laura.fo

Alternative classroom approaches to teaching Thanksgiving

I will not spend Ramadan arguing on the internet about honor killings.
I will not spend Ramadan arguing on the internet about honor killings.
I will not spend Ramadan arguing on the internet about honor killings.

- deep breath –

Just once, though, I would like to see a debate that goes something like this:

Person 1:
“The only country to use nuclear weapons is the United States.
Most Americans are Christian.
Therefore, using nuclear weapons is a Christian practice.
Therefore, if we want to calm the nuclear arms race, we must engage with these Christians by asking them to re-interpret the parts of the Bible that say ‘thou shalt bomb Japan.’ What is that, Leviticus? Whatever. Look it up. Anyway, I’m sure there are ways to do this that are sensitive to the other, less crazy parts of their religion.”

Person 2:
“But the fact that most Americans are Christians has nothing to do with Hiroshima and Nagasaki! There were political factors at play! Besides, Israel and Pakistan both have nukes, and they’re not Christian countries. And there are many Christian countries that don’t have them. It’s much more complex than that.”

Person 3:

“Are you saying the killing of thousands of people is ‘complex’? What’s complex about it? It’s mass murder! Wow, you’ve really gone off the deep end of moral relativism! Why are you always apologizing for these people?”

Person 2:

“No, I didn’t mean murder is complex, I meant the reasons for… ugh, never mind.”

- headdesk –

Dear Limey assholes: American responses to the Guardian's campaign to try and sway the Ohio electorate in Clark County. All funny, none surprising, but I had to agree with this one: Nothing will do more to undermine the Democratic cause in Ohio than having patronising Brits wander around Clark County telling people how to vote. Just, for a second, imagine if the Washington Post sent folks from Ohio to do the same in Oxfordshire. I'm saying this as a Democrat, and as someone who has spent the last few years in the UK. That is, with all due respect. Please, please, be rational, and move slowly away from the self-defeating hubris.

And, in case that didn't drive it home, another one: Your plan, if carried out, will hurt the Bush opposition TERRIBLY. We cannot afford to have this associated with John Kerry or anyone else.

And my personal favorite: My dear, beloved Brits, I understand the Guardian is sponsoring a service where British citizens write to Americans to advise them on how to vote. Thank heavens! I was adrift in a sea of confusion and you are my beacon of hope! Feel free to respond to this email with your advice. Please keep in mind that I am something of an anglophile, so this is not confrontational. Please remember, too, that I am merely an American. That means I am not very bright. It means I have no culture or sense of history. It also means that I am barely literate, so please don't use big, fancy words.

I only bring this up because, elsewhere in Europe, teenage Sikhs in France are going to court over the right to wear the turban in public schools. Sikhs are a small minority in France, but because turbans are an expression of religion they were caught under the anti-hijab ban.

And here's the thing. You can say that "we shouldn't patronize other cultures" under the guise of taking an open-minded multi-cultural outlook, and that's fine. Or you can say no, human rights are human rights, there's a hard line, and I don't care if people think we're lecturing them when we tell them to knock it off with the honor killings or the FGM or the wearing of hijab or voting for Bush or whatever else you believe to be Just Plain Wrong under any circumstances. But engaging in the second line of thinking while being completely ignorant of the first argument undermines your cause.

My friend Dave posted this entry about Rachel Corrie on a BBS I used to be on. I thought the responses were interesting, especially Bob's argument that there can be no such thing as using privilege strategically (I don't agree, but I'm willing to discuss it) and Kali's bit re: "a Leftist life is not as highly valued by the U.S. Administration as, say, a Christian evangelical's."

Reposting:

Aug 6, 2003 21:13 from Bob
I really reject this idea that Corrie "gave her life" or even risked it. The
reaction from her companions was utter shock. I don't think that leftists went
to Spain and were shocked when Franco's troops tried to kill them. The whole
point of the privilege, and asserting it, was that it was supposed to
innoculate them against any actual mortal danger. The whole mission was to
stand there between the IDF and Palestinians because they were sure that the
IDF would not harm Western foreigners.

I also think that this is a very significant difference between what the left
was and what the left is. There is a narcissism about, and an idealism (in the
philosophical sense, not the moral sense), and they are corrosive.

"Truth has given way to credibility, facts to statements that sound
authoritative without conveying any authoritative information." (Christopher
Lasch) What is important is appearance, because appearance is what is regarded
as reality. As a metaphysical speculation this is good fun. As a basis for
political acts it is reckless.
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Aug 6, 2003 23:35 from Fleep
I don't know that I agree with that, Bob. Beyond the sense of invulnerability
that most young people have (what? I can't be killed! I'm only 21!), I don't
doubt for a minute that the people you're talking about felt mortal danger.
How could you not, with bullets whizzing and death all around you?

Perhaps there was shock at a blatant act against them, but I can't believe that
the risk was unreal to them.
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Aug 7, 2003 0:49 from Thufir
Even green soldiers get shocked the first time a platoon buddy of theirs gets
it in the chest. I'm not buying this argument that being shocked implies they
hadn't evaluated their odds.
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Aug 7, 2003 6:53 from Dawdle
One of the links in the original was this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,916299,00.html

Those are Rachel Corrie's letters home from between 2/7 and 2/28/03. I think
she pretty clearly realized the danger she was in. You can see a very apparent
shift in the way she sees that danger coming closer in just the course of those
3 weeks.
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Aug 7, 2003 10:58 from Bob
Dawdle> I don't see anything to tell me that she feared for her life in those
letters – quite the opposite.

"You just can't imagine it unless you see it – and even then you are always
well aware that your experience of it is not at all the reality: what with the
difficulties the Israeli army would face if they shot an unarmed US citizen,
and with the fact that I have money to buy water when the army destroys wells,
and the fact, of course, that I have the option of leaving."

Her recognition of her "white privilege" is also explicit.

"We could probably make it through [an IDF checkpoint] if we made serious use
of our international white person privilege, but that would also mean some risk
of arrest and deportation, even though none of us has done anything illegal."

Fleep> The whole point of their being there was to be invulnerable. Their
whole mission to Palestine was based on their inviolability. If they were
there to be shot and get run over, what is the point? That (Thufir) is why the
ISM people who spoke just after the incident were so shocked, not out of some
sudden realization that the danger is real. One member put it in very clear
terms:

"[IDF soldiers] "have shot over our heads, and shot near our feet–they have
fired tear gas at us. But we thought we had an understanding. We didn.t think
they would kill us." (Michael Shaik of the ISM)

(Her letters also show the frustration with the situation that leads to
flirtation with not-so-nonviolent reactions.)

I also think that the dynamic changed in March, both in the ISM and the IDF.
Tom Hurndall, who was shot in the head, seems to have recognized the danger,
and wrote that "it is on the decision of any one Israeli soldier or settler
that my life depends." He was shot in clearly dangerous circumstances – heroic
circumstances. His killing is also a far clearer case of IDF misbehaviour (the
total absence of his name from pro-Israel sources is telling evidence). Of
course, he was not the first one killed, so he is not as famous.
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Aug 7, 2003 11:31 from Doktor Nil
I think Laura addressed all of Bob's interesting points in the original essay
that started this conversation, better than I could. So I won't try. I think
they are already answered by the original essay, and I don't see anything in
Bob's posts explaining why Laura's points are incorrect or mistaken, frankly.
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Aug 7, 2003 11:57 from Dawdle
And Bob did exactly what I feared he would do. It was easy enough to recognize
a couple of choice quotes that I figured might be posted here. I think anyone
who reads the full thing should have a clear sense that her life was in danger
and that she was well aware of that fact. She pretty well stated that fact. The
fact that she was also aware of her privilege doesn't negate that. She didn't
call it "international white immunity from danger".
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Aug 7, 2003 16:31 from Thufir
Sounds to me more like they were trying to talk themselves into bravery, as
opposed to thinking that their White Privilege would be their stalwart shield.
When you are a stranger in a strange land with a war going on, I think it
natural to try and convince yourselves that the combatants aren't shooting at
you specifically. Doing this convincing and rationalizing is not the same as
believing yourself invincible or not in danger.
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Aug 7, 2003 17:57 from Kali
Partially agreeing with Laura's essay, I really like her point about
privilege as "a series of dynamic, lived experiences, ones that result from
social relations specific to time and culture."

However, I wonder if, in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian horror, national
identity occupies as crucial a role as race – Or that race and nation are
entwined in such a way that another read of the ISM/Rachel Corrie is as
probable, one that focuses as much on the naturalizing of "citizenship" as on
the making immutable of white privilege.

I know she addressed nationality briefly, but the whole goyim concept is such
a nicely rabidly nationalist one that I was moved to gush a little…

Perhaps until recently, there was enough fear/respect/trepidation in the
Israeli government about the harming of foreign nationals that they avoided
it. Of course that it was white people from Northern nations wouldn't hurt…

But I want to put the argument out there that it's as much an issue of how
the United States government feels its nationals should act in other
countries, and/or the American public's perception of Americans in other
places, and that there has been a shift in attitude about what the fate of
especially leftist Americans should be outside the country – And perhaps that
is another thing Israel is responding to.

Yes, I believe a Leftist life is not as highly valued by the U.S.
Administration as, say, a Christian evangelical's life is. Please try to
prove me wrong. I don't have the background or expertise to pinpoint when it
seemed to have gotten worse, but I can illustrate my perceptions briefly.

For example, for Gulf War II, the folks of "Voices in the Wilderness" who
went over as human shields, were savagely vilified on the radio, on network
TV, etc. because we were supposed to perceive them as aides to Saddam (for
some reason). Unless I'm misremembering, the level of outcry against
American human shields in Iraq was a lot less loud (or less visible) for the
first Gulf War.

We (in the collective "we") don't seem to care as much about protecting the
rights of U.S. citizens protesting on U.S. soil. Perhaps that goes double for
people trying to lend their support, in a more internationalist way, to
conflicts around the world.

What does Laura think??
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Aug 7, 2003 20:29 from Cpk
No, you're not off base at all. In Gulf War I, most protestors were simply
ignored–with perhaps the occasional grumble at their temerity. Attacks
against leftist have taken on a whole new level of shrill demonization. And
it's not been a gradual thing, either–it's really ramped up since 9/11, as if
the right-wing suddenly realized that this was its big chance to rid itself of
the Left forever. A|\||\| <0u1173rr has explicitly said as much.
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Aug 7, 2003 20:31 from Cpk
[and, by the way, I don't think Ann Coulter is loonier than the rest of the
right. Sadly, she is solidly within the mainstream of right-wing politics,
though other right-wingers have had to move some distance to catch up with
her.]
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Aug 8, 2003 4:20 from Dawdle
I think Coulter is slightly loonier than the rest of the right, but that's more
based on the fact that I think she's actually insane rather than on her
politics. Politically, I don't think she's that much further to the right than
your average neo-con. I think 80% of the outrageous stuff she says (liberals
are traitors, McCarthy was unnecessarily demonized, etc) are things that most
conservatives believe, but won't say.
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Aug 8, 2003 10:15 from Bob
Dawdle> I can only read what is actually there on the page. I am assuming that
these letters (which were never intended for publication) are frank and honest
and don't need much interpretation.

Thufir> (broken record time) The ISM's entire mission was predicated on their
firm belief that the combattants would not – could not – shoot at them.This is
what makes it a "human _shield_" thing, and not a "human target" thing.

DN> I agree with most of the essay, but I think it does not go far enough.

If Corrie is a hero to you, so be it. A rehash of the incident is not
interesting. We can all read the various accounts.

What I was actually hoping to get at was the "air of authenticity" as ascendant
over "authenticity" (that is, appearances over truth), and how that has
affected the left (which I try to remember is supposed to be about dismantling
arbitrary power in favour of something more rational).

Using the ISM as an example, you can see that the program that they use depends
upon not only the belief in the immutability and universality of one's own
hierarchies, but the maintenance of those beliefs. I do not think that there
is "a place for recognizing unmerited advantages in order to … use them
strategically on behalf of those without such advantages". Doing that cannot
but reinforce those unfair advantages.
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Aug 8, 2003 14:06 from Doktor Nil
I'm not sure the ISM ever used the phrase 'human shield.' If they did, I think
it's a stupid phrase too (although maybe you don't). I think the mission of
the ISM is, at its base, simply predicated on the idea that sympathetic foreign
nationals willing to take a risk can be of help _somehow_ to the struggle for
Palestinian rights, by being in Israel/Palestine. Their _strategy_, at least
for a while, was indeed predicated on the idea that these foreign nationals
would be _less_ likely to be shot at by Israeli troops, and that if they were
shot (at) it would get significant publicity, of a helpful sort.

Less likely does not mean impossible. Now that it's obvious that ISM folks are
in fact _quite_ likely to be shot at (and sometimes shot), if perhaps still not
as likely as a Palestinian (especially one doing similar work), perhaps the ISM
strategy ought to change. That's something for the ISM to decide, succesfully
or not. That doesn't mean that their _mission_ needs to change. The fact that
the ISM still exists, and still has no trouble getting members/volunteers (it
does have trouble getting htese people into Israel or Palestine), seems to
indicate that their mission is _not_ predicated upon some kind of
invulnerability. Becuase it is now quite obvious that they enjoy no such
invulnerability. Yet they continue.

We've had the discussion before about "recognizing unmerited advantages in
order to use them strategically (for godo)." I know we disagree. I don't
entirely understand your position. Do I understand correctly taht you suggest
the only ethical behavior is in fact to ignore something that you really know
to exist, to pretend it does not exist, or to refuse to take account of it in
planning your strategy? I think that if you want to struggle to win, you need
to take a cold hard look at what _actually is_ and plan strategies accordingly.
You don't do anyone any favors by intentionally deceiving yourself or
pretending the world is other than it is. Now, true, some strategies are to be
judged unethical, and avoided. You apparently believe the ISM's strategy(ies)
to be unethical, although I honestly still do not understand why. What I hear
you saying is not that their strategies are unethical because of the actions
undertaken, but that they are unethical if they were formed with an awareness
of the the way the world actually is; that no strategy is ethical unless it
completley ignores real world 'unmerited advantages.'
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Aug 9, 2003 12:53 from Bob
Let's get away from the ISM for a minute.

Using a corrupt system to produce good results can be admirable. But that is
not to say that doing so does not perpetuate a context in which a broader
justice cannot result.

The film "Blaze" has an excellent scene (fictionalized, possibly apocryphal)
where Huey Long recieves a visit from a black civil rights organization that
tells him that there are qualified physicians and nurses who go without work
because they are black. So, Long decides pay a surprise visit a state hospital
with this gaggle of lawyers in tow. The administrator of the hospital gives a
tour, but Long demands to see the colored wards. Upon visiting the colored
wards he feigns shock – "Do you mean to tell me that we have these fine white
doctors and nurses waiting hand and foot on colored folk?" And he orders the
administrator to hire some black doctors and nurses to replace them.

He's used segregation and gutter racism to achieve a noble goal – he, in 1950′s
Louisiana, has put black physicians to work, and for the state. But he didn't
do a hell of a lot to get rid of segregation – he actually reinfoced it by the
appeal to its principles.
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Aug 10, 2003 9:07 from Slit
That's an excellent analogy and I agree with your larger point. Where it breaks
down for me is that I can't equate the employment of physicians with teh
emergency situation that is Gaza.

I realize this is a slippery slope and everyone has to decide for themselves
where they're willing to draw the line. Personally I hate sorority girl charity
and Save the Children because they do nothing to undermine structural problems.
But I don't put Rachel Corrie in that category. The fact that Palestinians
_requested_ Americans perform that role, in their capacity as citizens from the
country funding the occuaption, goes a long way with me, as does the fact that
this was a quote-unquote policy that worked for more than a dozen years. It
was one of the better examples of _coalition_ activism I've seen, actually, its
miscalculations notwithstanding.
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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.

I seriously don't know how people who dwell long-term in the social sciences hack it. The sheer inevitability of someone saying "nuh-uh! that doesn't apply to me/my sister/my dog!" when one notes a trend just exhausts me. Then there are those who readily champion the need for a free press, quality art, quality entertainment, enriching friendships, all the things that sustain a person aesthetically and emotionally —- who simultaneously and bizarrely maintain that we are completely autonomous beings who are never influenced by the culture around us. Dude, if we're not influenced by the culture around us, why are you bothering on about the view from your office window, your annoying co-workers, the cutting of NEA funding, whatever? If nothing has an impact on you, if you are a fully formed human being who will not be swayed by external circumstances, why bother trying to change those circumstances? Even super-duper hardcore Buddhists (which is sort of an oxymoron, I guess) will admit that they went through a LOT of work to get to the point where they can work up some indifference to their surroundings.

But damn if there aren't people who would come this shy of arguing that it is a TOTAL COINCIDENCE that Japanese babies born in Japan to Japanese-speaking families end up speaking Japanese as their first language and Italian babies born in Italy to Italian-speaking families end up speaking Italian as their first language. (And here watch as someone pipes up with "well I know this girl who was born in Italy, but she learned Spanish first." Because that would be just totally par for the course in this sort of discussion. I can set my clock by it.)

Lila Abu-Lughod, who wrote one of my all-time favorite books (Writing Women's Worlds) has written about the inherent contradiction between the need to avoid "trafficking in generalizations" and the fact that cultural anthropology's raison d'être is the study of human behavior in all its manifestations and as such relies on offering up an analysis that goes slightly deeper — or rather wider? — than "John woke up. John put on his shoes. John had oatmeal for breakfast." The way most seriously unreadable ethnographers seem to deal with this is to say "John woke up. John put on his shoes. NOT ALL MEN NAMED JOHN WEAR SHOES. John had oatmeal for breakfast. NOT ALL MEN NAMED JOHN EAT OATMEAL FOR BREAKFAST. IN FACT, NOT ALL MEN NAMED JOHN EAT BREAKFAST PERIOD. EVEN THIS MAN NAMED JOHN DOES NOT EAT OATMEAL FOR BREAKFAST EVERY DAY OF HIS LIFE. WHICH BRINGS TO MIND THE PROBLEMATIC NOTIONS OF 'OATMEAL' AND 'BREAKFAST.' AND 'EAT' [see 3-paragraph footnote]."

It's tedious, you know? It's tedious as hell. And it's not just tedious, it undermines the entire point of the endeavor, which is to create some kind of descriptive narrative that is applicable to circumstances outside of those being directly observed. Note that "circumstances outside of" != "all circumstances everywhere on the planet ever in the history of all time Isweartogod I've just figured it out Once And For All."

It goes beyond noting that the plural of anecdote is not data and that one person's inability to identify with a particular thesis doesn't mean the thesis is inherently wrong, unless said thesis was literally arguing "all x are…" (e.g. that Men Are From Mars crap). It has to start with the very basic premise that people ARE influenced by the world around them. That kids in Japan speak Japanese for a reason. And that if such variables in our environment exist, they can, perhaps, be studied, discerned, analyzed, discussed. Some analyses will be better than others and some will be just downright offensive and some people doing the analyzing will be people you really, really wish had stayed out of the conversation, but all that is separate from the act of questioning itself.

I think what's really at the root of this is the pain that comes from being misrepresented. Which happens, like, constantly, especially to people(s) who aren't charged with writing the narratives. Not just in the macro sense ("The Arab Mind"; "Lakota Traditions") but in the smaller acts of applying to a particular reading to a particular phenomenon ("this movie sends the message that…") — both make assumptions about audience, and can be not just 'problematic' but actually painful if it's a view you don't share. And yet what I want to see is a way to deal with that, the misrepresentation, without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

More and more people resort to I-statements to get around this problem — "I had oatmeal for breakfast" "my coming out experience went like this" "as a disabled person I feel" — and maybe that's the way to go. "Speak for yourself, mister! Oh wait, you are." But in addition to turning discourse into the academic equivalent of a me-fest replete with parallel play ordinarily associated with toddlers — I'm over here with my yo-yo/experience/history, you go be over there with yours — it ignores the question of people as agents of influence on others. How can I say that I was influenced by this or that without accepting at least the possibility that others might be, too, and so I should adjust my behavior accordingly? I mean if I were terrorized by, I dunno, scary clowns as a child, I can admit that not all children are but that some might be, it's a reasonable thing to think, and therefore I maybe should think twice about dressing up as a scary clown and hanging out at a day care center. But there I go, making assumptions about audience, and have likely offended more than one 4-year-old who LOVES SCARY CLOWNS. And if one of those 4-year-olds happens to protest, there we'll be, stuck, arguing about "some" vs. "all" for the next five years, and never get to the part about what it is about clowns that can be frightening.

Stasis. It's maddening.