lot, and obviously Israel guaged that reaction and realized that mowing over American and European activists would save more trouble than it created; this has been a blow to the Palestinian movement. I remember back in the late 80′s and early 90′s the presence of even one non-Arab American or European with a video camera was enough to stop the bulldozers. Does that make their presence the be-all and end-all of the movement, i.e. "thank god! you saved us!"? Of course not, but a collective movement is by definition collective and there was definitely a role here for so-called outsiders. Palestinians knew this and to some extent relied on it. Rachel Corrie's death and the corresponding lack of outrage surrounding it eroded that role, which is where, in strictly concrete terms, the battle cry that "we only know her name because she's an American, *eyeroll*" has done absolutely nothing to help the Palestinian cause.

There is, however, the need to divorce concrete privilege from psychological privilege. I'm struggling for language on this one, but I've become increasingly bothered by the 'existential snobbery' (term coined by my husband when I was going on about this ) that comes with declarations of 'white privilege.' It's one thing to acknowledge the ways privilege, racial or otherwise, permeates one's existence; to recognize that the fact that you don't burn crosses on people's lawns doesn't mean you weren't raised with racist stereotypes, that you didn't absorb these messages subconsciously, and that you didn't benefit from other people's racism (or sexism, or homophobia, or imperialistic conquests) even if you didn't actively solicit such benefits.

But there comes a point when recognizing this privilege leads to its own form of racism (or sexism, or heterosexism, or imperialism); when one believes one's "privilege" is so entrenched as to be immutable, and, most arrogantly, the corresponding belief that one's own hierarchies are shared by everyone on the planet.

That first link above addresses this with regard to Zionism. "In the eyes of Zionists, you are not Americans or Britons or Australians. In the last analysis, you are goyim." Whether Zionists believe they are "above" or "below" goyim is almost beside the point. What matters is that it's a great example of a group operating under a different system of categorization, and it sheds light on the myriad limitations of wow-am-I-ever-privileged as an organizing principle, much less as a psychological framework. While there is a place for recognizing unmerited advantages in order to renounce them or use them strategically on behalf of those without such advantages, there's also the danger of repeating the "I'm privileged!" mantra enough in hopes of making it true. (And here I have a vision of a Sensitive New Age Guy putting down a book of Freud's and apologizing to his wife for his oh-so-powerful-penis, to which she answers, uh, don't worry about it, you ain't all that.)

It's the immutable part that bothers me. This idea that privilege is a 'state of being' rather than a series of dynamic, lived experiences, ones that result from social relations specific to time and culture. The problem with announcing one's privilege as a static state — together with a fear of appropriation — is that it fixes a system of categorization that leaves no space for oppressed/non-privileged groups to be seen as authentically talented, objectively powerful, "winners" with or without a level playing field. I remember being told as a child that I was a good artist "for my age" and being so offended by the qualifier — I'm good period, dammit! You're the one who can't draw a stick figure without screwing it up.

It's within this framework that, when the overt racist argues against "dwelling" on slavery, the multiculturalist argues in favor of studying it "so that African-Americans will feel included in the curriculum" rather than arguing that the study of slavery and those who defied it is integral to the macro-study of war, economics, and power relations, topics that are at the heart of, say, the study of the Roman Empire. Making "African-Americans feel included in the curriculum" is a nice goal, I guess, but not when it comes with the implicit assumption that the history of people of color is only useful as a niche subject for people who swing that way when in fact it is a fundamental part of American history.

On a global scale, Islamic civilization was the center of the world for hundreds of years, and I can't get past the role this fact played on September 11. On the one hand I'm opposed to any world view that gives primacy to whoever was on top at any given period, as though those with the power did and therefore should control the universe, but on the other hand I can see where Muslims, particularly those in the Middle East, take particular offense to the view that a country like the U.S. — which has only achieved global dominance in the last 60 years — has the audacity to go flitting around the world doling out advice. And in that context it really doesn't matter if it's someone from USAID telling you you need to initiate a structural adjustment program in order to qualify for a loan or if it's a lefty college student saying "I apologize for all my privilege! Man, am I ever a dick!": it's still some asshole who thinks they're all that giving YOU, the civilization who invented agriculture, who translated the Greeks for the Chinese and vice versa, who initiated the Renaissance in Europe and essentially saved civilization as we know it, advice on how to live.

So while I like and agree with the strategic use of concrete privilege initiated by Rachel Corrie and her cohorts — it was a policy that worked for over a decade, after all — the way the left speaks about privilege generally makes me uncomfortable.

Conservatives like Dinesh D'Souza are capturing this sentiment and selling it in an ahistorical framework, ala "There! We've got Oprah! Racism's over! Everybody go home now!" This is appealing to rich white guys for all the obvious reasons, but there's also a contingent of historically oppressed groups who are the political equivalent of me back in elementary school saying my drawings were good period, sick of white people (or men, or the American War Machine, whatever) approaching them as though they are quaint museum artifacts rather than communities with expertise to be shared. As one friend told me recently, "In order not to be a steoretypical, consumerist New Ager, I didn't proactively try to learn about other cultures." I went through the same thing with all things Native American, to the point where what I'm left with veered way past "respect" and straight into "ignorance." After all, if I'm not going to the source looking for information about this part of American history (and, for that matter, this part of American present), then what I'm left with is whatever I crap I get from FOX News. Yet it shouldn't be either/or.

Several of the (male) authors in this book I keep talking about, _Progressive Muslims_, say that their ideology was informed by feminist scholarship, to the extent that it turned them around on seemingly unrelated-to-women issues in Qur'anic interpretation. This is 2003. When I was in school my male professors were "sensitive to" feminist critiques. And that was nice; it was better than the only alternative back then (early 90s), which was to make jokes about Hairy-Legged Bra-Burners (and here I'd use one of those little 'TM' symbols if I knew how to make them), but "informed by" and "influenced by" are so much better than "sensitive to." Trouble is, you can't be authentically "influenced by" if you're not willing to admit that the tradition you've inherited — the one you label your "privilege" — might not be all it's cracked up to be.