A Short Commentary on Selective Memory in the Pursuit of Empire

For background on the following, join in the conversation on my friend's blog about the new edition of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which replaces the epithet "nigger" with "slave". Please note that when I critique empire, I am not critiquing a singular party or movement, but rather the entire American project that rests on the lingering idea of Manifest Destiny. The following is a slightly elongated revision of the comment I left in response to the above post:

Empires thrive on the rewriting of history, and in its short history the United States has shown itself to be adept at this exercise. The problem with the word nigger is not that it’s an ugly spot in our history we don’t want to look at. The problem is that it is a reminder that a previous injustice was in large measure remedied (and that only a generation ago), and thus there is power in the populace to continue effecting change within the structures of empire. Such reminders are dangerous in the extreme and to be avoided at all cost.

From the days that slavery was abolished, the word nigger was used to keep ideological chains on so many black Americans who either transitioned to the semi-slavery of sharecropping or migrated to the cities of the North. Physical violence was paired with these verbal chains in order to communicate one message: “You may have been freed from slavery, but don’t think that EVERYTHING is going to change. White people are still in charge.”

The battle over vocabulary is a battle over imagination. If a country where the word nigger could not be used with impunity was imagined and then realized, why not imagine a country where Latino students can critically examine history from a minority perspective without being accused of sedition?

Such imagination cannot be given room to grow, so the solution is to get rid of words and stories that serve as touchstones of communal memory, which in turn is the foundation for communal transformation. There are two main options to be rid of such words and stories. The first option is to co-opt them. Think of how Martin Luther King Day fixes in time the nation's victory over its own weakness of racism, rather than propagating Dr. King's radical critique of the military-industrial complex and economic inequality.

The second option is simply to delete such troublesome words and stories. Czech author Milan Kundera illustrates this well in a passage from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting:

People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past. They are fighting for access to the laboratories where photographs are retouched and biographies and histories rewritten.

It is this latter option which the well-intentioned professor and editor of the newest censored version of Twain's novel unwittingly chooses with his attempts to make the work more accessible to young readers.

Goodbye, “nigger” – you and all the power (good or bad) in your utterance belong to the past, not the future.

New

Yesterday afternoon on my way home delicate snow crystals gently dusted the sidewalk. Due to the dry climate, it rarely snows here in the lower altitudes (7000 feet), so I didn't think much of it. A few hours later I emerged from the front door to find that it was still snowing, a tiny layer had accumulated on the surface of the roads, sidewalks, trees, and bricks.

I know the last part of that list is kind of odd, but bricks are really quite a phenomenon here. Because there is never-ending construction in Chinese cities, and particularly in our slightly rundown Eastside part of town, there are often building materials piled all over the place. Our part of town additionally features many piles of rubble of the hundreds of houses and tiny storefronts that are being demolished to make way for "development". I noticed as I was walking last night that the thin layer of snow blanketing the piles of brick rubble gave them the eerie feeling of ruins.

Apart from those ruins of the recent past, everything else looked new. Even as I was walking, I knew it was temporary. Soon the tread of boots, the trace of dogs, and the dim neon of drunken urination would sully the shallow purity glowing around me. Nonetheless, it was a fitting sight for the start of another year.

As I was walking around 7 p.m. on the first day of the year in China, the denizens of American Samoa were ringing in 2011 in whatever style Samoans celebrate. Except for two tiny Pacific islands on the very edge of the international date line, practically the entire world was artificially united by our clumsy demarcations of time. For all the disharmony in this world of ours, those few moments still descend upon us in which we feel that, somehow, there is a chance for a new start. It is in these moments where we are faced with a difficult question - do we dare to hope?

I am looking forward to and hoping for some things in this new year:

*Scoring respectably on my first national Chinese proficiency exam
*Securing a longish term residence here in Western China
*Taking concrete steps toward the completion of a significant writing project
*Attending the weddings of two of my favorite people (Natalie Ray and Alexis Harmon)
*Learning how to cook at least five Chinese dishes
*Losing enough weight to wear red leather pants
*Thinking better of wearing red leather pants
*Ending my five year absence from New York City
*Attending a Food for Thought reunion of some sort
*Talking to kids who were just babies when I left the States
*Writing and recording at least three songs

There are of course many more things that could be on this list, but I wanted to leave room to tell you that if you are reading this I am most likely more grateful for your friendship than you realize. As I'm cresting 30, sleeping in a bunk bed and still in school without letters behind my name, I have become certain that I will never have much in the way of money. But there is this - I am well loved and feel rich beyond measure. I pray that you may all be rich in love in 2011!

The Fight for Peace

I live in a region that epitomizes the ethnic strife and attitudes toward violence of a nation that comprises approximately 20% of the world's population. There is so much about the particularities of this region's situation that I want to write about on this blog, but in my current living arrangement it is unwise to do so. Nonetheless, I am prompted to write something that might bring the "unspeakable" into focus. So it is that I find myself again drawn to the subject of nonviolence.

While it is easy to point at governments, the media, video games, and other "impersonal" structures as the main perpetrators of violence, I am finding again and again that the finger ultimately points back at us--ordinary people. Almost daily I am confronted with often uncomfortably frank conversations about ethnic prejudices which can lead to conflict. On the more benign level, I am asked several times a week if I like to play basketball or "street dance", two activities that are most closely tied to local conceptions of my identity as a black American. Those with whom I have cultivated more of a relationship talk about depictions of black men in American movies as being ultra-violent and dangerous. "But, you're not like that," a few friends have said, one of whom admitted that he was nervous when he first met me because of his preconceived conception of black men.

The reality is that very few black people make their way through this part of the world, and the few prejudices in place have more to do with the ignorance of absence than anything else. However, the more concerning prejudices are rooted in deeply communal, deeply personal ways of interacting with cultural differences. My province is home to a wide array of ethnic minorities (a complex concept in Chinese society which has filled volumes of scholarly works and can hardly be introduced in blog post) with various linguistic, religious, and cultural affinities that sometimes come into conflict. These conflicts can arise in a multitude of situations.

For example, in regards to food consumption, Hui Muslims will only eat at restaurants and homes that are Qing Zhen, literally "pure and true", implying the complete absence of pork. That means that any restaurant or home where pork has ever been cooked or served is out of the question; even cups touched by lips that have eaten pork can be considered unclean. This can lead to awkward situations where a Hui person is invited to a Han Chinese person's home and will not eat or drink anything offered to them to guard against contamination. This awkwardness can expand into offense in socially specialized environments like weddings, banquets, and business dinners.

In many ways, local people are accustomed to this arrangement, with public places like school cafeterias and grocery stores making concessions for Qing Zhen dietary restrictions. However, the imbalance of power in hospitality (ie, Hui can host Han, but not vice versa), such an important part of this society, often leads to what is in practice a habitual lack of contact with members of the "other" group. This mutual absence creates space for ethnic cultural "straw men" which have little in common with the real people who they represent, and these "straw men" are passed on through various mediums to later generations.

The problem with straw men is that they have no brains. They are not rational beings capable of thoughtful adaptation to the complexities of their environment. As such, they can be looked down upon those who live according to subhuman instincts and impulses, or even worse, seen as objects. This characterization in turn provides justification for prejudiced actors to employ violence to resolve conflicts of interest. After all, you can't reason with something that is subhuman, can you?

This may seem like harsh overstatement, and perhaps it is, but the consequences of violence that I see around me require harsh analysis. In many ways, violence is often controlled in the public spaces of the United States. Sure, you can watch UFC matches on television and play Grand Theft Auto video games, but uncontrolled displays of violence are generally socially unacceptable. It is often in the shadows of back streets where people get jumped or mugged, inside houses where husbands abuse wives. Here, these acts of violence are profoundly public. Men can hit women while they are walking down the sidewalk, and groups of young men can shower a rain of blows on a lone victim, all without expecting much interference from passersby unless it is a police officer, a monk, or a pesky foreigner. Violence is in some ways the norm.

When it comes to intercultural strife, small incidents sometimes escalate in more widespread vandalism and acts of violence. Just yesterday in a small town a few hours from my city, I heard the story behind a spurt of violence three years ago. A Hui vendor and a Tibetan boy had a disagreement about a purchase, and the Hui vendor reportedly struck the boy. Whether or not this event actually happened as it was told, the result is that the Hui vendor was beaten badly. That beating fed deeper feelings of offense and enmity which led to the chanting of slogans advocating violence against all Muslims (including those who were not Hui), and a mob formed which began to vandalize Muslim restaurants and beat unsuspecting Muslims out on the street. Soon, the slogans began to include other ethnic groups, and it can be safely said that at some point people participating in the mob did not even know what event sparked the entire thing. It didn't matter. All that mattered was the opportunity to unleash internal rage on nameless, faceless "others" who were clearly the enemy.

Do you see how easy it is for the "straw men" to become objects of violence? While this might be an extreme example, I think it is particularly pertinent for Americans today. On the global level, there is the ongoing American warfare against "enemies of democracy" which extends from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War to today's War on Terror. In each instance, the enemy has to be depersonalized and essentialized as vessels of opposition to our own goals. According to the conventions of nation-state governance, this is the approach required in order to be a head of state. The dissonance which this creates in the thoughtful actor is captured beautifully in a recent article about Obama's visit to India.

On a more personal level, I remember when my former roommate (who is also African American) joined the military shortly after 9/11. Several months later we were chatting online and he used the term "ragheads" in regards to Arabs. I was taken aback by his use of this racial epithet, and chastised him for aiming prejudice at Arabs when black people had been the targets of that exact kind of racism for years.
As he began to defend himself by referencing the 9/11 tragedy, I began to wonder what kind of training he was receiving in the military. Don't get me wrong, I am not accusing the military of training soldiers to be racist. However, I am asking if there might be a connection between the depersonalization that fuels prejudice and the depersonalization that my ex-Marine buddy said was necessary to eliminate the hesitation that most people experience before pulling the trigger with a human being on the other end of the barrel.

I don't want to pick on the military alone. The military is simply the embodiment of a human tendency to depersonalize those we consider "other", and especially those whose goals come into conflict with our own. We can point at the statistic that robberies are less likely to become violent if the victim mentions her family or tells the perpetrator her name. Personalization of the victim makes it harder for the victim to be objectified. I wish I remembered where to find this article, but there was a report several years ago about the reduction of violence and negative perceptions between Palestinian and Israeli youth who played sports together (does anyone else remember this?). The list goes on, but the salient point seems to be that if we are forced to personalize the "other", we are less likely to commit violence against them.

I think this highlights a famous but often unheeded teaching of Jesus--to love one's enemy. Most of us stumble over the seeming impossibility of such an idea before we consider the power that it might have in its accomplishment. Missionary to India and friend of Gandhi, E. Stanley Jones, writes in The Unshakable Kingdom and the Unchanging Person in response to the common objection that "love your enemies" is an impractical command:

Love your enemies, turn the other cheek, and go the second mile when compelled to go one. Impossible idealism -- you would be everybody's doormat, everyone would walk on you. Would they? The aim of a quarrel is to get rid of your enemy. Suppose you strike back and give blow for blow. Do you get rid of your enemy? You fix the enmity by very blow you give. By turning the other cheek you disarm your enemy. He hits you on the cheek and you, by your moral audacity, hit him on the heart by turning the other cheek. His enmity is dissolved. Your enemy is gone. You get rid of your enemy by getting rid of your enmity.

If prejudice and violence are rooted in our own view of the "other", is it truly possible to get rid of our enemy by getting rid of the enmity in our heart? By viewing those who oppose us not as depersonalized opposition to what we want, but as persons who can change in response to their environment? What if our enemies are confronted with nonviolence rooted in the affirmation of their own personhood and ability to change? Can they remain our enemies?

Assuredly, some people can. However, I think that the early Jesus movement, the Indian independence movement, the American Civil Rights movement all illustrate that many people cannot remain enemies in the face of such nonviolence rooted in belief in the possibility of redemption for actors of violence. These movements also illustrate that those committed to nonviolent resistance are also committing to self-discipline and personal suffering which most of us do not have the courage to take on willingly. Yet, if we willingly choose that discipline and suffering, there is tremendous power for justice and redemption.

Looking back over this post, I see that I have mostly been rambling incoherently. Typical. If I would only write smaller posts on a more regular basis, that might be avoided. Nonetheless, scrambled though it may all be, I'd be interested in hearing your responses. Until then, peace be with you.

Temples and Holy Places

My previous post has served its purpose - enough of you have asked when I'm going to post again that I feel sheepish if I sit in front of the computer and don't write. So, since there is a slight element of "forcing it", don't expect too much :o)

I was walking around today and put my finger on something that had been ruminating under the surface for awhile. One of the main roads in my town runs from east to west, and on this road are two of the religious landmarks near the center of town - a large mosque and a Christian church.

The Dongguan Grand Mosque is on the east side of the city center, and was featured in absentia in a post last fall marking Eid al-Fitr. It is one of the largest mosques in China, and is rumored to annually host the largest gathering of Muslims outside of Saudi Arabia celebrating the end of Ramadan (I'm still looking for concrete statistics to support this). Dongguan is a cultural landmark for the many Muslims in our city, and the area surrounding it is full of small shops and markets selling Islamic merchandise - head coverings and hats, prayer rugs, halal food, religious books (in Chinese, Arabic, and Persian), gold-plated plaques featuring intricate Arabic inscriptions of the shahada, etc. It is a lively, bustling area, and one of my favorite parts of China for its unique Chinese Islamic flavor.

But, after four years of being away, I noticed a few months ago that something had changed at the mosque. When the sun went down and the street lights fired up, lights also fired up on the mosque. This beautiful mosque, which features a blend of Tibetan, European, Turkish, and Arabic architecture, is now covered in very large, very tacky strings of lights. It's like a little piece of Vegas tucked in a corner of Mecca. It would be completely shocking if not for the fact that this is how most parts of Chinese cities look. If you keep heading west on the road, you get to the more economically developed part of the city, chock full of shops splattered with neon, blasting Chinese and Korean pop music. It is the mosque and the neighborhood surrounding it that are the true anomalies.

Further down the road, at the intersection that marks the city center, there is another out of place structure - a church steeple. There many reasons this steeple is out of place, but perhaps the most prominent is that it is the only church building I recall seeing in this part of China. When I visited Shanghai in the spring, I was surprised by how many church buildings and steeples dotted the skyline. There were even DENOMINATIONS! It was quite surreal, and highlighted the oddity of this church steeple in my largely Muslim, Buddhist, and agnostic city, proclaiming in bold white letters: "Church of Christ" (not the denomination).

The other prominent aspect contributing to this building's oddity is the fact that it is just off the city center intersection. Everything around it is stores, malls, shopping centers, and restaurants. There are perhaps more lights per square meter than in any other part of the city. There is a huge video screen projecting various advertisements above one of the few Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in our 落后 (backward/underdeveloped) little city. Everything around this steeple screams of hustle and commerce, hardly a place for religious reflection.

The stretch of road between the mosque and church is nothing but stores and markets. Walking through that strip today, I was struck by how many people were walking alongside me, raptly drinking in the blaring music and signs announcing 30% off sales. The people were incredibly diverse - Muslim women wearing glittery headscarves and 4-inch heels, Tibetan monks wearing scarlet robes and leather jackets, Chinese college students sporting the newest and coolest tight jeans and spiky hairdos, and elderly people walking slowly with hands that survived the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution clasped behind backs. It is these last who have witnessed the rise of a new religion to come alongside the Buddhism and Islam which have had roots in the area for centuries.

I am not the first to write about the religious aspects of consumerism, nor will I be the last. I am not particularly in the mood to present an academic case for it either. However, I will say that today, the temple of consumerism had more pilgrims than the mosque and the church. The lights that have crept up the front of the Dongguan Grand Mosque and the barrage of blinking signs obscuring the view of the Church of Christ steeple seem to suggest that this is not temporary. The coffee shops and merchandise booths inside some American mega-churches hint at possible milestones farther down the road for these religious landmarks in my "developing" city. I suppose everyone has different ideas of the benefits or detractors of this trajectory, but very few seem able to imagine anything different for the future. Consumerism seems to have won the religious franchise wars.

I'm rambling now. I guess I'm stirred because the other day on Facebook an acquaintance asked if people thought their faith had impacted their behavior. It's actually a multi-layered question that was apparently sparked by a conversation about the correlation between adherence to a faith system and what is considered "bad" behavior. Maybe I'll post my response on here sometime, but if that question is aimed at the religion of consumerism, the answers that arise are a bit disturbing.

I'm reading a novel by Margaret Atwood called Oryx and Crake, which through graphic depictions of the gradual excesses of consumeristic, self-centered behavior leading to societal apocalypse has regularly sent chills down my spine. Self-centered behavior encouraged by rampant consumerism leads to a valuation of comfort and security above all else. As Kahlil Gibran asserts in The Prophet, this lust for comfort is risky business:

And tell me, people of Orphalese, what have you in these houses? And what is it you guard with fastened doors? Have you peace, the quiet urge that reveals your power? Or have you only comfort, and the lust for comfort, that stealthy thing that enters the house a guest, and then becomes a host and then a master?

Ay, and it becomes a tamer, and with hook and scourge makes puppets of your larger desires. Though its hands are silken, its heart is of iron. It lulls you to sleep only to stand by your bed and jeer at the dignity of the flesh. It makes mock of your sound senses, and lays them in thistledown like fragile vessels. Verily the lust for comfort murders the passion of the soul, and then walks grinning in the funeral. (You can read "On Houses" in its entirety here)

Perhaps the religion of consumerism serves the god of comfort. Perhaps that is why many times religion can end up looking very similar to consumerism and the political/economic orders that uphold it as a unifying (and pacifying) strategy. When the lust for comfort has not only become masters of our houses, but of our churches, mosques, and temples, what then becomes of the passion of the soul?

There has to be more to religion than whispers of comfort, or else religion becomes a murderer. But I'll leave that for another post :o)

Rebirth?

It would be generous to say that this blog has been lethargic this past year, especially considering it has been completely devoid of activity for more than three months. Coming soon, new life will be breathed into this stale little corner of the interwebs. Significant personal experiences have transpired in the interim, and I have no idea how to breathe enough life into my overambitious prose to convey even a fraction of the changes that have taken root in my mind and spirit, but I will try.

It makes me wonder about Lazarus...after Jesus raised him from the dead, how different was he? Was he like a cancer survivor who learns to drink life down to the last drop? Or was he like someone who has a near death experience and grows increasingly strange, like Jeff Bridges in Fearless? It seems like dying might really influence your personality, maybe to the same extent as becoming addicted to cocaine or Lost.

I'm wondering whether my writing voice will change in proportion to my internal changes, or whether writing again will reignite hidden parts of myself that have spent the last year in deep slumber. Whatever happens, I am excited to discover once more the mystery that writing somehow has a life of its own. I hope you'll join me.

The Look

I know the look well. It is a heartbreaking composite of hurt, astonishment, and disappointment. There's no way to count the number of times I've seen the look, but I can say with some amount of confidence that I paid no attention to it until I was about 16. Up until that point, I didn't care enough to notice.

See, the look is fleeting, though it comes in two stages. In the first stage, it springs out unexpectedly - lifting eyebrows, widening the eyes slightly, and leaving the mouth slightly agape. In the second stage, everything tightens. The mouth seals itself into a grim line and the outside corners of the eyebrows lift at a slight angle as the eyes narrow. If you are not paying attention you will miss it, because depending on the person, it can happen in milliseconds. You have to become attuned to its presence. It was a long time before I realized its cause.

See, the look appears on a friend's face when I am a jerk. I don't mean a jerk who is kind of sarcastic or makes fun of someone. I mean a jerk who says something with malicious intent, who uses all the intimate knowledge he has gathered about someone to cause quick and devastating pain. You may have a hard time believing it, but I am one of the most skilled at doing this that I know.

See, beyond the oft discussed phenomenon that nice guys seem to finish last when it comes to young ladies' attentions and affections, there is another disturbing paradox. When you are seen as nice guy, nobody believes it when you tell them that your heart is full of all manner of darkness and venom. I know this is true, because as long as I can remember people have called me a nice guy.

The crux of this paradox is that being hurt by a nice guy hurts all the more because one has not put protections in place. One might wonder what he has done wrong, because how else can he explain what just came out of such a nice guy's mouth? Another might wonder could be wrong with her, to have let herself be so vulnerable with a guy just because he was "nice". All of these emotions are contained in that split-second of a look. Amazing, isn't it?

I'm not saying I'm a bad guy. But, if you haven't seen this other side of me, you will. It's only a matter of time. Sadly, there are lots of folks who can testify.

I saw the look recently. As soon as the words were coming out of my mouth, I knew the result. And in that moment, I was once again surprised by the forcefulness of the internal resistance to my immediate understanding that what I had said and done was wrong. Too often, the resistance wins. I did not apologize.

But sitting here typing at 3:00 a.m., that look haunts me. It unlocks the door to a host of memories in which I don't remember the words spoken, but I vividly feel the assault I have made on someone for whom I care. It's one of the worst feelings in the world.

One time in college, I was talking to a romantic interest on the telephone, and she was telling me how she did not understand this guy she had dated before who had said things to deliberately hurt her. When I told her I had done the same, she was quiet for a long time before she breathed, "But, why would you do that to someone you love?" I could only answer with a silence that whispered, "I don't know".

Every time I remember the look, it asks the same question. I still have no answer.

Desert Time

Brilliant, blistering sun
beating down on head
exposed to the brutal blanket
of heat burning the brand,
the mark of wanderers on the back of
your neck, behind your ears.
Lips cracked, cheeks chapped,
calloused lids worn thin by
dust flying on the arid winds
blowing through barren dunes adrift
on a sea of emptiness.
This is the desert.

And when gritty eyes open,
they see differently, clearly,
like they were born again
for softer vision.
Rough edges are worn down,
your heart tuned to the rhythm of hope
working its way around the mountainside.
You know now, like love,
sowing hope is hard work;
but the harvest is peace,
an oasis on the sandy steppes
where you find rest for your
weary, wonder-full soul.
This is the desert.