“By healing, you resist oppression. – Emad Burnat”

5 Broken Cameras is a story of living in the shadow of oppression, a moving portrait of vibrant resistance through the unapologetic embrace of life itself. Set in the small Palestinian village of Bil’in, the story and narrative belongs to Emad Burnat, who became the eye of the village and ultimately chronicled over five years of activism. The people of Bil’in found their lands being encroached on by the building of a new settlement, and the wall to protect that settlement. They protest peacefully, marching up to the wall each Friday and thinking of new actions and demonstrations to stop the advancement of the settlement.

During this time, Emad also had a son, Gibreel, which brought his total brood to four. Emad mentions that each of the boys knows a slightly different world. The eldest was born during the Olso Accords which meant that he grew up with more freedom and mobility. Gibreel, on the other hand, mixes his first words of “mommy” and “daddy” with “army,” “cartridge” and “run! run!” If it weren’t for the ever present undercurrent of violence, Emad’s life would almost be seen as idyllic: a loving family; a large, involved village; numerous dances and celebrations are cornerstones of the life they create. Their marches are also full of hope and some humor. At one point, tired of the late night raids on the village, a group of children march up to the wall, chanting “We want to sleep! We want to sleep!” The situation in Bil’in gained international attention, and groups of Israeli, German, and other activists come at various points to show their support and solidarity. However, violence is never far enough away, and the promise of more hangs over Bil’in like a cloud.

The documentary is brutal to watch–at various points in the film, I wished it would end, not because I was bored, but because I wanted to stop watching the endless cycle of violence. Outside of the usual tear-gassing and violent treatment of the protestors, other army actions loomed just as large. At one point in the film, the peace activists discover that Israeli special forces have disguised themselves as Palestinians and began creating chaos at a demonstration before hauling people away to be arrested by their comrades at the top of the hill. Another scene shows one of the most outspoken activists, Daba, being isolated by a group of police officers who then calmly and deliberately shoot him in the leg.

Still, through it all, Emad continues filming, even as his cameras are damaged by human hands, stun grenades, and bullets. He questions his role as an impartial journalist the day his brother is arrested, watching his mother and father throw themselves in front of the Army van to try to prevent him from being taken. His work makes him a target, and he is aware of that. But the most devastating part of the document was watching the impact of the events and the violence on Emad’s children.

“Dreaming can be dangerous,” notes Emad. “The only protection I can offer him is letting him see everything.”

(Note: I interviewed Guy & Emad – that interview will be posted later today.)

Courtesy of Illume Magazine

By Guest Contributor Sara Yasin

The Arab Spring shattered everything that I thought I knew about the Arab world. As unrest broke out in the region, and regimes fell, I realised how little I knew. As a Palestinian-American, it has been routine to reference my heritage, from explaining why I do not look like Princess Jasmine, or distancing myself from suicide bombers. The politics of the land of my parents always frustrated me, and I suppose what I understood was mostly gleaned from exhausted conversations overheard in our home or headlines.

To my shock, even though I proved to know very little about what caused the Arab Spring, many seemed to automatically think that the first half of my hyphenated identity automatically made me an authority on the region. While I feel tied to and interested in the struggle for change across the Middle East and North Africa, this is not my Arab Spring.

I last visited my family in Amman around 1995, as a pint-sized feminist homesick for cereal and episodes of Boy Meets World. While I seemed to be fluent in some Southern variation on Arabic, my cousins lived in an entirely different world than I did. The most noticeable difference involved religion; my own culture seemed to incorporate more Muslim values, and I remember my cousins being shocked at my declaration that I would soon wear hijab. Visiting my relatives made me realize I would forever be caught between two worlds.

Despite being identified through my Arab identity in the United States, I was “the American” abroad. Growing up in my hybrid Muslim and Arab American communities, my peers and I routinely referred to new immigrants as “boaters,” swearing that we would never marry a “FOB” (fresh-off-the-boat), in fear of a wife-beating stereotype who could not speak English. Since I never felt that I could entirely belong to the Palestinian or American communities, I launched myself into the world of the mosque, and – particularly after 9/11 – I spent much of my time harping on the fact that Muslims were diverse in faith and views, and blamed a lack of progress on culture, rather than religion.

I eventually learned that the lines between religion and culture could not be as easily separated as I would have hoped. The Arab Spring, as well as meeting friends that actually grew up in the Middle East made me realize I was projecting my own experiences onto an entire region. It did not occur to me that the world that my parents spoke about, and perhaps many of the cultural norms they adopted were part of a world that they left long ago – one that grew and changed after they left. Their views of culture are stuck in nostalgia, embalming their history and identity in a foreign world.

Courtesy of Associated Press

My parents, and many of their friends, had resigned themselves to the fact that the Arab world was rife with corruption and inconsistencies, and that mentality was passed along to us. I did not think that would change, and I suppose I thought that the Arabs without hyphens resigned to the same inevitability. After the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, I remember calling my stunned father, who said that he never thought he would see such a thing during his lifetime. While attempting to express his trademark amount of pessimism, I swore that in that moment, I heard hope in his voice. That was when I realized how out of touch he and I really were.

Though previously disengaged with the politics of the region, I feel passionate about expanding my understanding. However, I think it is important to make a distinction between my own culture, and that of those in the Arab world. As the children of immigrants, our lives are complicated by a number of cultural notions, rules and norms that can be tied to the lands of our parents, but they grow and change on an entirely different plane. Therefore, my lived reality is far different than that of a cousin living in the West Bank, despite our shared heritage. It is dangerous to fall into the trap of thinking that my shared heritage would automatically make me understand the situation better, or have the authority to speak on it.

I think it is also important to make this distinction, because I feel that many changes need to occur in the respective Arab and Muslim communities that I grew up in. I am proud of the victories of the Arab Spring, but I do not take ownership of them; not only because they are not my lived reality, but also because we need our own shake ups and changes in many Arab-American communities. We cannot claim those victories as our own – if anything, they just show how much work we have left to do.

While I still have an opinion, take an activist interest in the Arab Spring and continue to learn more, this still is not my reality. My childhood involved a world of hummus, fried chicken, Islamic studies, Southern Baptist churches and a world away from war and dictators. While being identified as an Arab in the United States is a large part of who I am, treating me like a voice of Arabs across the globe encourages a static notion of culture, a detrimental thing to reinforce when thinking about issues of history and identity. Treating me like I am not American, only serves the right-wing, closet-Jihadi fantasies of the Anne Coulters and Newt Gingrichs of the world, and only serves to hasten our Arab-American Spring.

Twenty-year-old Egyptian blogger Magda Aliaa el-Mahdy rose to stardom after delivering a stick of dynamite via her blog, ‘A Rebel’s Diary’, in what she described as being in the spirit of the revolution.

(Editor’s Note: NSFW image is under the cut. – Arturo)

Who is Aliaa? Nowadays she’s known as the Nude Revolutionary and the dynamite was – you guessed it – a nude photo of herself online, which sparked outrage from both conservatives and liberals in Egypt alike. Here’s her take on why she took such controversial measures:

Put on trial the artists’ models who posed nude for art schools until the early 70s, hide the art books and destroy the nude statues of antiquity, then undress and stand before a mirror and burn your bodies that you despise to forever rid yourselves of your sexual hangups before you direct your humiliation and chauvinism and dare to try to deny me my freedom of expression.

The North African country, with a population of roughly eighty-five million, is a largely conservative society.

Earlier this year, inspired by the wave of uprisings that struck the region following Tunisia’s ability to send their long-time dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali packing, Egyptians from all social and political classes took to the streets with a unified dream of doing away with a system that had outlived its stay.

As punishment, Egypt’s Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) subjected women to humiliating ‘virginity tests’, which entailed having a soldier insert two fingers into their croch. Once again, as discontent returned to Tahrir earlier this month, women’s bodies were targeted.

Women’s rights advocates like award-winning Egyptian writer Mona Eltahawy believes that El Mahdy’s act not highlights how in times of extreme repression sex and nakedness becomes the only weapon of political repression for women. In a recent article in the Guardian, she argues:

When sexual assault parades as a test of the “honour” of virginity, then posing in your parents’ home in nothing but stockings, red shoes and a red hair clip is an attack towards all patriarchs out there.

While Mahdy’s act has been hashtagged (#NudePhotoRevolutionary) and her name tweeted and Facebooked endlessly, others did not receive such attention.

Samira Ibrahim, the only one of the women subjected to “virginity tests” who is taking the military to court for sexual assault, has neither a dedicated hashtag nor notoriety. Another woman, Salwa el-Husseini, was the first to reveal what the military did to them, but news reports have said she can’t raise a lawsuit because she doesn’t have identification papers.

Not only did el-Husseini speak out, she courageously agreed to be filmed at a session of testimonies on military abuses. Again, hardly anyone knows her name, her recorded testimony isn’t racking up page views, and she was called a liar and vilified for speaking out. Both women have vehemently maintained they were virgins.

If “good girls” in headscarves who kept their legs together only to be violated by the military speak out and no one listens, what’s the message being sent?

Whether or not El Mahdy’s act was revolutionary or not it has definitely sparked a debate as to how far women should go in pushing the boundaries in their fight for a more inclusive society.

One question that probably pops in your head is: had she been a man, would the publics reaction have been different?

Critics argue that the embattled blogger not only insulted revolution but has tarnished the uprisings image.

#nudephotorevolutionary was the most daring conflicting act I’ve seen for a long time but was also the worst thing that happened to the liberal movement in Egypt,” Kamel argued. “Her actions have done nothing but stir a debate and allow the conservatives to have one more reason to call for an Islamic state and blame liberals and seculars for this. You will probably see one of them saying this is how all women will act if Egypt isn’t saved by an Islamic leader.

In the aftermath of her public expression, El Mahdy has been slapped with a lawsuit as the Coalition of Islamic law graduates in Egypt filed a case against the blogger and her boyfriend, Kareem Amer who also appears nude on the site, for ‘violating morals, inciting indecency and insulating Islam’.

In her defense, supporters have established a Facebook page in which they vow to also get butt naked in an act of self-expression. According to Eltahawy, El Mahdy’s nudity was a way of extinguishing the ‘dictators of our mind’.

Perhaps, but is this the way to do it?

I remember when I was still living on the streets and working as a delivery person in New York City while cleaning houses on the side. The delivery service was a family run business and in the midst of being delighted to finally have someone pay me for once, I didn’t even consider that the $20 a day for over eight hours of work was meager. Then a good friend C told me to quit that job and go art model.

I thought she had lost her mind. Now, it’s not like you think. It actually entailed going around to art schools and posing.

To convince me she said, “once you drop the clothes, it’s done and you got a new career.”

The idea didn’t sound bad to me, especially after discovering that NYU paid a hefty $18 per hour and most classes were four hours long. The major feat was challenging a lot of societal mishaps in the process but eventually I saw this as a great way to rekindle the artist in me, revolutionize my thinking and love my body.

So, I did it. After some time I was the most sought after model circulating the art scene and I felt empowered, liberated and I was an entrepreneur.

I use this example in an attempt to paint a visual image of one way in which nudity was used to empower an individual.

However, in the case of Egypt’s nude revolutionary, my question to readers is: Is any time the right time for the clothes to come off when advocating women’s rights? Is this truly an act of self-expression?

20-year-old Eiman from Darfur sought shelter at the UNHCR-run Chousha camp on the Tunisia/Libya border

By Guest Contributor Simba Russeau

With more than 140 tribes and clans, Libya is considered one of the most tribally fragmented nations in the Arab world. Despite modernization, tribalism remains a prominent force in a country now awash with weaponry.

In the aftermath of Gaddafi’s reign, nearly forty different independent militias that reportedly emerged during the rebellion remain at large.

Raising questions as to whether the National Transitional Council (NTC) has the ability to reign in all the various groups, many of which have competing interests like settling scores from the past.

For Libyans from the far south this daunting picture has already become a reality.

Tawergha – which lies some forty miles south of Misurata along the western coast of the Gulf of Sirte – was home to an estimated population of over 20,000 people. Now it’s become a ghost town.

According to some Libyans, the name Tawergha was given to the towns black population because they had dark-skinned features like the original Tuareg.

The Tuaregs, who inhabit the border area of Libya, Chad, Niger and Algeria, were historically nomads that controlled trans-Saharan trade routes and had a reputation for being robbers.

During the seventies, Gaddafi assembled the Tuaregs and other African recruits into his elite battalion known as the Al Asmar. Ironically, Al Asmar means “The Black” in Arabic.

Under Gaddafi¹s supervision, these militias were oftentimes sent on military expeditions into neighbouring countries and at the onset of the country’s revolt in February of this year many Tuaregs were unleashed on protestors.

20-year-old Eiman from Darfur sought shelter at the UNHCR-run Chousha camp on the Tunisia/Libya border

As a result, racial hatred fuelled by unconfirmed rumours that African mercenaries had been hired by Gaddafi to squash discontent created another common enemy – dark-skinned Africans.

In the eyes of Misuratans, Tawerghans were the perpetrators of some of the worst human rights abuses during Gaddafi¹s siege on Misurata in March and April.

On August 15, in what human rights groups are calling reprisal attacks, rebels forces going by the name of The Brigade for Purging Slaves, black Skin have reportedly detained and displaced hundreds while other Tawerghans have disappeared without a trace.

“If we go back to Tawergha, we will then be at the mercy of the Misurata rebels,” a woman, who has been living in a makeshift camp with her husband and five children, told UK-based Amnesty International.

“When the rebels entered our town in mid-August and shelled it, we fled just carrying the clothes on our backs. I don’t know what happened to our homes and belongings. Now I am here in this camp, my son is ill and I am too afraid to go to the hospital in town. I don’t know what will happen to us now.”

Also caught up in the crossfire of vengeance are economic migrants, refugees and asylum-seekers from sub-Saharan Africa, many of which have sought refuge in neighbouring Tunisia or Egypt.

For them, Libya was a transit country but for others it had become a place of rebuilding.

“Fearing for their life, my parents who are from Al Fasher City in Darfur fled to Tripoli in 1998. I had never lived outside Libya before the conflict started. My father worked as a cook and my mother was domestic worker. Before fleeing I was in my third year of University pursuing a degree in the medical field,” 20-year old Eiman told Witnessing Life.

“Unfortunately the uprising in Libya took a bloody turn because people no longer respected the law and started raping women, taking hostages and killing people. For two months my family remained trapped in our house. They were accusing and killing all black males caught on the street of being mercenaries, which meant that our mother had to try and gather food but there were many days that we starved.”

In an article published in September, the Wall Street Journal quoted Jibril as saying, “regarding Tawergha, my own viewpoint is that nobody has the right to interfere in this matter except the people of Misurata. This matter
can’t be tackled through theories and textbook examples of national reconciliation like those in South Africa, Ireland and Eastern Europe.”

Calls by human rights groups urging the NTC to protect black Libyans in the newly liberated Libya seems to have fallen on death ears, which could set a precedent of what is to come.

By Special Correspondent Fatemeh Fakhraie

Sir Richard Burton is most famous for sexing up The 1,001 Arabian Nights. Two centuries later, Craig Thompson has graciously provided some accompanying imagery.

I feel like I have no choice but to hate Thompson’s latest graphic novel, Habibi. I’ll admit that it was beautifully drawn, though some of the panels seem needlessly garnished with alchemy symbols or random Arabic letters. But I’ll let Robyn Creswell’s review for The New York Times handle the fact that Thompson clutters his story—my beef with Thompson is about his staggering Orientalism, which I’ll get to shortly.

Themes of longing and survival permeate Habibi. The protagonists, Zam and Dodola, long for each other, likening this to a yearning for the Divine – Middle Eastern poets have done this for centuries. Zam and Dodola endure horrible events in the name of survival, perhaps tying in with Thompson’s conservationist theme by implying that our disregard for the earth is tantamount to rape and castration of the planet. These themes, however, are often drowned out—no matter how much Thompson underlines them—by the towering gaffes of his misrepresentation. The country of Wanatolia may be fiction, but the cultures it mimics and clumsily muddles together are real.

When one opens Habibi, one might assume that it takes place a long time ago, in a fictional, far-away land that happens to look and feel just like Disney’s Agrabah. But, lo! Wanatolia has steam punk-themed palace guards and high-rise condo construction that flies in the face of a village’s pollution and resulting poverty and famine. Is it to represent the “Global South,” as Thompson claims in a Guernica interview?

No. It’s simply an Orientalist reimaging of a modern Arabia—Thompson needs modern machinery to further his conservationist theme, but he still wants his pre-modern harems full of odalisques with no cell phones and his pre-modern camel caravans crossing a desert that his very same construction companies would build roads through.

Thompson admitted to Guernica that he drew inspiration for Habibi from the Orientalist art movement. Orientalist paintings are a primary example of Orientalism as a racist point of view because they are Western depictions of Arab lands based on preconceptions of the painters (who often had never been to the region they were depicting). Thompson traps himself by not realizing that his magical land full of djinns and harems is exactly the kind of fantastical interpretation that many Middle Eastern people and Muslims have had enough of.

And then we come to the other huge problem: its portrayal of women and the sexualizing of rape. The female protagonist, Dodola, is raped constantly: as a child, by her first husband; as a child and teen, by men in the caravans she tried to steal food from; by the sultan whose harem she lived in. Dodola’s history is a history of rape, also falling into the Orientalist trope of brutal male savages and their oppressed women. And once Zam (or Habibi, the male protagonist) witnesses one of these rapes, both his consciousness and his dreams are plagued by sensual reenactments of her rape. Do I really have to make the point here that sexualizing rape is dangerous and unacceptable?

Tasnim at Muslimah Media Watch highlights the tired savage men/oppressed women dichotomy that Thompson’s novel rehashes: “Dodola’s narrative in particular features an endless array of savage men victimizing sexualized women, with hardly a page passing without nudity or brutality.” Every other page, Dodola was naked for one reason or another: being raped, bathing, birthing. The way Thompson portrays the female form is little more than a screen on which to project his Orientalist, new-agey crap. And with the current lack of female representation in comic books and graphic novels, you’d think he’d try a little harder to make his female protagonist more than a naked body.

I genuinely appreciated Thompson’s attempt to include the Qur’an in a positive way, which is why I wanted to like this novel. G. Willow Wilson, who has a foot in both worlds because she is both Muslim and a graphic novelist, tried similarly, writing, “the sheer dearth of sympathetic Muslim characters in western literature (and the fiercely secular world of comics and graphic novels in particular) makes me want to forgive a few small sins of inauthenticity.” And the beautiful drawings almost sway me before I realize that just because it’s beautiful doesn’t mean it’s okay.

But mixing Middle Eastern fairy tales with Qur’anic passages, new-age-y alchemist references, and a constantly naked female protagonist-turned-odalisque makes it apparent that Habibi is Thompson’s attempt to write his own Arabian Nights.

Longtime Racialicious readers know this time on the calendar has prompted the R to read someone (or several folks) about their racist costumes or some other Halloween-related foolishness. Well, this year, Ohio University’s Students Teaching about Racism in Society (STARS) put on posters what we’ve been putting into words for quite a while.

I think that, for the most part, the campaign deserves the accolades, coverage, and support it’s been getting around the web, from Angry Asian Man to the 17,575 (and counting!) responses on the STARS president’s Tumblr to The Root to Bitch to the former Racialicious owner Carmen Sognonvi .

Of course, we can argue, among other things, that phenotypes don’t equal culture and cultures aren’t static or even talk about the historical-religious appropriation of Halloween itself.

My only quibble with the campaign is that I may have chosen photos where the models conveyed different body language. Not that the models didn’t pose how they wanted, being a student-driven campaign. What I do think is quite a few photographers rarely get The Shot in one shot; in fact, several photographers submit several photos for clients/collaborative partners to choose from.

I would have chosen, say, the Latino looking down at the photo, the East Asian woman giving the “geisha” picture the side-eye. Or all of the models giving their respective photos the side-eye. Or all of them looking out at the viewer. Or all of them looking down. As is, the photo of the East Asian woman looking down may suggest non-confrontation (“meek Asian girl”)

juxtaposed with the men of color (the photo at the top of the post and this one)

and the Black woman

may  inadvertently suggest stereotypes of anger and aggression (“angry Arab,” “Latino with a temper,” “aggressive Black woman”). Just a thought if and when STARS decides to tweak this incredible campaign.

But, again, that’s my only quibble. STARS did a wild-applause-and-rose-tossing job with this campaign.

Others, however, have taken this serious and timely message and parodied—if not downright attacked–it. (Color me unshocked by this, Racializens.) Now, some of the parodies made me chuckle, like this Avatar-based one

and the zombie one

mostly due to the ideas of the creatures being symbols for people of color.

The ones about white people, especially poor whites, produced mixed results mostly because the parodies don’t quite grasp that, yes, poor white people do have a mitigated privilege via their skin color and that white people of various class standings making fun of poor whites may be viewed as “inside joking,”

but white poverty is also thoroughly ridiculed and dismissed—and, therefore erased–in US society by that very same mitigated privilege.

Oh, and let’s not forget the sexism and the fatphobia in these parodies.

As we’ve witnessed in our posts about racism in costuming, people have rushed to defend their choice to dress up in racially offensive Halloween garb in some of the comment sections about the campaigns, with the usual mixture of the “I got my rights!”, “my best [insert race and/or ethnicity here] friend/partner/co-worker/neighbor didn’t find my costume offensive,” (bonus points if the person saying this is a person of color wears the stereotyping costume of a PoC culture), “y’all are being oversensitive/overemotional/hostile,” “you’re the racist for calling out my racism,” and other derailing techniques.

Some of the Derailing/Apologist/Other-Blaming hits and remixes?

From “Jerry Stein” at Autostraddle

OMG, get a life. This is pathetic. Would an Asian woman be OK to go as a Geisha on Halloween? If not why not? And if so are we now saying that only people of the exact origin or race can have fun dressed as a CHARACTER on Halloween? Stop being so sensitive. If America is to get passed all of this nonsense then it needs to get some perspective and start smiling again.

Watch any movie or TV show and you will see a racial stereotype. Are all stereotypes negative NO! Why is it that this campaign only sees that.

This country is dividing itself. Nobody wants to be American. Everyone is so narcissistic and self important it makes me sick to my stomach. Bring back people with humility and a sense of humor before we all end up selfish deluded idiots thinking the world owes them something.

Based on this all costumes which feature Cowboys, Irish Leprechauns, Michael Jackson, Lady GaGa, Bin Laden, OJ Simpson, Madonna, Jersey Shore cast members will all now be banned because they offend the Irish, African Americans, Italians and Muslims. Thats pretty much Halloween cancelled.

This country is becoming a laughing stock for the wrong reasons.

Mohamhead from GOOD

I am not white myself but I don’t see what’s wrong with people doing that kind on stuff on Halloween. I might even dress up as a white guy. Is that racist too? Or is it only racist if white people do it? Hypocrites.

didimydoe3, also at GOOD

I don’t mind stereotypical costumes of my race because I’m mature enough to know it’s a costume.

Sometimes it is offensive. Mine is. It’s the only reason I’m doing it. I’m going blackface.

Oh, I could go on and on and on with these kinds of comments–because these comments are out there ad nauseum–but you get the jist.

But see, here’s the thing, People Who Defend Racist Costumes: you all are proving STARS’—and Racialicious’—point…and quite well. You’re welcome.

As Bitch’s headline says, don’t mess up as you dress up, and have a Happy Halloween!

Image credits: Uproxx and Hard to Be Humble When You Stuntin on a Jumbotron

The conviction of the Irvine 11 is a testament to the degree that Islamophobia has grown in the West. Moreover, it is a testament to how unwilling the United States has become to question its relationship with Israel. Any means can be used to silence such questioning — even the criminalization of free speech.

The Israel lobby and the US government are working hand-in-hand against efforts to raise awareness about the occupation and human rights abuses perpetrated against the Palestinians. This trial, the FBI raids on Palestine solidarity activists in the Midwest and the undermining of the UN Palestinian statehood bid show it.

What are the implications of the conviction of the Irvine 11 for Palestine solidarity student activists? One can only imagine the worries that now must run through the minds of these young students: Will I be seen as a criminal? Will the Israeli authorities deny me entry to Palestine next year due to my activism, when a cursory Google search can easily show that connection? Am I jeopardizing my future job opportunities as a result of my activism? Am I being, or am I going to be, investigated or targeted by the FBI?

One must keep in mind that these students now living in fear are Americans. Their intentions and passion for social justice is an American value. Yet student activists are now vulnerable to being criminalized This fear of criminalization may even echo into social justice movements which have yet to form, so essentially what the Irvine 11 conviction represents is a campaign to instill fear in anyone seeking to challenge the status quo in American politics.

- From “Why the Irvine 11 Are True American Heroes,” by Sanah Yassin

On Sunday, three passengers at Detroit’s Metropolitan Airport were detained after someone reported “suspicious activity on board.” Not long afterwards, one of those three passengers’ story has gained national attention after blogging about her treatment by Homeland Security officials.

According to The Associated Press, Shoshana Hebshi and two men were detained and questioned after the crew on their Frontier Airlines flight “reported suspicious activity on board.”

Hebshi, an Ohio resident who identifies as half-Jewish and half-Arab, wrote on her blog that she was sitting with two Indian men from Detroit when the flight was first diverted to a different part of the tarmac, then boarded by armed personnel. She and the two men were subsequently “pushed off the plane” and detained. Hebshi wrote that she asked, “What’s going on?” but did not get an answer.

She wrote:

They put me in the back of the car. It’s a plastic seat, for all you out there who have never been tossed into the back of a police car. It’s hard, it’s hot, and it’s humiliating. The Indian man who had sat next to me on the plane was already in the backseat. I turned to him, shocked, and asked him if he knew what was going on. I asked him if he knew the other man that had been in our row, and he said he had just met him. I said, it’s because of what we look like. They’re doing this because of what we look like. And I couldn’t believe that I was being arrested and taken away.

When the Patriot Act was passed after 9/11 and Arabs and Arab-looking people were being harassed all over the country, my Saudi Arabian dad became nervous. A bit of a conspiracy theorist at heart, he knew the government was watching him and at any time could come and take him away. It was happening all over. Men were being taken on suspicion of terrorist activities and held and questioned–sometimes abused–for long periods of time. Our country had a civil rights issue on its hands. And, in the name of patriotism we lost a lot of our liberty, especially those who look like me.

An airline spokesman told the AP the crew reported that two people were in the bathroom for “an extraordinarily long time.” Also, FBI representative Sandra Berchtold said security was heightened because Sunday was the anniverary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

“All precautions were taken, and any slight inconsistency was taken seriously,” Berchtold said. “The public would rather us err on the side of caution than not.”

According to Hebshi, she and the two men were taken to a facility and incarcerated while still handcuffed. Though she needed to go to the bathroom, she said, she was dissuaded by the toilet in her cell, which she said had “probably never seen the good side of a scrubbing brush.” Unbeknownst to her, the other 113 passengers on the flight were also taken to the facility for questioning. At least two other officers refused to answer when Hebshi asked for more information about her detainment.

Hebshi was later strip-searched by a female officer, before ultimately being questioned by two FBI agents.

The male agent proceeded to ask me a series of questions about where I had been, where I was going, about my family, if I had noticed any suspicious behavior on the plane. The other agent took notes while I talked. They asked if I knew the two men sitting next to me, and if I noticed them getting up during the flight or doing anything I would consider suspicious.

I told them no, and couldn’t remember how many times the men had gotten up, though I was sure they had both gone to the bathroom in succession at some point during the flight.

They had done some background check on me already because they knew I had been to Venezuela in 2001. They asked about my brother and sister and asked about my foreign travel. They asked what I did during the flight. I told them I didn’t get up at all, read, slept and played on my phone (in airplane mode, don’t worry). They asked about my education and wanted my address, Social Security, phone number, Facebook, Twitter, pretty much my whole life story.

Again, I asked what was going on, and the man said judging from their line of questioning that I could probably guess, but that someone on the plane had reported that the three of us in row 12 were conducting suspicious activity. What is the likelihood that two Indian men who didn’t know each other and a dark-skinned woman of Arab/Jewish heritage would be on the same flight from Denver to Detroit? Was that suspicion enough? Even considering that we didn’t say a word to each other until it became clear there were cops following our plane? Perhaps it was two Indian man going to the bathroom in succession?

Hebshi said she was allowed to use an officers’ bathroom following her questioning by the agents, before being returned to her cell and subsequently released. Berchtold told the AP authorities determined there was no real threat. And the Detroit Free Press reported that Kowalchuk refused to comment on whether Hebshi and the two men were racially profiled, saying Frontier was “following safety protocols.” Representatives of the Wayne County Airport Police, who were involved in the arrest, did not respond to the Free Press’ requests for comment.

By Guest Contributor Isaac Miller

While some critics are rightly noting the confusing and inaccurate message of Beyoncé’s new single “Run The World (Girls)” in the context of a world controlled by patriarchy, her song/video also raises the issue of how peoples, artists, and cultures from the global south are referenced and represented by artists from the first world. Several layers of referencing go on within this song/video, which makes this discussion a lot more complicated, lengthy and, at the same time, all the more necessary.

Please bear with me. This is an important conversation to have because of the ways in which this kind of sampling reinforces disparities of privilege and power. Furthermore, its important to note the ways that the profits and opportunities produced from this referencing are disproportionately transferred to people with white privilege or benefiting from larger structures of white supremacy.

I want to be upfront about my position as a white man from the United States. Recognizing my own privileges in this dialogue, I welcome critique and debate and I’m writing this in large part because I want to see what kind of conversation these issues can generate.

Beyoncé and the Ethics of Sampling

Beyoncé’s sampling from artists and cultures of the global south permeates this video. Her creative team saw a YouTube video of the kwaito dance troupe Tofo Tofo performing at a wedding in Mozambique and decided to reach out to them to choreograph and dance in part of the video. Frank Gatson Jr., Beyoncé’s choreographer, told MTV News that “It was hard finding them. They were really in a remote area; we had to get the embassy people involved. That was a process that took about two months or more. Beyoncé really loved them and I’m pretty sure we’ll see them again. It was magical.”

“Tofo, Tofo”

As “magical” an experience as this may have been for Beyoncé, its unclear what the experience was like for the dancers in Tofo Tofo. The MTV News interview with Gatson, Jr. offers the only information on them that’s available on the web. Nowhere are their names or backgrounds mentioned, let alone their opinions. Furthermore, as The Johannesburg Times notes, “While pantsula dance is nothing new to us Africans, it’s the first time that it has been given such exposure. I’m glad Beyoncé saw something great in them and the movement as a whole. But I wish the genre was as appreciated and respected here. Why do our artists always need the American/ European stamp of approval for us to value them?” We in the U.S. could also ask ourselves the same question: Why do we value third world culture only when its mediated via first world celebrity?

In one scene, Beyoncé is holding the chains of two hyenas, referencing the work of White, South African photographer Pieter Hugo and his photographs of Nigerian “Hyena Men.” This work has been stridently critiqued for the racialized and exotified undertones to his photography. This raises the uncomfortable issue of how so many images in Beyoncé’s video echo exotified, Orientalist representations of the third world (Africa and the Middle East in particular).

Gatson, Jr. explained that “The concept the team ended up settling on was a desert landscape ruled by two forces: Beyoncé and her supermodel minions and a very unwelcoming opposing army.” But these representations don’t take place in a vacuum. Particularly perplexing are the images of “Beyoncé and her supermodel minions” confronting phalanxes of riot police. Its unclear in what context we are supposed to read these images, particularly given the recent events of the “Arab Spring,” where protesters across North Africa and the Middle East have been facing the real life dangers of batons, water cannons, and bullets. Notably -in the context of Beyoncé’s video- many of the participants in these uprisings and revolutions have been Arab women who have fought for their freedom from repressive dictatorships. Many of these women have been met with violence, and even death.

Beyoncé’s audience is left wondering whether there is a clear reason for the imagery that she is using. While its possible to interpret these references as an act of solidarity with the protesters across North Africa and the Middle East, the contrast between the glamourized images of Beyoncé’s video and the violent struggles that those images reference seems disrespectful.

Furthermore, that lack of sensitivity for the experiences of women protesters actually undermines the ostensibly feminist message of Beyoncé’s song. Especially given that Beyoncé received $2 million to perform at a New Year’s party for the sons of Muammar Qaddafi, her politics on this issue are questionable. Though she eventually gave this money to Haiti earthquake relief efforts after the uprisings in Libya began, it seems hypocritical to incorporate this kind of imagery with such ease given her history here.

Ethar El-Katatney recently wrote an article (cross-posted on Racialicious), about a song by Sijal Hachem, a Lebanese singer whose video features “women as sexy riot police standing in formation behind barbed wire as men charge them”… “equating men standing up to their nagging wives with people revolting against dictatorships.” El-Katatney writes that “The imagery in the music video is disturbing on so many levels. To see scenes we witnessed in real life paralleled in a music video—of barbed wire, billowing smoke and burning tires and paper; of groups of men wearing masks to protect themselves from tear gas while holding sticks and rocks; and of state security standing in rows and hosing protesters standing peacefully with gallons of water—makes me shiver involuntarily. It was real, it was horrible, and it was traumatic.” Many of these same images also appear in Beyoncé’s video. What is their meaning there?

In thinking about these issues, its also important to examine the idea of “imperial feminism” discussed in Nadine Naber’s recent article “Imperial Feminism, Islamophobia, and the Egyptian Revolution.” Naber discusses the way that first world feminist demands for women’s rights intersect with U.S. geopolitical interests in the Middle East. Naber writes that: “Both rely upon a humanitarian logic that justifies military intervention, occupation, and bloodshed as strategies for promoting “democracy and women’s rights.” This humanitarian logic disavows U.S.-state violence against people of the Arab and Muslim regions rendering it acceptable and even, liberatory, particularly for women.” I wonder at what Beyoncé’s vision of women’s liberation implies when paired with these discourses over the “oppression of women by Islam.”

I’m not saying that Beyoncé’s video intentionally advances an agenda of Imperial Feminism, but that the very character of Imperial Feminism is that it takes a claim that is on one level liberatory -women’s rights- and grafts it onto a political project that in fact destroys the lives of those women, their families, and their communities. So no matter how earnest Beyoncé was in shaping the message of her video, that meaning is malleable depending on her audience. As an artist Beyoncé has the freedom to use whatever imagery matches her vision, but she should be conscious of the potential implications of that vision. Accordingly, does this video’s message subvert or provide sustenance to the imperial agenda that defines women’s liberation as military occupation?

Also striking is the way in which this trajectory of U.S. imperialism coincides with American cultural hegemony, or the way in which American popular culture has become global popular culture. In the video of Beyoncé’s recent performance of “Run The World (Girls)” at the Billboard Music Awards, she is introduced by such pop culture luminaries as Stevie Wonder, Lady Gaga, Barbara Streisand, Bono, and (not insignificantly) First Lady Michelle Obama. This leads into Beyoncé’s re-creating in live performance the music video to “Run The World (Girls)”, which weaves together an array of dazzling digital images, including lion and elephant heads (continuing in animal form the theme of third world inspired imagery). However, one of the most striking images was with the line “Endless Power”, where Beyoncé literally holds (an image of) the world in the palm of her hand. This serves as a powerful visual representation not only of the influence of superstars such as Beyoncé, but also of American cultural hegemony as a whole.

Interestingly, while Beyonce re-enacts the Tofo Tofo dance sequence sans Tofo Tofo (replaced instead by a legion of digitally replicated Beyonce’s), she does include a sequence with Les Twins, a French dance duo made up of brothers Larry and Laurent Bourgeois. Though its troubling that Tofo Tofo’s contribution was absent from this performance (no mention of them in Beyonce’s acceptance speech for the Billboard Millenium Award when she thanked her family, Destiny’s Child, and her husband Jay-Z), they were swapped out as Beyonce’s male backup dancers with Les Twins, two other dancers representing global hip hop culture.

Opening with the words “Power is ever present” echoing through the auditorium, this performance gives little thought the way that power plays out in this very song. Taking this statement at face value, under the guise of a feminist anthem, “Run the World (Girls)” speaks much more directly to the dynamics of power between first world artists and third world culture. But to really get at the racialized dimensions behind Beyonce’s latest mega-hit, its necessary to not only examine her music video and Billboard Awards performance, but also the song and video that “Run The World (Girls)” samples for its beat.

“Pon De Floor”: Major Lazer and the Representation of Black Bodies

“Pon De Floor”

Major Lazer “Pon De Floor” from Eric Wareheim on Vimeo.

Bianca I. Laureano writes about watching the “Pon De Floor” video by Major Lazer in her article “Major Lazer: Cyborgs, Dancehall, Racism, & Colonization in Music”:

“I was immediately excited because the dancing in the video was very much the kind of Dancehall I find fascinating, yet also complex as it is overly sexually graphic. Basically performers are reenacting some sexual activities on the dance floor, yet are doing so in a way that challenges our ideas of athleticism in dancing in this way. Another aspect of the video that I was excited about was that the women dancing were large bodied women. Some may even call them “fat dancers” yet for me their bodies were so much like my own it was as though I was watching myself dance…

My online searching led me to the shocking knowledge that Major Lazer is a fictional Black cyborg created by two White men, Diplo from Philidelphia (of M.I.A. fame), and Switch, from the UK who specializes in “House” music…

At the end of the day I kind of feel duped, hoodwinked, bamboozled. I fell for imagery that was crafted by outsiders to represent something meaningful that I valued as an important part of my Caribbean identity.”

My reaction to the video was different than Laureano’s. Before I saw the video I had followed the work of Major Lazer and knew that the group was composed of two white DJs. Watching the video, as a white person, I immediately felt uncomfortable because it seemed made by and for white people. That is to say it felt exploitative, racist, disingenuous, and totally uncritical of its own white gaze. The video was filmed by a white director (Eric Wareheim) for a group of white DJs. Though the vocalist on the track and the dancers in the video are all people of color and the song, as a Dancehall track, draws on a genre that originates from a community of color, it is interpreted through the gaze of white artists. Eric Wareheim had already created a similarly themed, but even more graphic video “Parisian Goldfish” for the group Flying Lotus and if the comments section of the Vimeo pages for both of these videos are any indication, the majority of the people watching them are white.

As Laureano points out, the Major Lazer project is itself a bizarre racialized fantasy where two white artists created a Black “cyborg” Major Lazer, who serves as their vehicle for representing Jamaican Dancehall culture to the world. What I question are the meanings conveyed when a predominantly white audience views this video and how it plays into racialized depictions of Black people as hyper-sexualized beings– stereotypes that go back to slavery and serve to reinforce characterizations of people of color as animalistic and inhuman (fundamentally Other and inferior to White people).

While “Pon De Floor” incorporates “Daggering” from Dancehall culture, the “Pon De Floor” video, as well as a subsequent one, titled “Major Lazer’s Guide to Daggering”, de-contextualize Dancehall as just another ironic commodity for white people to gawk and laugh at. Clearly these racist attitudes continue to this day (you need look no further than the YouTube comments sections to see this). So to play around with these hyper-sexual depictions of Black people in the name of hipster irony is not only confused but also dangerous. These images are not being controlled by people from the communities that are being represented. The lens is fundamentally different than if, for example, the video was conceptualized and produced by the women who appear in the video, and if they possessed the same level of creative control as Diplo, Switch, and the director Eric Wareheim.

“Major Lazer’s Guide to Daggering”

To highlight the importance of context in determining the meanings these images convey, it is necessary to understand where Daggering comes from. For example, A Newsweek article by Kate Dailey on “Daggering” quotes Jamaican DJ Jah Prince: “The majority of the time it [is] done with full disclosure to the patrons and only enacted by a hand few of ‘characters’ in the crowd.” Dailey writes, “‘Dancehall’ in fact, refers to music so suggestive that it could only be heard in clubs.” Dailey then quotes Annie Paul, a Kingston-based blogger who says “Jamaican society is extremely stratified, and people at the bottom are the core participants of dancehall culture… It is one of the few spaces and phenomenon they have control over.” The context that Dancehall comes from influences the meanings that the culture conveys. When “Pon De Floor” is posted on the internet and viewed by a majority white audience, those meanings change drastically.

And those meanings change even more live. This video interview with Diplo which showcases footage from Major Lazer’s SXSW showcase makes it clear that Diplo has no doubt about who his audience really is…

“Major Lazer Showcase at SXSW”

“We have this wild Daggering video *laughs*, its called “Pon De Floor”… anywhere you go, you can watch it. Its crazy and its just nuts. You can see it today, we’re gonna do it live. We have Skerrit Bwoy… You can expect a party that looks kinda like that video.” – Diplo

Major Lazer can’t be ignorant to the racialized dimensions of Black dancers performing a Daggering routine live in front of a majority white crowd. Diplo seems to glory in the irony of it all. But as with all minstrelsy, the contradictions do not diminish the racism involved. White artists presenting Black bodies as a sexual spectacle to a predominantly White audience is loaded with racism, however ironic it may be.

Diplo’s Relationship to Third World Artists/Artists of Color

Diplo (Wesley Pentz), even before Major Lazer, made a name for himself as a “musical Columbus” discovering the cutting edge of third world musical genres originating in some of the most impoverished and oppressed urban communities of color on the planet. He has been given credit for bringing introducing these styles to the global north, at tremendous personal success. Diplo, a former producer (and ex-boyfriend) of indie hip hop artist M.I.A. -producing her first mixtape “Piracy Funds Terrorism” as well as hits such as “Bucky Done Gun” and “Paper Planes”- is famous for bringing attention to the musical genre of Baile Funk (or Funk Carioca), originating in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The underside of Diplo’s rising success is his history of using the work of third world artists without attribution. This includes his baile funk mixes “Favela on Blast” and “Favela Strikes Back”, as well as the anonymous baile funk tracks he included on MIA’s Piracy Funds Terrorism mixtape, and the song Bucky Done Gun on MIA’s first album Arular, which reproduced without acknowledgement a beat from Brazilian funk DJ Marlboro. M.I.A.’s label later took steps to acknowledge DJ Marlboro (as well as Deize Tigrona, the MC whose song the beat was originally used for), and Diplo attempted to bring more attention to baile funk artists in Brazil through touring with some of them and even producing a documentary on Baile Funk called “Favela on Blast.” However, he continues to come under criticism for exploiting artists of color. This recently resulted in a heated twitter debate between him and DJ Venus Iceberg X (covered in a recent Racialicious post), a queer woman of color producer who played shows with artists signed to Diplo’s record label Mad Decent and noticed some of the shady patterns to Diplo/Mad Decent’s business practices. She called him out publicly after he tried to record one of her shows without permission. As described in another post on Racialicious, “Its Complicated: DJs, Appropriation, and a Whole Host of Other Ish”, Diplo has a pattern of using the work of artists of color who make music in the latest genre that he takes interest in and then leaves those artists behind as he moves on to the next genre that grabs his attention.

What will Major Lazer’s newfound mainstream success mean for all of the artists of color who Diplo has worked with who have not seen similar success? Diplo is now producing for some of the most powerful superstars in pop music. “Pon De Floor” was sampled not only for “Run The World (Girls)” but also for “Ass On The Floor” a Swizz Beatz produced track on Diddy’s Dirty Money album and Diplo recently co-produced Chris Brown’s hit “Look At Me Now.” Furthermore, Diplo recently starred in a BlackBerry commercial and continues to tour all over the world. In contrast, Maluca, an ex-girlfriend and artist signed to his label, recently released a video showing her life beyond the limelight. In the video Maluca contrasts appearing in fashion shows and touring as an opener for Robyn with qualifying for EBT and living with her mother. In the Fader article “Diplo Cannot Keep You Out of the Poorhouse”, the author zings Maluca for holding a Mud Truck coffee cup in her video, and in the comments section someone critiques her for showing up to apply for food stamps wearing a fur hat. But another commenter notes “In her interview with T Magazine she says that she doesn’t have a cell phone, so I think going out and buying a cup of coffee is a fair exchange. Just because she isn’t the poorest person in the world doesn’t mean she is not poor.”

What’s particularly complicated is that Diplo has placed himself in the role of ambassador and intermediary for an array of global hip hop genres originating in the global south (in particular Baile Funk and Dancehall). On the one hand, Diplo presents himself is as someone concerned with the well-being and success of the communities that he engages with. He claims to be committed to their development and has engaged in a number of projects that have brought considerable attention to artists and communities in the global south, as well as artists of color in the global north. He has worked on projects such as the “Favela on Blast” documentary on Baile Funk in Rio’s favelas and the Heaps Decent NGO that supports the development of indigenous hip hop artists in Australia. And certainly Baile Funk has received greater attention and audiences in the global north as a result of Diplo’s work. The same with Dancehall culture via Major Lazer. However, no artists in these communities have gained even a fraction of the mainstream success and attention that Diplo/Major Lazer has. Not. Even. Close. And if Diplo’s career continues to move in the direction that it has been going, that disparity will only continue to grow. Perhaps he will be able to bring increased attention to even more artists and will use his resources to support projects that create genuine impacts on these communities. I wonder, though, for how long and how deep will the impact be.

“Interview with Diplo”

“I’ve gotten a lot of criticism, from journalists mostly, and also other people who do what I do in America. I’ve tried to confront all of them because I think its really important to at least recognize that I’m a white guy from America and I can work under the guise that I’m a White guy from Mississippi, from Florida, I’m from a working-class family… [but] I have a passport and I have access to travel outside my country, which 90% of the world doesn’t have. Probably more. Doesn’t even recognize that they can do these things that I can do. So its important to confront that reality because it exists. I have the freedom to come to Rio and work, while at the same time almost all the favelados don’t have the freedom to leave the favela, or even have the notion in their mind that they’re capable of doing that because of the social aspects in Brazil…”

In this quote it seems like he understands that there are some serious imbalances in power between himself and the artists he works with in the global south. But what does it mean to “confront that reality because it exists”? And, really, what does that mean in practice, as in getting the people who came up with this music in the first place paid? It is significant that Diplo makes attempts to engage his critics, albeit in ways that are often cynical and dismissive. Perhaps this is just a publicity ploy, a learned tactic of leaning towards controversy, because of the resulting buzz. But Diplo doesn’t have to respond to these criticisms. No one is forcing him to acknowledge them, especially as he enters the rarified air of stardom. So it’s interesting that he continues to do so. It seems like a lot of his response is: What do you want me to do differently? That’s an important question for all of us who critique him. And a question that we should consider the answer to, not just when directed at him, but also when the answer is turned on ourselves.

Global Hip Hop: Creating the Alternative

Beyonce’s incorporation of Dancehall, as well as Kwaito through Tofo Tofo and “New Style” hip hop dance through Les Twins offers a glimpse into a more holistic, global hip hop culture. However, this global vision is still mediated through the work of a U.S. superstar. This is symbolic of the overarching global balance of power. However, while the U.S. still acts as the global center of media, music, and film, immense networks of media production are burgeoning across the global south.

It seems like Diplo wants to create networks, audiences, and opportunities for the communities he engages with. But so long as he is the necessary Western interlocutor for artists of color from the global south, I question how much will these artists and cultures actually be “represented” globally. Like other forms of Western “development” that created the very conditions of poverty that these musics and cultures exist in, Diplo’s brand of development reproduces the very inequality that it claims to solve.

Yes, Diplo plays a part in this and should be held accountable…but so should all of us. But what would it mean for us as consumers, fans, critics, and so forth, to genuinely support the work of artists from the global south, particularly women of color/queer artists (both in the U.S./first world and in the global south)? More specifically:

And…

When it comes down to it, this conversation is much larger than Diplo or Beyonce. They are not the creators of the systems of oppression that they participates in (consciously or not). Diplo is not the first white artist to perpetrate cultural appropriation. Beyonce is not the first First World superstar to capitalize on third world imagery and culture. And they will certainly not be the last.

Be that as it may, global hip hop culture has never been as expansive, diverse, and vibrant as it is today. There are musical genres like Dancehall, Baile Funk/Funk Carioca, Kuduro, Kwaito, and Reggaeton. There are artists like Anita Tijoux, ChocQuibTown, Buraka Som Sistema, Bomba Estereo, and DAM. There are documentaries like Homegrown: Hip-Life in Ghana, Inventos: Hip Hop Cubano, Slingshot Hip Hop, Democracy In Dakar, and, yes, Favela on Blast. Hip Hop played a role in sparking the Tunisian revolution and in raising international solidarity with the Egyptian revolution. There are even academic conferences such as the Trinity International Hip Hop Festival, and Stanford’s Global Hip Hop Conference.

If global hip hop is this vibrant, then we—white people and people of color, celebrities and everyday people– in the global north need to help create genuine collaborations and infrastructures with these artists to get them paid instead of continuing to feed off the global south’s creativity.

By Guest Contributor Simba Rousseau, cross-posted from Her Blueprint

Threatening emails, phone calls, constant surveillance by secret police and eventually prison couldn’t dissuade Randa, an Algerian transsexual and pioneer in the Arab world’s gay and transsexual movement, from going public with her life story.

“I returned home to Algeria from my last trip and that’s when the threats to imprison me started,” says Randa, who received initial threats via email and phone. “As a method of intimidating me, they started sending articles about me to my family, and they would show up at my workplace. Once, while being stopped at a checkpoint, one of the officers grabbed me in the car and told me that he could arrest and rape me and no one would know about it.”

Convinced by influential members of Algerian society, two of Randa’s friends were forced to present her with an ultimatum. Leave the country in ten days or things will get worse.

Ten days is not a long time, but as luck would have it, a feminist organization in Lebanon found out about Randa’s situation and offered to assist.

“I don’t regret speaking out because in the end I realized that the reason they were doing all of this was because they were scared. I managed to shake up their system and this is why they were lashing out at me,” she said in an interview with Her Blueprint. “Of course it was driving me crazy, and I knew that if I didn’t leave the country they would kill me. I decided to continue addressing the situation of LGBT in Algeria outside the country and accepted the offer to go to Lebanon.”

However, Randa’s troubles were far from over.

Once in Lebanon, Randa caught the attention of the Lebanese secret intelligence. One day while going to the General Security (Lebanese immigration), she was informed that she was under investigation because she shared a birth name with a man who had skipped out on military service. It seemed to be an unfortunate case of mistaken identity, though Randa believes the Algerian embassy in Lebanon was responsible for having her detained.

Randa, who had been living as a woman for years, was forced to dress in men’s clothes and confined to a cell alone in the men’s section of Adlieh prison.

Adlieh, a former underground parking lot turned detention center, houses thousands of migrants and refugees and is infamous as a harsh and inhuman detention center.  Human rights advocates have long called for the closure of Adlieh due to its inhumane treatment of inmates. Most detainees languish underground for years until they’re deported or until rights groups are informed of their whereabouts.

Randa was one of the lucky ones. She was able to send a text message to friends letting them know that she had been arrested. “It was a miracle that I got the call that I was going to be released. Almost 99% of the prisoners are deported. They kept me in the prison for over 60 days because they were trying to figure out any way to deport me,” says Randa.

Once Randa was released, she decided she had to take the opportunity to share her life story. By publishing a memoir, Randa hoped to gain closure around her experiences in Algeria and humanize the Trans experience, which remains a taboo topic in most Arab countries. Her biography, Memoirs of Randa the Trans, which is based on a series of interviews with her, was written by Lebanese journalist Hazem Saghyieh and is likely the first book of its kind to be published in Arabic.

Speaking to Her Blueprint, Randa says, “I wanted to say to the world that Trans people exist. We have dreams, feelings, pain–just like everyone else. Our suffering is that we’re treated like monsters and people think that we are just looking for sex.”

So how did Randa become the voice of the Algerian Trans community to begin with? Like the recent political revolution in Egypt, it began with the Internet. In a conservative Muslim country like Algeria, where the penal code and society severely condemns the LGBT community, Randa faced severe difficulties. Oppressed by her family, bullied at school and abused whenever she would tell her mom that she was a girl trapped in a male body, Randa decided at the age of fifteen that someone needed to address the issue of LGBT in Algeria.

“When the Internet arrived to Algeria it gave me an outlet to speak, so I started a personal blog writing about different issues I was facing. Then it started to take on a life of it’s own,” says Randa. “People around the world started coming to my blog and it became a reference for individuals to learn about issues concerning the LGBT community in Algeria.”

Although living in Lebanon as a transwoman has been easier than it was for her living in Algeria, discrimination and harassment still exists. As a certified nurse, finding work in her profession or landing any kind of respectable job has been a daunting task.

However, for Randa the bulk of the discrimination she faces in Lebanon is within the LGBT community. “Within the community you have this hierarchy of the gay male, then the feminine male, then the lesbians and then the lesbians are categorized according to their look and then there are the bisexuals and then the trans,” she said. “Of course there is also the class issue that also plays a role in dividing the community.”

By Guest Contributor Ethar El-Katatney, cross-posted from Muslimah Media Watch

I lived through a revolution. I saw my 21-year-old brother holding a gun. I slept with a knife under my pillow. I have a close friend who was shot and is now blind in one eye.

I was lucky. I didn’t have thugs break into my house. I wasn’t tear-gassed. I wasn’t shot at. But I have friends who were. I have friends who have friends who died.

And compared to the revolutions going on in Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, and Libya, Egypt was lucky.

Today I heard a new song by Sijal Hachem, a Lebanese singer I’d never heard of before.The lyrics are a man complaining about his nagging, materialistic wife, who wants pearls and cars while he only has flowers to give her—nothing new. Here’s a sample: (Arabic lyrics here)

You nag and nag (Raise your voice)
My heart and soul [are tired] of your nagging (Raise your voice)
If people were able to build the Great Wall of China
Then I can shut you up and not hear criticism

Chorus:
Enough. Enough nagging. Enough
Your nagging makes my livelihood disappear
I’m killing myself
I work day and night

I wouldn’t have given it a second thought if I’d heard it on the radio. But I was watching the music video, which features women as sexy riot police standing in formation behind barbed wire as men charge them:

For a while after, all I could do was sit there with my jaw hanging open.

“No,” I thought. “I must have misunderstood. Surely the song isn’t equating men standing up to their nagging wives with people revolting against dictatorships? Surely it isn’t sexualizing state security and torture? Surely is isn’t capitalizing on the revolutions in such a demeaning and infuriating way?”

I’m still in shock that out of the dozens of people who must have worked on this music video, not one person thought that it was perhaps a bad idea.  Not one person thought it was insulting to the memory of the thousands of people who died and are still dying around the Arab world? To the thousands upon thousands of people who are tortured in state prisons?

The imagery in the music video is disturbing on so many levels. To see scenes we witnessed in real life paralleled in a music video—of barbed wire, billowing smoke and burning tires and paper; of groups of men wearing masks to protect themselves from tear gas while holding sticks and rocks; and of state security standing in rows and hosing protesters standing peacefully with gallons of water—makes me shiver involuntarily. It was real, it was horrible, and it was traumatic.

Before the revolution, before I saw burned out trucks in front of my eyes, a similar image on television wouldn’t have provoked a blink; we’ve become desensitized to imagery of war, of human suffering.

The video associates the imagery of war with sexy women in short shorts and stockings, gyrating, stripping, and pouting. Let’s sexualize torture. Let’s replace the imagery of men beaten by state security until they no longer resemble human beings with the idea of sexy state security rubbing against prisoners to get them to talk.

And let’s degrade the calls of the revolution. Let’s have the men in the music video shout what all the youth in the Arab world are shouting now: “Enough, Enough!” Let’s have the scene in 3:06 look exactly like it did in real life. Let’s throw in the Palestinian scarf for good measure. All the better. Because, you know, men revolting against their wives is serious business.

This video was not produced a long time ago.  It was released last month, right in the middle of the Arab Spring. But, hey. The revolution has been televised. Why not merchandized and sexualized?

By Guest Contributor Simba Russeau

Libyan President Muammar Gaddafi’s use of African mercenaries to quell the uprising against his autocratic regime has revived a deep-rooted racism between Arabs and black Africans.

Though most will deny its existence, in Libya discrimination is common not only against migrant black Africans, but also against darker-skinned Libyans, especially from the south of the country.

“Against this background, one needs to be a little wary of the accusations of ‘African mercenaries’ or even ‘black African mercenaries’ that have been bandied around. Certainly, Gaddafi has used, in the past, mercenaries from other parts of Africa, and our information is that some of these are likely involved in the current situation on Gaddafi’s side,” Na’eem Jeenah, executive director of the Afro-Middle East Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa told IPS.

“Mercenaries, of course, are extremely useful because the regular army forces include conscripts — who can easily leave their posts and join the uprising. Mercenaries work for money and have no compunction about whom they kill.”

About one and a half million sub-Saharan African migrants and refugees, out of a population of nearly two to two and a half million migrants, work as cheap labour in Libya’s oil industry, agriculture, construction and other service sectors.

However, this is not the first time Libya’s most vulnerable immigrant population has fallen victim to racist attacks. In 2000, dozens of migrant workers from Ghana, Cameroon, Sudan, Niger, Burkina Faso, Chad and Nigeria were targeted during street killings in the wake of government officials blaming them for rising crime, disease and drug trafficking.

In response, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) expressed concern over Libya’s practices of racial discrimination against dark-skinned migrants and refugees. In 2004 it accused the country of violating Article 6 of the 1969 International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), and for failing to implement proper mechanisms safeguarding individuals from any racial acts that circumvent human rights.

“However, it is also possible that many of those identified as ‘African mercenaries’ could be darker-skinned Libyans. It is easier for people to project their problems onto outsiders than on their own people,” adds Jeenah.

A case in point is Karim, an African-Lebanese. After a day of visiting relatives, he was traveling with his African mother on the bus back down to Beirut when the vehicle was stopped at a military checkpoint. Soldiers entered the bus and asked for everyone to show their identity papers. While he was searching the bag for his wallet to find his military standby card and identity papers, one of the officers in charge ordered his arrest.

During several hours in custody, Karim was subjected to continuous physical and verbal abuse; not a single soldier even bothered to check his identification.

“It wasn’t until my mother shouted that they call a relative who is known in the military that the soldiers stopped mistreating me and checked my papers,” says Karim in an interview with IPS. “Even then they tried to save face by claiming that my military card was new though in fact it has been standard for over ten years.”

Experts argue that though a taboo subject, racism is not confined to Libya; it is found throughout the Arab world, and stems from historical linkages of the Arab slave trade to the way blacks were used during European colonisation in the region.

In his study titled, ‘Perceptions of Race in the Arab world’, Mark Perry says: “The past and present trade in African slaves to the Arab world has left a long and bitter memory in African society to this day. Black Africa was the earliest source for slaves and the last great reservoir to dry up; already in the 640s slaves were part of the ‘non-aggression pact’ between Arab conquerors and Nubian rulers, while as late as 1910 slave caravans were still arriving in Benghazi from Wadai (in Chad).”

Scholar Elizabeth Thompson adds that French colonisation of Syria and Lebanon was charged with racial overtones due to the use of West African soldiers. “The Senegalese would become a regular target of nationalist propaganda in sexualised and racialised imagery that fused men’s gender anxieties with outrage at French domination.”

As the world marks the 2011 International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which has been dubbed the ‘International Year for People of African descent’, uprisings sweeping the Arab region should include a social transformation to shift perceptions of dark-skinned Arabs and non-Arabs to put an end to racial discrimination and xenophobia, experts say.

Otherwise, they warn, a violent backlash by anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya who link black skin with the regime could lead to a massive genocide once the long-time leader is ousted.

Image courtesy of شبكة برق | B.R.Q

TR: What role would you like the U.S. to play?

NS: I don’t expect the power or support or interference of anyone, of any government. We here in Egypt are fed up with U.S. colonialism. Obama is a pragmatic person and thinking of the interests of his country; I understand this. But now he is confused: One minute he supports Mubarak, one minute he doesn’t; one moment he is afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood, the next he is not. Now I believe in the people of Egypt only, I depend on the people of Egypt only.

~~Excerpted from interview with Rebecca Walker at The Root. Read the rest here.

Image Credit: myhero.com

By Fatemeh Fakhraie, cross-posted from her blog

Last Sunday, I went to a local production of Jennifer Jajeh’s solo show “I Heart Hamas.” The show’s site gives a pretty good synopsis:

With the current ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, the threat of global terrorism, and the never-ending negotiations and hostilities between Israelis and Palestinians, it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by all of the bad international news. That’s exactly how Jennifer Jajeh feels. And to make matters worse, Jennifer is Palestinian. Well, Palestinian American. Or more precisely: a single, Christian, first generation, Palestinian American woman who chooses to return to her parents’ hometown of Ramallah at the start of the Second Intifada.

Join her on American and Palestinian soil on auditions, bad dates, and across military checkpoints as she navigates the thorny terrain around Palestinian identity. Weaving together humor, slides, pop culture references and live theatre, Jajeh explores how she becomes Palestinian-ized, then politicized and eventually radicalized in a fresh, often funny, searingly honest way.

I really enjoyed the performance. Jennifer’s wit when talking about her Jewish cat Judah or preachy Palestinian audience members made the evening fly by. She’s a wonderful performer, and it showed in both the show’s comical aspects and its serious ones. Her performance and the show’s vivid audio brought her life in Ramallah into startling perspective.

It was comforting and refreshing to hear someone address the, “No, where are you really from?” question. Though I’m Iranian and Muslim, I related to so many of Jennifer’s experiences as a Christian Palestinian trying to figure out where she fit in America. She spoke about feeling confined and uncomfortable in the small Palestinian American community, but being completely alienated from Palestinians in Ramallah. She talked about her frustration with trying to find a place for herself within mainstream American life, sharing examples from elementary school and her attempts to find work as an actress. She spoke about making people uncomfortable just by virtue of who she was—wishing aloud that she could be “ethnic, but without the baggage.”

If you get a chance, you should definitely see the show. She’s currently doing a college tour and will be in Los Angeles early next year—watch for updates at her website!

The first time I strapped into a snowboard, I was twelve years old. I remember being the only girl in my younger brother’s group of friends, and we all took turns hitting a little jump we had built using the lid of a trash can. The first time I ever went to a resort, I noticed something else. I was the only Arab there. This is something I became used to, being the only brown girl on the mountain. I remember going into the demo center, cash in hand, ready to pick out my very first board. A board that would be all mine, ridden only by me. No more rentals, no more borrowing boards from guy friends that were much too big. All mine. I bought a Burton “Clash” board and the rest was history.

To say I’ve been a loyal Burton customer ever since is a huge understatement. If it had that little bent arrow logo on it, it had to be mine. I felt a loyalty to the brand. They were the only company at the time that made women-specific bindings, that made clothes that fit my awkward body. I liked the message the company propped itself up on. Burton prided itself on being about bringing snowboarders together, creating a community, being inclusive. Being Arab-American, I was having an extremely rough time with being included in post-9/11 American Society. I was an outsider now. And Burton was about creating a community of outsiders. I could finally belong again. I could finally go back to “normal”, back to what I remembered, back to being human.

I grew up with that company. Burton made winter my favorite season. Every year they would put out these amazing products and videos, and I was more excited for them than I was the previous year. I followed them the way a football or hockey fan follows their favorite team. The Burton team was my team. I bought the snowboarding films It’s Always Snowing Somewhere and The B because I wanted to know what my team was up to, what new tricks and runs they were stomping. I eagerly awaited the new catalog because I want to see what gear is good enough for my team to shred all over the world in. Even though the glossy pages were only filled with white kids, that was okay! They were outsiders, just like me. Somehow, they were just like me. I let myself believe that for so long. The Burton team riders were my heroes. I looked up to the people in those glossy catalogs and magazine spreads. Not once after watching a video part or live feed from a contest did I feel disappointed. They always left me blown away, thinking “That’s how it’s done. That’s how you do it”.

So, imagine my surprise upon seeing one of my idols, Burton team rider and Urban/Rail riding legend Jeremy Jones, referring to Arab-Americans as “towel heads” in his personal blog. Being an Arab-American, that hurt me so deeply to know that someone I hold in such high regard only sees me as a racial slur, as some lesser person based on my ethnic background. And he’s doing it, hiding behind the shield that’s shaped like a crooked arrow, behind that name that told me for years and years that I was just like them. Suddenly, everything was back just as it was before. I was excluded and different and worth nothing. And I recalled all the mean looks and whispers thrown at me every time I got in the lift line. Glares and words I was willing to just brush off because I was part of something, and no one was going to take that from me. No one was going to take my escape. Suddenly, I realized just how unwelcome I was, had been. And that shook me. It shook me and hurt me and made me sick.

I wrote a letter of concern to Burton. It took me so long to decide to send it. I was intimidated by Jeremy Jones’ fame, by Burton’s gigantic mark on the snowboarding industry. I was scared I was going to be laughed off as I so often am, to be ignored as I so often am. The snowboarding community is so small. What if someone found out I “tattled” on one of snowboarding’s biggest celebrities? I wrote to Burton, knowing that I could be shunned out of the snowboarding community, knowing that I could be effectively ending my snowboarding career before it really began. I could be snuffing out my dreams of being a professional snowboarder, something I’ve always wanted and I’ve spent years working towards. I thought I could just let it go; I mean, he didn’t mean me, right?

Except that he did. He did mean me. Every time someone decides to throw out a slur, they do mean me. They mean every brown-skinned person, every caricature of the goofy Indian man running the 7-11, every Jihadist with a vest of dynamite, every bent over nanna from the old country with her black chadore pulled tightly under her chin. You didn’t mean me? What makes me so special? Am I from a more desirable country? Is the food of my people better? Is it because I speak English “perfectly”, because I’ll wear a bathing suit at the beach, awkwardly laugh at every version of the 40 virgins joke? When someone throws around epithets like “towel head” or “camel jockey”, they mean me. They may not think they do, but they mean me. Jeremy Jones was addressing me. He was addressing everyone who dares to be born with brown skin, whether they’re from Lebanon or India or Omaha, Nebraska. I will not allow Jeremy Jones or Burton to decide who is us and who is them.

I wrote to Burton because I couldn’t stay silent. Silence is acceptance, and I do not, under any circumstances, accept being referred to as a “towel head” by someone who is being paid to travel around the world to snowboard with the money I use to buy the products he backs. I don’t accept being called that by anyone. Burton hasn’t responded, and the blog post is still up, its hate speech is still glaring back at me through my computer screen, screaming at me “You are less, less, less. You are worthless”. And I don’t accept that, I will never accept that.

And because I believe in the power of speaking directly to those who wrong you: Jeremy, if you have a problem being driven around by a “towel head” in a cab that isn’t up to your standards, fucking walk.

By Deputy Editor Thea Lim

I am from Toronto, though I now live in Houston.  I get most of my Toronto community news through Facebook, and I have been watching with disgust and amazement for the past two months as my Facebook feed has filled up with reports about Pride Toronto, Blackness Yes! – a community organization that celebrates black queer and trans history – and Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA).

Long story short: Pride Toronto, which is an internationally famous week-long celebration of queer and trans pride, has made conscious or unconscious attempts to curtail the wholehearted participation of queer and trans folks of colour and their allies in Pride. They have attempted to relocate and shrink black-identified spaces, and they have banned QuAIA from participation in Pride 2010.  This year queer & trans people of colour (QTPOC) and their allies may participate in Pride, but only as long as they check their histories and politics at the door.  Short story long? Hang on to your hats, this is an epic tale.

Blackness Yes!

The first news I heard of this mess was in April, when the Blackness Yes! Blockorama party was asked to move by the Pride Toronto organizing committee for the third time in 4 years.

Blackness Yes! organizer Syrus M. Ware describes Blockorama and Blackness Yes!:

Since 1998 Blockorama has been a party at Pride where black queer and trans folks, their allies, supporters and people who love them came together to say no to homophobia in black communities and no to racism in LGBTQ communities. To say Blackness Yes at Pride – loud and proud…We have built Blockorama out of love, through sweat and toiling. For 12 years, we have claimed space, resisted erasure, found community, shared memories, built bridges, embraced sexuality, and found home. Blockorama is not just a party or a stage at Pride. It is a meeting place for black queer and trans people across North America- Blockorama is the largest space of its kind at any Pride festival on the continent.

Yet Pride Toronto has multiple times tried to move Blockorama further away from the main events, or relocated the party to smaller spaces that will not fit the huge crowds Blockorama draws.  Blockorama is a hugely important part of Pride, not only a black space where queer black folks go to party, but also a space that has always been immensely welcoming to non-black folks of colour.  Pride Toronto’s moves – whether or not they are racist – indicate a lack of sensitivity, care or even basic awareness of the size and meaning of Blockorama.

University of Toronto professor Rinaldo Walcott wrote this letter to the Pride Toronto organizing committee, upon news that Blockorama was to be moved again:

…at the same time that Pride Toronto has moved Blocko three times, Pride Toronto has also taken on the mantle of global human rights as its signature issue.

It is in fact the discrepancy between Pride Toronto’s treatment of local black communities participation in pride events and its attempt to position itself as a global player in the LGBTQ global rights movement that I find particularly offensive, disrespectful and unmindful of the very communities residing here that Pride Toronto would seek to champion overseas.

How can this be? How could it be that Pride Toronto did not see this ethical dilemma before it? Is it because Blocko is the last non-commercial space at pride? Is it because like much else in this country Pride Toronto too believes that black people as a constituency can be ignored? These are genuine questions, not accusations.

…We will not as black people here and globally stand to be exploited by white folks who now want it to appear that all is well at home, but not elsewhere.

On April 13 Blackness Yes! held a community meeting to protest these moves.  Deviant Productions, an alternative youth media collective, made a video of the meeting:

You can read a transcript of the video here.

In many ways this community mobilisation was successful.  3 days after the meeting, Pride Toronto agreed not to relocate Blockorama to a smaller venue for this year, and agreed to work with Blockorama, starting in July, to put a stop to the yearly migrations and find a permanent home for Blocko at Pride.

However negotiations are stalled around the matter of a dancefloor. This is a queer dance party, after all.

Blockorama site coordinator Syrus M. Ware says of the Blockorama site for this year: “Where we have been put is lovingly refered to as the ‘swamp’”: Blockorama requires temporary flooring in the park to ensure the safety and accessibility of its dance space.  Pride Toronto agreed to find funding for said dancefloor, but it is two weeks to the party and the money has yet to come through.

Ware says, “The sponsorship ask has still not been sent to me. I worry that this will not come through this year –  it does not seem to be one of Pride’s priorities. We have not yet been contacted about a date to plan for a better site for next year…we will wait and see what happens on the day of.”

He continues, “We have deliberated very long and very hard about whether or not to pull out of Pride this year. After our meeting, we met and strategized with QuAIA…We have decided to stay in the festival for this year- but we dont know about next year. We are committed to creating space to celebrate and shout Blackness Yes!, and we will do this with or without Pride Toronto.”

Israeli Apartheid

At the very same time as they were dealing with Blockorama drama, Pride Toronto was doing some shady dealing around another group of QTPOC and their allies. A letter dated April 14th (as in, the day after the Blockorama meeting) from the City of Toronto’s executive director of culture detailed a conversation where Pride Toronto’s board discussed ways to ban Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) from marching in the Pride parade. On May 25, Pride Toronto announced that QuAIA would not be allowed to march in the parade or participate in Pride, due to the City of Toronto’s complaints over the term “Israeli Apartheid”:

…the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) may contravene the City’s own anti-discrimination policies in relation to “place of origin” and that Pride Toronto, as a recipient of City of Toronto funding, is required to adhere to said policies…

QuAIA states that they use the word “apartheid” because it is the best way to describe a system of differentiated (queer) rights based on race. On their website they explain:

Today, in response to increasing criticism of its occupation of Palestine, Israel is cultivating an image of itself as an oasis of gay tolerance in the Middle East. As queers, we recognize that homophobia exists in Israel, Palestine, and across all borders. But queer Palestinians face the additional challenge of living under occupation, subject to Israeli state violence and control. Israel’s apartheid system extends gay rights only to some, based on race.

QuAIA is a diverse group, their membership including Jewish, Muslim, Arab, Palestinian and white queer and trans folks.

This ban hinges entirely on language – QuAIA would be allowed to participate in Pride and even articulate solidarity with queer Palestinians, if only they would stop using the word “apartheid.”  After expressing her distaste for the ban, Ellie Kirzner, editor of a leftist entertainment weekly in Toronto wrote:

I think it’s time to try the window; Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, change the name of your organization…I fear the use of [the word "apartheid"] has unmindfully offered a lever to the other side. It’s time to declare less and deliver more…Would the sky fall if Queers Against Israeli Apartheid became Queers Against the Occupation? Or Queers for Mideast Justice? Or just about anything that would advance the plot on behalf of Palestinians?

While I understand Kirzner’s just-do-whatever-works-for-the-movement approach, doesn’t the kerfuffle kicked up by a single, shocking word – because again, it is about the word, not the existence of the group all together – mean that we should talk about why this word upsets us so much?

In the world history of oppression, we often like to attach fixed definitions with specific illustrations to fluid terms. And so our definitions are too small to capture our terms; we have the language to describe our world, but we don’t know how to use it. For example, we attach “American slavery until 1865″ to “racism” – so anything that happens in America that isn’t on the level of the enslavement of others based on race, cannot be racism. Or we attach “assault in a darkened place by a stranger” to “rape,” so that when a woman is attacked by a man she trusts, it cannot be rape. Or we attach “South Africa before 1994″ to “apartheid”, so that anything that does not involve the worldwide horror at South African apartheid, cannot be the systematic separation of rights by race – even when it is.  Oppression, racism and systemic cruelty are ideas and machines that work by changing shape.  If we hope to confront and dismantle them, we need to blow open our definitions.

Depressingly, money is at the heart of Pride Toronto decision to ban QuAIA. From the CBC:

The use of the words has put the Pride organizers on a collision course with the City of Toronto, which says the name of the group ‘Queers Against Israeli Apartheid’ violates its anti-discrimination policy.

In 2009, the city gave the Pride festival $121,000 to help defray costs.

Xtra! quotes Pride Toronto board co-chair Genevieve D’Iorio:

D’Iorio says city and corporate sponsors are threatening to pull funding, and banning the phrase “Israeli apartheid” is the best position PT organizers could take. Pride simply wouldn’t happen, she says, without the city’s financial and in-kind support.

Pro-Israeli groups in Toronto have been pushing for QuAIA’s ban since last year; the May 25 decision has been on the table since last November.  A group called Reclaiming Our Pride argued that QuAIA was a “disgruntled group using Pride as a platform to further their own political agenda…only groups supporting gay rights can be in the parades.”  This stance seems to miss the point that QuAIA’s mandate is to support gay communities in Palestine (key word: gay).  The whole “this Palestine stuff is diluting my parade” line is unpleasantly close to the whole “anti-racism is making feminism lose its focus” argument that we are all so tired of hearing.  Both gay rights activists who only want to talk about sexuality, and feminists who only want to talk about gender, forget that there are many women and queer & trans folks who are also…people of colour. You can only parcel out sexuality and race when your worldview is imbued with white privilege.

Lobbyists who pushed for the banning of QuAIA have also complained that QuAIA is trying to make Pride “political.” Yet the nature of Pride is political to begin with and that is inescapable: pride celebrations exist around the world to celebrate and take space for a identity that is political because it is politically marginalised.  And yet in Toronto Pride is contorting itself to betray its own purpose, as it attempts to silence members of its community when Pride is supposed to be about coming out into the open.  In an gruesomely ironic turn, the slogan for this year’s Pride Week is “You Belong.”

And the commercialisation, depoliticisation and white-ification of Prides worldwide has become a matter of grave concern. San Francisco has an alterna pride called Gay Shame; this year in Toronto a counter-Pride celebration called Take Back the Dyke has been set up in order to, organizer piKe Krpan says, return Pride to its political roots and reject the commercialism, police escorts and censorship policies of Pride Toronto. On Sunday, an international group called No Homonationalism announced that superstar academic Judith Butler has refused her Zivilcourage (civil courage) Prize from Pride Berlin, saying

the parade had become too commercial, and ignor[ed] the problems of racism and the doublediscrimination suffered by homosexual or transsexual migrants.

3 days after Pride Toronto announced their decision to ban QuAIA, the grand marshal for this year’s Pride parade stepped down. Dr Alan Li wrote:

I was a keynote speaker at the second Pride celebration in 1982. I thus remember very clearly our communityʼs battles against censorship that attempted to invalidate our concerns, minimize our struggles and silence our voices. I remember struggles to ensure that the many diverse voices in our community were heard.

Prideʼs recent decision to ban the term “Israeli Apartheid” and thus prohibit the participation of the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid from participating in Pride celebrations this year is a slap in the face to our history of diverse voices. Prideʼs choice to take preemptive step to censor our own communitiesʼ voices and concerns in response to political and corporate pressure shows a lack of backbone to stand up for principles of inclusiveness and anti-oppression.

In early June, 23 recipients of Pride Toronto awards – honoured dykes, grand marshals, special award honourees and international grand marshals – returned their awards in protest of Pride Toronto’s banning of QuAIA.  You can read a full list of their statements here.  This is a video of the event, also from Deviant Productions:

A surprising addition to the list of honourees returning their awards is Matthew Cutler, who identifies as a Liberal Zionist and makes the argument for why the term “Israeli Apartheid” should be allowed in the parade, despite the fact that it causes distress to some members of the Toronto queer and trans community. At 3:48 he states:

[The] use of a term “Israeli apartheid” continues to offend me, but has led me to conversations Israel, Palestine and the Middle East…conversations which have helped me to become a more engaged and informed Liberal Zionist. [I return my award] with the hope that generations of young people like myself will continue to be offended, will continue to grow learn and discuss difficult ideas and issues…

The Guardian (a UK paper – news of Pride Toronto’s ban  has reached far) makes similar criticism:

At a time when many countries are becoming more critical of Israel’s policies, Canada seems to be moving in the opposite direction. A general reluctance to engage in open debate about the Palestinian issue is exacerbated by pro-Israel groups’ efforts to shut down discussion…Since the beginning of 2010, the federal government has systematically cut funding to Arab-Canadian organisations and to UN relief works in Gaza. In March, the Ontario provincial legislature issued a unanimous condemnation of Israeli Apartheid Week, while the federal government considered introducing a similar motion.

However, self-censorship reached new heights last month when Toronto’s Pride Committee – which organises one of the world’s largest gay pride celebrations – announced it would be banning use of the term “Israeli apartheid” at the festivities…But when asked, neither Pride Toronto nor Giorgio Mammoliti – the Toronto city councillor mainly involved – could explain in detail what was discriminatory about describing Israel’s privileging of its Jewish citizens over others as a form or racism and apartheid.

QuAIA plan to march in the Pride parade anyways.

Sticking Together

While news of the active exclusion of queer and trans folks of colour and their allies from Pride Toronto has made me feel depressed and tired – this is my hometown, and many of those excluded are people I love – I also have been deeply moved by the mobilisation of my community, and the solidarity across communities of colour.

Ware from Blockorama told me a grisly tale about attempts to fracture Toronto’s QTPOC communities:  ”We were approached by many ‘Blocko supporters’ after [our April 13 meeting]…the most concerning was an ally from TD Canada Trust.  This ally has been a great supporter of Blocko…during the weekend of April 19, 2010, while we were considering whether or not to accept Pride’s offer and to stay in the festival or not, we were contacted by the TD rep. They indicated that they would offer us their full support, but wanted to know first, ‘what was our position on QuAIA.’”

In other words Blockorama were offered funding that they desperately needed to keep their black-identified party afloat, in exchange for breaking rank with a queer Muslim, Arab and Jewish group. Ware says TD’s support would’ve been enormous for Blockorama, to the point of putting pressure on Pride to treat Blockorama better, since TD is a huge sponsor of the entire Pride celebration.

Blockorama declined TD’s offer. Ware and Blackness Yes! say

Our liberation and freedom will not come at the expense of another communities. We stand in solidarity with QuAIA and all of the other groups marginalized within Pride and also broader LGBTTI2QQ organizing.

Blockorama and QuAIA have been working on a Pride Community Contract together to strategise a way forward.

What truly depresses me is how the battles that both Blockorama and QuAIA are fighting are just so normal. Which is why I called this post “an everyday epic battle” – all this debacle with Pride Toronto is typical of the struggles that people of colour face every single day to make themselves a space, even within supposedly inclusive spaces. The insensitivity, meanness, attempts to divide and the silencing are cruelly banal.

But it also warms my little heart that these everyday violent putdowns so often meet a Fight: a kicking and screaming refusal to back down, and a determination to stick together.

–
Apologies that transcripts are not available for the posted videos. I contacted the creators of the videos and they hope to have transcripts eventually, so I will come back and add them in if that is possible at a later date.

Thanks to Elisha, Syrus, piKe, Alexis and Michelle for all their help with this piece!

UPDATE: The Blockorama Displaced video now has a transcript. Thanks Lali and Deviant Productions!

UPDATE:

23 June 8:30 pm: Pride Toronto has lifted its ban on “Israeli Apartheid.” From Xtra:

Pride Toronto (PT) has reversed its May board resolution banning the term “Israeli Apartheid” and will instead require all participants to sign and abide by the City of Toronto’s non-discrimination policy.

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) — the target of the ban — has declared a victory and congratulated the queer community for pushing PT to reverse its censorship decision

“This is a victory for the Palestine solidarity movement, which has faced censorship and bullying tactics from the Israel lobby for far too long,” said QuAIA member Tim McCaskell in the release…

Brad Fraser, another member of the coalition, says that the ban would not have been lifted had it not been for the popular revolt of queer people over the last month.

“It’s a tremendous victory for anyone who dared to speak out,” says Fraser.

I just wanted to tip our readers in the L.A. area off about the West Coast premiere of After The Cup: Sons of Sakhnin United, which has been garnering praise around the documentary circuit for its’ story about Bnei Sakhnin F.C., a football team based out of the city of Sakhnin, an Israeli town that is home to more than 25,000 Arab Israelis. The team’s roster is comprised of both Arabs and Jews, and though some elements in the film hew close to more traditional “underdog” fare – because Sakhnin is a small club, for example, its’ facilities aren’t as modern as its’ competitors – it does change up the formula in one significant way: After The Cup deals with Sakhnin in the season after it won the Israeli Premier League’s championship, the State Cup. Slight spoiler here: the team soon finds it really is harder to stay on top than to get there.

Unfortunately, I can’t make the premiere – I live too far away – but if any of our readers can catch it this weekend, I’d be interested in getting your take on the film in this thread.

(WARNING:  Totally NSFW)

Reader Grace nearly caused a pearl-clutching moment amongst us Special Correspondents with a link to these, ahem, enhanced drawings:

I look at these images as I do hentai and plushies:  some people getting off on the frisson of (hyper)sexualized ideals of taboo images and items connoted to belong to the kiddie world, like Disney cartoons and stuffed animals.   So, I do understand the squick with seeing these resemblances of lust-inspiring Calvin Klein and Armani underwear images because it’s like fucking with someone’s childhood.  And childhood, regardless of quite a few people’s realities about their early years on this earth, is held as sacrosanct in its idyllic innocence—especially sexual innocence– in US culture.

Quite a few of these images are sort of the contemporary versions of some cisgay male drawings of idealized dudes that served as counterimages of the “sickly” man with HIV/AIDS that gained traction in the 90s–that’s also why going to the gym was a big thing within some cisgay male communities back then and that aesthetics spilled in the wider popular culture–as well as the hypermasculinity that Disney’s been kicking out anyway.

Where my anti-racism sex itch gets going is demarcating the Black characters as “some dark chocolate” when none of the others are:

Dr. Atlantis’ “overbulge” (working that whole “Black men have bigger dicks than everyone else” meme),

the “underdeveloped” Kuczo,

Kocoum’s kitschy “noble savage” pose (all that was left out was a coyote, an eagle, a dreamcatcher, or a bear faded in the background),

John’s appropriated gear and markings,

and Shang’s “martial arts” stance.

So, for even growing these guys up, the artists didn’t really grow away of Disney’s racialized images.

When I first spotted this photo over at Jezebel, I didn’t know what to think.

Photographer/Artist Dina Goldstein created the “Fallen Princesses” series as a response to her children’s burgeoning interest in Disney. There are seven photos currently available, featuring Belle, Jasmine, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Cinderella, and Snow White. The women are placed in a modern setting, so Rapunzel is shown with her braid around her feet after going through chemotherapy and Cinderella is shown drinking at a bar.

While I liked the idea behind the concept, I was brought up short when we got to Jasmine. Deviating from more gender-based themes, Jasmine is put squarely in a war zone, clutching an M-16 and rocking purple camo. While the commenters over at Jezebel cheered Jasmine’s competent and in control facial expression and the fact that the scene was not about her helpless, I found myself hesitating. Why did Jasmine’s story default to her racial background, and why was the idea of the modern day “Agrabah” assumed to be a conflict site?

Over at JPG, where the images originally appeared, the comments ranged from outright love to…well…

On 16 June 2009 What What said:

As a good muslim, Jasmine would have an AK47 and bombs strapped around her instead of bullets.

That was quick.

Another commenter at JPG notes:

On 17 June 2009 Drew Clayton said:

I came to see this because I’d heard rumors about a photo online showing Jasmine “as a terrorist.” Obviously, it was spread by people who had not seen the image themselves, or who do not have a grasp on conceptual thinking. She’s obviously fighting in a war zone, not wearing a suicide belt to the market. I’d look at this and say she’s being a good national leader protecting her war-torn country against malicious forces in person instead of sending soldiers out to die for her.

It’s fascinating that Jasmine’s interpretation is receiving such reviews. Readers, what are your thoughts?

(Thanks to reader Quincy for pointing this out!)

Sexy Girls. Arab Beauty that’ll rock your world. Sea, sex and sun. Let the funky Arabs turn you on!

 The new “Funky Arabs” single by Jad Choueiri, the Lebanese singer known for crooning love ballads, has had over 150,000 views on YouTube in one month.

Choueiri spends four and a half minutes singing about how Arabs are not the evil figures typically portrayed in Western media. “We’re not what you see on CNN and the BBC. […] Ain’t no bombers, we’ve got the guts,” starts off the track. So far, so good. But then the main message of the video really unfolds, which, when translated from pop star-speak, can be summarized:

“Arabs aren’t terrorists! We’re just like you, the all-wonderful West. We too have sexy blond girls with silicone boobs dancing in next-to-nothing clothes in smoky nightclubs, gyrating their hips and filing their nails. Our guys are all cut, and walk around wearing bling. We love to smoke, drink, and take drugs. We party all night and we are oh-so-cool.’

A disclaimer at the beginning announces that everyone who participated in the music video is an Arab, just in case you can’t possibly believe that such beauty, sexiness, and botox addiction exists in our countries.

The women in this music video, are, to put it simply, nothing more than  half-naked eye candy. As Choueiri announces, “We’ve got sexy girls / Arab beauty that’ll rock your world.” The first woman we see is blond in a blue strapless dress and red heels, and her silicone implants are visible when she stands in front of an x-ray machine. Another is dressed in what looks like a pink ice-skating outfit, straddling a huge wine bottle in a martini glass. Another pours wine down her throat and then, on her hands and knees in a bikini, dances.

The men, unfortunately, don’t fare much better. Plucked to within an inch of their lives, they could not look more metrosexual if they tried. Ripped abs and humongous biceps seem to be the criteria that need to be fulfilled to be one of the “loaded guys” who “you gotta see when they get their highs.”

Strangely enough, there isn’t any “funny” stuff between men and women. The video basically goes as follows: Jad singing in his awful-looking shirt, sexy girls, Jad singing, sexy girls, guys and girls sitting in a group, Jad singing, guys and girls dancing stiltedly at the beach with a whole lot of water. For all this talk of getting freaky with Arabs, no one in the video actually gets freaky with anyone else.

With its over-the-top scenes, such as Choueiri arriving at a nightclub red carpet on a camel, and women injecting themselves with botox in the bathroom, Choueiri’s music video seems to be the poster child for parody. The singer’s handlers insist he is quite serious—inasmuch as pop can be taken seriously.

The idea behind Funky Arabs is to show a different point of view of a segment of the Arabic society,” reads an email from Jad Choueiri’s management to me. “It doesn’t have the pretension to represent the real face of the Arabs like some media has suggested. In a pop song, which is meant to be entertaining and fun, it would be probably inappropriate to display the cultural and social achievements of the Arabs in different fields. So the side that was chosen to be represented is the side that has to do with partying and fashion which is adequate when you are a member of the pop culture community. Although it may sound superficial to some, it is supposed to make us look more appealing to the West by showing that we endorse that type of ‘culture.’ You cannot follow these trends and be a terrorist or a close minded person because they are a representation of a deeper matter, the one of tolerance and openness.  (emphasis mine)

Umm, make us seem more appealing? But who said “they” are all like ‘that?’

My biggest problem with this music video is not the gratuitous amounts of flesh on show by the scantily clad women–which let’s face it, has become the norm in many similar Arabic music videos–but the political implications of Choueiri’s message. Because if not a parody, then the video is certainly a textbook case of cultural appropriation. Listening between the lines, you could well take home the message: the only way we can prove we are not evil is if we try to erase our identities and emulate selective (read: the most materialistic) aspects of Western culture.

Choueiri’s only concessions to Arab culture: bellydancing and shisha smoking, of course! Nothing else we have “over here” is worth anything anyway. The orientalist image is complete once an x-ray machine shows us that a woman is carrying on her person handcuffs, a mask, and a whip. Arabs are all hypersexual, doncha know?

Some people have applauded Choueiri for trying to highlight different types of Arabs. Others have blasted him for portraying Arabs this way. Others shoot him down for the lukewarm lyrics and music—there’s even a dreadlock-sporting rapper who pops up throughout the track, perhaps aimed at upping Choueiri’s street cred.

I agree with the message of the music video: Arabs are not all terrorists. Duh. It’s a message we have to constantly emphasis and a stereotype we have to dispel. But the substitute image Choueiri is hawking is perhaps just as a bad–substituting one extreme for another is never a good thing. As a friend of mine said:

The benevolent Jad is dispelling the bomber stereotype by replacing it with the harem stereotype, the rich-Arab-with-money-to-burn stereotype, and the inferior-Arab-grovelling-for-western-approval stereotype. Right on, Jad.

This is an edited version of the original article which appeared in Egypt Today.