File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2002/postcolonial.0203, message 344


Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2002 16:03:50 -0800 (PST)
From: Wolf Factory <wolf_factory-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: In response to Eldorra


Dear Ms. eldorra mitchell 

You wrote:
> Are u being naive, or honest; racism is racism and
> is
> sick.  Please look at your honest racist Arabic
> countries. Your very own countries were the slave
> traders who sold my black people into bondage. Shame
> on you. On all of you Arabic people.

I would like the opportunity, as an Arab, to respond
to your message.
That Arabs enslaved Africans is well documented and
known. This is a sad episode in our history which
contains many sad episodes of atrocities committed by
us and against us. It doesn’t warrant however labeling
all Arabs as racists. 

My understanding of the slave trade is that it took an
African penal system and pushed it into overdrive. The
demand for slaves in the western world created a
supply system that lead to, amongst other things,
Africans selling other Africans for profit. 

Omar Guessous in his e-mail has dealt accurately with
the nature of Arabic/Islamic slavery. It was by far a
lesser evil than its western counterpart. The slaves
became fully integrated into the Arab society and in
some cases acquired positions of power.

Furthermore, the term Arab describes a vast set of
people stretching from modern day Lebanon and Syria in
the north down to Yemen in the south and from morocco
in the west to Iraq in the east. There are also
millions of Arabs scattered all over the globe. While
it is true that Arabs share the same language, the
local dialects are highly divergent and so are the
cultures. Moreover, while Arabs are predominantly
Muslim, they are also Jewish and Christian. A great
many are African also. You calling all Arabic
countries racist is a severe blanket generalization
and does not deal accurately with the nature of the
African slave trade.

The slave trade was a low point in human history. The
west developed a systematic justification for the
slave trade and there were many intellectual
apologists for it. It was driven and sustained by
greed. Islamic societies did not develop such a
discourse because Islam was at least intellectually
though not always practically against slavery. 

It is also important to remember that there was a
slavery system in pre-islamic Arabia which Islam
helped to obliterate. One of the early heroes of
Islam, a character of mythological proportions is
Bilal, a Muslim of an African descent who gained his
freedom under Islam. All Arab children learn about him
at school.

 
The Arab slave trade was several folds of magnitude
smaller than its western part and it has not had a
lasting legacy because the slaves were absorbed by the
Arab-African societies. Their color was not as much of
a factor. 

The Palestinians, who you seem to despise, were
thoroughly energized by watching their African
counterparts free themselves from the shackles of
apartheid in South Africa (see for example, Edward
Said’s Reflection on exile). Many Palestinians and
other Arabs also find much hope and inspiration from
the legacy of Martin Luther King and the civil rights
movement. Palestinians and Arabs in general very much
identify with the liberation movements in the rest of
Africa. Moreover, there are in fact Arab institutions
and NGOs (e.g. AAPSO) that have long links with
African countries and have worked hard to help
Africans gain independence and freedom. They have also
helped in times of famine.


Said repeatedly quotes from a poem by Aimé Césaire,
the African-Caribbean poet, in reflections on exile:
 …no race has a monopoly on beauty, on intelligence,
on strength
And there is room for everyone at the convocation of
victory.

Equally I would add no race has a monopoly on racism
or ignorance. We are all susceptible to these things.

But I see hope in the collective change that human
attitudes and norms have underwent. We no longer can
tolerate such atrocities as slavery, which is now
(hopefully) forever behind us. Equally, we are growing
intolerant of mass genocide and I remain hopeful that
things like the Holocaust and the Rwandan massacre
will not be repeated. 

Alas, the devastation of colonialism is a human horror
that is much less understood, faced up to and
confronted. Someone on the list posted an article
today showing how an adviser of Tony Blair’s has
called for a neo-colonial project. I am sure his
opinion will not prevail, but it does highlight that
the west has not dealt with the impact of its colonial
past and modern day military adventures. Colonialism
had a devastating effect upon the people of the middle
east and Africans alike and they have yet to fully
recover from it.

But let me return to the topic I started with: Arab
racism. Yes Arabs have been racists in the past. Some
continue to be even now. To take one example: Saudi
Arabians are notorious for mistreating the servants
they hire from other countries (again I have to
qualify that by saying some Saudis behave this way, to
be fair to the great many who don’t). Also the way my
own country, Iraq has treated the Kurds since the 70s
fills me with outrage. There is much chauvinism in the
nationalistic rhetoric of Arab governments and some of
the Arab media. 

However, one must distinguish between racism, the
irrational hatred of another group because of their
religion or race and hatred generated from years of
conflict. Sometimes, unfortunately, the two forms of
hatred get wrapped around each other like two snakes
coiling. Their separation and final obliteration
requires an act of political and social surgery and
the good will of all sides.

So what is the remedy for the Arab world? The remedy
is for greater democracy in Arabic countries and
greater freedoms. This is particularly important with
regards to academic freedom which will allow a
sustainable attack on the way our history and religion
are taught. 

I hope Ms. Mitchell that you will take the time to
investigate Arabic history and politics by reading
Arabic scholars. I am by no means suggesting that the
voice of the Arabic scholar has absolute authority.
However, it seems to me a strange state of affairs not
to have any curiosity about what the Arabs have to say
for themselves. There is an entire side to Arabic
existence which is never presented to American
audiences. You should be aware of it before you issue
blanket statements about Arabs. Have African-Americans
not been fighting precisely against all crude
generalizations against them? Have they not been
fighting to take their rightful place in American
history ?

If I may quote another poem by Aimé Césaire:

my negritude is not a stone 
nor a deafness flung against the clamor of the day 
my negritude is not a white speck of dead water 
on the dead eye of the earth 
my negritude is neither tower nor cathedral 

it plunges into the red flesh of the soil 
it plunges into the blaxing flesh of the sky 
my negritude riddles with holes 
the dense affliction of its worthy patience. 


Substitute Arabness for negritude and you will
understand how many of us secular, non-racist,
pro-democracy, peace and justice loving Arabs feel.
And there are more of us than the western media would
have you believe.

W.F.

--- Omar Guessous <o_guessous-AT-yahoo.com> wrote:
> Wow ... How shockingly unfortunate that the African
> American community have you acting (on your own
> behalf
> I assume, Eldorra) as its spokeperson ... Believe
> me,
> you are doing it (and yourself) a disservice by
> pitting one oppressed group against another in such
> a
> manner that is inconducive to dialogue.
> Point of information, it was only those Arab
> countries
> located in the African continent that were involved
> in
> any type of slave trade. More accurately, they (I.e.
> North Africa) was involved in some type of slave
> trade
> into its own countries (not to the US, to my
> knowledge
> anyway). Although I have heard many argue that the
> Black Africans 'brought' to certain North African
> countries were not treated as horribly as were the
> African brought to 'America'. For example, they had
> the 'option' of emancipating from slave-status by
> converting to Islam (for slavery and Islam are
> incompatible), they were not as savagely treated,
> etc.
> Also, many Arabs themselves were adamantely
> outspoken
> against this. For example, one of my ancestors in
> Morocco, who was (according to oral history) an
> outspoken critique of the monarch/calif of the time
> on
> a number of issues around his oppressive and
> demagogic
> tactics, was eventually killed when he criticized
> him
> for forcing Black African Islam-converts (or
> children
> of Islam-converts) to serve in the army, as the
> lesser
> officers - for he was concerned with expanding his
> military force. 
> The fact of the matter remains though, in absolute
> terms that is, that they were dehumanized and
> mistreated in ways unacceptable. 
> But then again, I could spill out more tales about
> horror directed against North African Arabs, at the
> hands of Sub-Saharn Africans. This history is,
> unfortunately, a very sad and conflictual one - for
> matters of race/color, religion, postcolonialism,
> and
> more.
> Oh, and btw, did you know that a good number people
> whom you'd consider to be Black also identity as
> Arab?
> Anyway, please reconsider yourself, the (dis)service
> you're doing to the community you claim to be
> advocating for, and consider constructing a more
> complex, dialectical view of history and oppression,
> particularly as it concerns relationships between
> various non-White groups - relationships that often,
> because of our respective focus on
> whites/Europeans/Americans/Israelis, get lost in the
> cracks, only then to serve the same oppressive order
> that we claim to be challenging. For if we cannot
> get
> along, discuss, collaborate, and maybe start giving
> the most visible oppressors a little less
> importance,
> then maybe we can begin dealing with our own
> internal
> 'shit', as well as develop partnerships that could
> reduce, if not eliminate the dependence that many of
> us have on those whom we feel uneasy about in the
> first place.
> Respectfully,
>  Omar
> 
> P.s.: Racism exists in Arab countries, sure,
> including
> toward Blacks. Indeed, racism is a plague that
> infects
> all communities, including the African American one
> (towards East Asians, Latino/as, and Arabs), though
> of
> course with differing levels of intensity depending
> on
> what subset of the community you consider. The same
> logic applies to Arabs, white Americans, etc. ...
> 
> Omar Guessous, Ph.D. Program
> Georgia State University
> Community Psychology Dept.
> Atlanta, GA
> 
> *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
>    Birdie! Birdie!
>    To keep it I built a cage of silk
>    And never thought it would fly away
>    After letting itself be tamed
> 
> - Moroccan 'freedom song'
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>
[mailto:owner-epostcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu]
> On Behalf Of eldorra mitchell
> Sent: Friday, March 29, 2002 3:10 AM
> To: postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject: Re: Question: Race/Color & Thinking modes
> 
> 
> Are u being naive, or honest; racism is racism and
> is
> sick.  Please look at your honest racist Arabic
> countries. Your very own countries were the slave
> traders who sold my black people into bondage. Shame
> on you. On all of you arabic people.
> 
>  --- "Dr. Salwa Ghaly" <sghaly-AT-sharjah.ac.ae> wrote:
> >
> Back in the mid-eighties in Princeton, I repeatedly
> > heard African American
> > students refer to one black dean as a "banana,"
> > black from the outside, but white
> > from the inside.
> > 
> > In light of this disucssion, is it fair to suggest
> > that many of those terms
> > migrated in usage from one ethnic or racial group
> to
> > another?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ====> "There are insistent questions that we all have to
> ask and that make it clear to us that it is not
> possible to study simply for the sake of studying.
> As if we could study in a way that really had
> nothing to do with that distant, strange world out
> there."
> - Paulo Freire, in 'Pedagogy of Freedom'
> 
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Greetings - send holiday greetings for
> Easter, Passover
> http://greetings.yahoo.com/
> 
> 
>      --- from list
> postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---



===="All the wolves in the wolf factory paused at noon, 
for a moment of silence."
........from laughing Gravy by John Ashbery.
---------------------------------------------------------
Looking for something good and original to read?
Check out: http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~simmers/

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Greetings - send holiday greetings for Easter, Passover
http://greetings.yahoo.com/


     --- from list postcolonial-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005