On Strategy

Apologies for another ((sigh)) post. Anyway, here goes.

I saw a very good friend on Monday. She was living far away but is only 2 hours away now. I still haven't seen her much, largely because I suck & am curmudgeonly. But I was out there Monday and got to have coffee with her & really realized how much I miss her.

I told her this story I'd heard about a place we used to work together.


Our mutual sisterfriend (let's call her Fauzia Faidi, or FF for short) asked the receptionist to make some hotel arrangements at a hotel. The woman did and sent an email saying, "let me know if you get there & its unacceptable. If there's anything wrong with the place just call & I'll get you in someplace better!"

So FF goes up to get the paperwork and to inquire. "So, is there anything that's making you worry about the place? Like, did they say, yes I'm sure the exterminators will have lifted the quarantine by Monday night?"

And the woman says, "Well, I don't think of myself as racist or anything but some hotels are not well maintained."

Let's go with puzzled. It is more effective than pissed, right? The ff replies, "I think I'm confused. What does that have to do with race?"

"Oh, well, you know, its just that there's a certain group of people from a certain place" she looked around to avoid eye contact, "and they tend to buy up a lot of hotels and don't take care of them."

"Huh. Well, I've stayed in some really crappy hotels in Dodge that were all run by white people. Is that what you mean?"

"What? Er, oh, of course. It's just that on the phone, it was just, they sounded. . .i don't know"

"Is this about someone on a phone having an accent?"

"yes. yes. i'm so sorry! i don't know these things and i'm really not like that and its just that you hear people talking about these hotels and i don't know anything and you know so much and. . .and. . .and. . ."

So this whole conversation was low-level impact. No one was denied services, housing or healthcare. Our friend the FF was not worried about loss of her job, custody of her daughter blah blah blah. It was tiring, something to address & sigh about. The woman felt terrible and expressed every hour on the hour afterwards how terrible she felt. This only made the FF more tired.

So my good friend and I were parsing through this story.

"OMFG. You are making that up!" (I have been known to exaggerate, on occassion)

"In fact, I'm not."

"I just wish people would keep to the strategic racism. At least you don't have to deal with all their apologies afterwards."

Not the same thing at all.

There is something to be said for exposure and that some folks have simply not had much exposure to good information. There is something to being able to say "wow. that logic actually doesn't even make sense." Why waste energy on being surprised, shocked and outraged by what is logical consequence of the whiteness all around us? Respond, of course, but don't lose sleep over it.

And then I think about our last national election.
Fear and hatred of queers and arabs meant that more people voted for a hate-mongering, war-mongerer fuck than voted against him.

And then I think about where the above woman gets her information, who feeds it to her, who ensures it is the dominant cultural discourse, who maintains whiteness as we know it.

It's all strategy, isn't it?

My first "Fuck You"

Benazir Bhutto has been assassinated.

This isn't going to be a post with fawning over Benazir as the representation of all hope for pakistan. I know I don't understand enough about pakistani politics to even understand where the problems with her governance began or ended. But I remember when she came to power while we were in arabia. I remember being so proud of her and feeling like her presence proved something about us. And I even remember being surprised that I felt an "us" because I knew that as a Saudi I was not encouraged to feel commonality with Pakistanis (other than being Muslim.) I almost think that was the first time I felt a distinctly non-western womanhood rather than being saudi or even arab. Pakistan has a woman prime minister. Why hasn't the u.s. had a woman president?? I remember feeling proud about that question.

I'm not eleven anymore. Grownup life is complicated. Benazir was not the savior of Pakistan. But I still feel really sad about her death. She represented many different things to many different people. I felt inspired by her and also thankful, like she was my first "fuck you" to all the people who never talk about non-western women or certainly Pakistani women unless they're talking about a sexual assault case that reaffirms how fucking superior they are (see mainstream feminist blogs everywhere.)

(sigh)

Check out some good links via Problem Chylde

Really, I'm not making this up

Coming up on the door at the business center:

Two white women have been at the wrong door. A guy who works at hilton is showing them to the correct door. "Oh, thank you, thank you." they say "I can't believe we were at the wrong door. Thank you" they say.

"That's alright." He says, not with a st. louis accent. "I'll show you the way. See? I'm a black man but I'm nice to you. Just like a little teddy bear."

The white women twitter uncomfortably and go on through the door. I tilt my head with a question on my face and he turns to look at me.

"How ya doin, Sister?"

I smile my response.



What is going on here????