Exchange on Race

I wanted to post an exchange between me and a professor of mine both because I think the point being made is important and also because I am just SO impressed by her. It's possible that part of what I like about her is that she reminds me so much of my own mother. When I was little my mother explained to me why it was so important to her that we have a view of the ocean (from the time I was a baby), which is that she wanted me to always see how big the world actually was, and imagine something beyond where we were. My professor actually makes a kind of similar comment in her reply to my email.

Check out her comments on Giuliani!

Email from VC to PW:

I just saw this on tv and had to send it to you. This is a clip from memri tv that shows a popular Palestinian kids program which follows the hero, Farfour, as he fights against Israeli occupiers. What was so shocking about this clip is that a black Israeli interrogator shows up and murders Farfour (in the most recent episode he was replaced by his cousin).

I should say that, as someone with an MA in Middle East studies and having spent a lot of time in the Middle East, I don't consider Memri tv to provide objective translations of the media sources it monitors, and even CNN has aired examples of really outrageous translation "mistakes."

One of the most common perceptions I encountered when people found out I lived in New York was that the US is an incredibly dangerous place (and compared to many Arab countries, it is), and that the REASON that it is so dangerous is because the streets are filled with black people with guns. I mean, I can't tell you how many reasonably well-educated and otherwise open-minded people would ask me about how I felt living in New York when there are so many dangerous black people around. It was stunning. Anyway, I think that it's an elision of "filthy jews" with the idea that to murder is, in essence, to be black, that motivates this clip.

The "interrogator" comes in at 2:13

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrieBhaGgHM


Email from PW to VC

Hi Chunk,
This is so, so incredibly depressing. I'd heard about Farfour, the
faux-Mickey; it's gotten a lot of press about how anti-Semitic and
offensive it is. I wasn't prepared for how weirdly sad it is as
well--from the bad acting to the undertone of despair to the youth of
the actors--it's really as though it's written not just for but by very
young children. And yes, the degree to which blackness as a trope for
evil and danger has taken on a kind of globalized dimension scares me.
I agree that the elision with the notion of the "filthy Jew" is very
much what Sander Gilman describes in his books. And what worries me a
lot too, is the growing habit of profiling according to the kinds of
simplistic formulae that Rudolph Guiliani seems to be pitching as he
travels around the world--London, Paris, Mexico City, the man's on a
mission. He leaves a trail of the most divisive policies imaginable.
I do wonder what kind of world my son will face in another few years;
I've tried to raise him to be well-traveled for lots of obvious
reasons, but also because I wanted him to realize that prejudice is a
mutable phenomenon, that it takes on different shapes, objects,
scape-goats, depending on the time and society. That it's not
inevitable in other words. But things are changing fast and there are
very few places we've been where it hasn't been clearly communicated
that he embodies someone's worst or exoticized fears. Are you from the
BRONX?! asked one little old lady in rural Ireland one summer when we
were sitting in a doctor's waiting room when my son was about seven.
She didn't even know we were from NY, and she didn't say it meanly--she
seemed to be almost trembling with the happy anticipation of meeting
the kind of person she'd seen on TV. It was so absurd. But there
aren't many places that escape these images anymore. There's a kind of
world-wide stereotypification around skin color--as well as so many
other things--that's going to be very hard to reverse.
Anyway, let me not get pessimistic. Thanks for sending this--it's
really deeply provocative on every level.
pw