This afternoon I was going through my weekend email, and I found an email she sent me with a link to a video clip from ABC News. It was a news report on India. At the end of July, I will be travelling to India for three weeks to travel and to attend Sireesha's wedding. So, she has been sending me some really great information about places I can check out, and she has been a wonder of helping me plan this trip...without her and her family it wouldn't be possible. So, I'm sitting here...writing email and listening to the video clip when I could hear...I mean audibly...half of the reporter's brain implode...it was a soft sound...kinda like the sound a balloon makes as it slowly deflates. And then I had proof that he'd lost his damn mind when the words came out of his mouth about that India is not only the world's largest and most diverse Democracy there are just millions of PEACEFUL Muslims living there. Then the camera flips to some old ass white man who says..with a wistfulness that made me wish I could reach through the internet and slap him with a copy of K'oran...IMAGE if the Muslims in Iraq were like the Muslims in India (read...BAD IRAQI MUSLIMS...GOOD PEACEFUL INDIAN MUSLIMS)...and then the guy lowers his voice...filling it with hints of the deepest horror and dread then says...now imagine if all of those Muslims in India were to act like the Muslims in Iraq killing and killing each other! Well, he almost killed me when he said that shit.
Now, earlier today I was sitting at home thinking about this trip, and how I know it is going to challenge me in some pretty profound ways. I have not been to a developing country as an adult, and I don't remember much about living in the Phillipines as a child. While I know that most Indians speak English, I've never been to a country where most people also speak at least one other language that I do not share. I've not been to a country where the majority of the population has been other than Christian. Nor to a nation that has such ready examples of amazing poverty... poverty that I will need to face and need to acknowledge how being an American is directly connected to the continued poverty of the people that will be around me. I've got tons of pre-conceived notions about the developing world. I know that I am going to have to engage with oppression and my participation in oppression in ways I can't now articulate or imagine. And I'm really looking forward to what this trip has to offer. (Including the week long party that will be Sireesha's fiesta...particularly after watching a documentary on gender construction around the world and how in India men dance with men and weddings are the places traditionally where boys find other boys for hot man on man lovin'. Pump the Bhangra and pass the curry...I'm going to an Indian wedding!)
But, what I am not ready for is meeting a bunch of crazy white people looking to renew their spirits or hearing another crazy ass white person on ABC, CBS, CNN, CSPAN, WGN, TBN or Animal Planet spout more anti-Muslim good Muslim/bad Muslim colonial bullshit. Here...let me help out Mr. Expert from ABC and the half-brained reporter...the Muslims in Iraq whether they are for the U.S. backed Iraqi government or fighting to determine their own system of rule...have the inalienable right to take up arms against a power they view as tyrranical. The United States justified its own revolution based on that very principle. I do not...DO NOT...condone kidnapping, random executions, and the other fucked up scare tactics being perpetrated by BOTH sides in the Iraqi fight...but I do know that the Iraqis have the right to self-determination...which is a right the United States has never respected for anyone. Ask any Native American you might know about that. Islam has nothing to do with violence. Just as Christianity had nothing to do with the Crusades and all the other fucked up massacres of whoever whenever however that have taken place over the last 1500 years. Men. Stupid, greedy, oppressive, twisted, horrible, power mad men have been at the root of attrocities, wholesale slaughters, and genocides since Cain went upside Able's head back in Eden. Religion has been used as an excuse, cover, shield, smoke screen, and diversion by men who have had as much to do with God as I have to do with the Aryan Nation.
In the end this is all about spin. If we look at the post-colonial history of India there have plenty of times when the "good" Indian Muslims have, because of oppression, been forced to take up arms. But, of course, back then...India's economy wasn't growing at double digit percentage rates and the U.S. didn't have half of its corporate infrastructure outsourced to India. The new India is Great GO INDIA campaign is the direct result of the fact that India is a growing world economic and nuclear power...its population is highly educated...and fairly soon we'll all probably be speaking Hindi as the lingua franca of the world. Let Iraq recover from the hell hole that we've put her in...let Iraq's GNP start to skyrocket...we'll see the same reporter in Iraq...walking the streets...viewing the Iraqi economic miracle...and extolling the virtues of the good, peaceful Iraqi Muslims and wishing the Indian Muslims could be just a little bit more like the Iraqis.
I know that there have been times in my life when I too have said something things that probably made the people around me wonder if half of my brain had just imploded. That's the unfortunate result of growing up in a world that gives out privilege based on who you get to opress and how many different kinds of people you can oppress. I'm sure that just like you have a credit score...there is a company or goverment department that keeps track of your opression score...anything about 750 is good...you gain points by never evaluating your privilege, perpetuating oppression, and voting Republican. You can gain bonus points by kicking a disabled person or double bonus points for organizing a lynching or passing an anti-marriage amendment.
I was beginning to think that perhaps the world had moved a little further along the path to justice and liberation. But then...thankfully...ABC News came right to my rescue. If it wasn't for ABC...I would be living in a lala land where people had become smart enough to recognize racism before it oozes out of their mouths across the internet and on tv. Thank you ABC, and good night.
