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This is a really interesting question, and in general the post shows critical thinking at its best in not simply celebrating the presence of these men. Indeed, Bald is vague. In most cases he does mean non-marital families, but non-consensual polygamy happened, and caused trouble, as we’ll see in our class on the West Coast Punjabis.

@nickolas_mazza I really like how you pointed out that whites weren't treating Indians any better thank Black people but were instead responding to their own fantasy of what they thought Indians were. You're right, It wasn't like Indians could live normally and get special treatment. They had to play into this "exotic' stereotype to get any benefits, and even then, it wasn't real freedom.

The shift you mentioned, from being seen as "exotic" to being mistrusted, really makes me think. It's interesting how, once South Asians stopped fitting into that stereotype and started speaking up for themselves, things changed, and they were no longer seen in the same positive light. It's like people were okay with them only as long as they stayed in their assigned roles. I also wonder how this plays out today with other minority groups.

lmao rofl

Pierre, your post beautifully examines how systemic biases in Western frameworks marginalize and misrepresent Muslim women and Latinos, as discussed by Zine, Hoodfar, and Muñoz. The critique of the veil bans in France as hypocritical is especially powerful, as it highlights the double standard in Western secularism: while claiming to oppose oppression, it enforces its own form of control by dictating how Muslim women express their faith. This denial of agency underscores how Muslim women are subjected to Orientalist views that render them perpetual outsiders, even within the societies they inhabit. Your point about Québécois narratives, which frame Muslim women as inherently incompatible with “peace and respect,” shows how this exclusion is justified through rhetoric that racializes cultural values, effectively “othering” immigrants and their descendants.

Hoodfar’s insights on the double bind faced by Muslim women—having to navigate both sexism and racism—are particularly relevant. The anecdote about the hijabi student being denied a job application form powerfully illustrates how stereotypes are institutionalized, with the veil interpreted as a marker of inferiority or inaptitude. This connects to your broader point that these women are often rendered invisible unless portrayed in a negative light. It’s a stark reminder of how systemic racism and sexism intersect to perpetuate exclusion, even among those who claim to champion diversity and equality.

Your integration of Muñoz’s concept of disidentification expands the discussion effectively, showing how Latino identities, much like Muslim women’s experiences, are reduced and homogenized by Western narratives. The media’s role in simplifying Latino identities, or framing them through an exoticized lens, parallels the misrepresentation of Muslim women as monolithic victims. The call for disidentification as a form of reclaiming representation is a compelling solution, as it challenges these reductive frameworks by allowing marginalized groups to define themselves on their own terms.

Overall, your post emphasizes the need for self-representation as a way to disrupt colonial and ethnocentric narratives. It invites further discussion on how these efforts might be supported and amplified in a world where colonial institutions still dominate public discourse.

this post was such a lie

Pierre, your discussion post offers a rich analysis of how racism and self-hatred manifest in various contexts, drawing on the works of Kendrick Lamar, Maimouna Youssef, Bald, and Frantz Fanon. The connections you make between the internalization of racism and its impact on self-perception are compelling, particularly in your discussion of Lamar and Youssef’s music. Lamar’s critique of how racism leads to both external hatred and internalized self-loathing is powerful, and your interpretation of his line, “you hate me just as much as you hate yourself,” underscores how systemic racism not only dehumanizes its targets but also corrodes the humanity of the oppressors. Youssef’s exploration of her relationship with her hair and identity further demonstrates how white supremacy creates a distorted lens through which Black individuals often see themselves, echoing Fanon’s insights on the weight of being “fixed into nonbeing” by the gaze of the other.

The transition into Bald’s analysis of South Asian immigrants and their navigation of American society adds another layer to this discussion. The contrast between Khan’s and Singh’s approaches to naturalization speaks to the broader issue of how marginalized groups often face pressure to assimilate into dominant cultural norms to gain acceptance or success. Singh’s rejection of traditional Sikh expressions to achieve higher social status reflects the costs of assimilation, while Choudhry’s advocacy for the working class demonstrates a different, more grounded form of resistance. Your question about whether Singh would have advocated for the working class if he had been part of it invites a critical reflection on how privilege and positionality influence activism and representation.

Your analysis of Fanon is equally thoughtful, particularly the way you engage with his concept of being "fixed" by the white gaze and the burden it places on Black individuals. Fanon’s distinction between Black visibility and Jewish invisibility is intriguing, and your question about visibly Jewish individuals who express their faith raises an important point. While Fanon sees Jewish people as being able to avoid objectification through their appearance, visibly Jewish individuals, like those who wear religious garments, may also experience a similar “enslavement” to their physical identity. This comparison invites a deeper exploration of how different forms of visibility and embodiment shape experiences of racism and othering.

I really enjoyed how this post weaves together diverse perspectives to highlight how racism operates on multiple levels—external oppression, internalized self-hatred, and societal pressure to conform. A possible next step could be to explore how these dynamics intersect across the examples you’ve provided. For instance, how do the experiences of South Asian immigrants, as described by Bald, intersect with Fanon’s framework of being objectified and fixed by others? Similarly, how might the music of Lamar and Youssef provide a modern continuation of Fanon’s reflections on asserting oneself in the face of dehumanization? These connections could further deepen the already insightful analysis you’ve provided.

My response to Fanon, and my analysis of other readings/listenings

I agree with the sentiment that Fanon’s tone is negative, as to me it feels like this chapter is a description of his experiences, however rather than considering it purely fatalistic or even later as you described it as almost “explaining or justifying…”, I perceived it initially as his way of characterizing the intensity of the adversity he faced. By talking about his experiences as a black man in such harsh and explicit terms, he is giving readers just a glimpse into the alienation that he had to endure. While the true depth of difficulty and pain can never be understood, I feel as though his directed and explicit language, descriptions of events, and later on use of dialogue and poetry allow the reader to understand the issue in a deeper way through multiple facets. While at some points I found this reading more abstract and difficult to read, it would quickly transition into either an example of an experience or insert a dialogue that set me back on track.

As mentioned above, Fanon uses a myriad of terms and phrases that make it seem as though he is “poisioned by the steroetypes others have of them”, however again I think the emphasis on these terms is to expose the absurdity of racism he has experienced. Throughout the reading, I think that Fanon is set on describing the circumstances that have previously and continue to perpetuate this racism. The situation that brought forward the topic of subjecthood and objecthood is a perfect example of this; he describes an occurrence — a child talking with his mother — and describes how even in this regular occurrence, his race stands to mean more than him being a person. I think that this situation stands as an example of how any experience can be the catalyst for your self-worth shrinking. As the child repeats the phrase, Fanon describes his feelings shift from amusement to shock as he discovers the child is afraid of him, and he becomes confined by how the white child sees him, stripped down to just his race.

I also wanted to touch on Fanon’s description of his relation to the Jewish man. I think he does a very good job of comparing and contrasting by, on Page 92, speaking about how “I joined the Jew, my brother in misery” and goes on to even equate them to an extent saying that anything said about the Jewish can be interpreted towards a black person as well. However, earlier in the chapter, Fanon identifies the key difference in the treatment of the two groups — “All the same, the Jew can be unknown in his Jewishness. He is not wholly what he is.” I believe drawing this contrast is Fanon’s way of recognizing the Jewish people as those who have faced persecution, but identify that while they were segregated for their ideas and what they believe, it had never even gotten to that point for black people as others took one look and saw something wrong.

In Bald’s introduction, it is very insightful to see three different perspectives from South Asians all fighting for a similar yet vastly different population goal. Choudhry, in his letter, is advocating for the working-class, already residing labourers who have already been working and living in America to acquire citizenship. Mubarek Ali Khan is seen following a similar approach trying to get citizenship for the 3000 Indians in the US but with more reservation and a less direct approach. JJ Singh’s approach however is the most interesting to me as rather than fighting for the rights of the pre-existing Indian-American residents, he was not only lobbying for future immigrants, but even assuring Congress that his proposition would not lead to an influx of Indian-Americans getting citizenship. While my gut tells me to be optimistic and believe that he was blurring his intentions and would have shifted course later on, his assurance to Congress as well as his departure from cultural items such as his turban once he arrived in the US leads me to assume that there was likely some sort of class/superiority complex at play and he wanted improvement for the Indian-Americans, but only the ones he deemed worthy at 75 out of the 100 that would be allowed to naturalize being “more highly qualified”.

The main similarity I identified between Kendrick Lamar’s “The Blacker the Berry” and Maimouna Youseff’s “Tell My Story” was the concept of building black people up rather than tearing them down. While Kendrick’s song has a stronger focus on the issues and the violence that black people in America face, it always circles back to the chorus “The blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice”, which can be interpreted differently at the end of the chorus when he says “the bigger I shoot” and transitions back into the issues and the violence, however, I believe the chorus serves as a reminder that despite all the violence, being black is “sweeter”, highlighting their resilience. Youseff’s song more explicitly builds black people up with lines like “I’ll be infamous either way you can’t ignore me”, which serves both to show that 1) there is a sense of negligence from other races towards black people and 2) again, similar to Kendrick’s, highlights the resilience of black people and the importance of not letting others put you down.

The last thing I want to touch on briefly is the final verse in Kendrick Lamar’s song where I think he is portraying the range/duality of experiences of a black man. When Trayvon Martin was killed, the black community was in mourning, and rejecting gangbanging and activities that endangered the lives of their youth, but the reality is that despite this, the situation that he found himself in forced him to kill another black man. This shows that there exists a fine line between being angered at black deaths versus participating in them.

I just want to make a note that the beginning of this discussion was in response to Cathy’s, however, it eventually transitions to my own analysis of the other readings and listening.

To answer this question, I want to relate some of the readings to my lived experience:

This was not my first interaction with Edward Said’s text, but reviewing the first few pages, along with the class discussions and suggested questions, made me think about this subject differently. Most of my previous readings of Said were part of the literary criticism syllabi, so I always approached his work through an analytical lens, examining a text or something similar. However, this class has opened a new door for me—one that encourages me to reflect on my lived experience as a Middle-Easterner who has recently migrated.

Living in Iran, I share many of the experiences of Middle-Eastern people. I once remember a Lebanese colleague telling me, "This is the difficult responsibility of being Middle-Eastern! Whenever you want to travel home, you're thinking about the possibility of bombs and missiles—things that not many Canadians (as she put it) are familiar with." That day, I reflected on her words and on the contrast between the life we are trying to build for ourselves in this "whitened" space. There are experiences we've lived that others simply cannot imagine. It takes a huge effort to navigate this space as a Brown person, where there is little understanding of the burdens and difficulties that shaped our past.

However, this sense of displacement doesn't end when you're back home. There are moments when even your own home feels exotic, as if you're a foreigner in your own land. Speaking from my lived experience, this has often left me with a feeling of dislocation—a feeling that, at times, closely aligns with the notion of "disidentification" that we discussed in the last session. Suddenly, you find yourself in unfamiliar dimensions, lost in this "whitened" space, struggling to find—or create—meaning in life.

As Said states, "because of Orientalism, the Orient was not (and is not) a free subject of thought or action." I find it fascinating, yet unsettling, that this statement resonates on an individual level as well. Much like the systemic and individual racism we talked about last session, this Western-dominated framework has persisted for so long. The fact that European culture "gained strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a surrogate and even underground self" makes the discourse between the Orient and the Occident even more complex. This is evident when such discussions occur on a personal level, especially among young adults.

There is an idealized version of Europe (or the West) that often takes center stage in these discussions, while the motherland is frequently blamed. At some point, you find yourself caught in a conversation with yourself, almost as if you're battling against your own identity. It’s as though there is no freedom of thought—you are compelled to obey what has been imposed upon you, that Western style of governance, even when you’re in your own homeland.

Hence, I assume the widespread "whitened" space does not merely concern you as the migrant but it is so widespread that even at home, in your motherland, there are instances where you find yourself fighting against the 'white' space which is being cast upon your life! And at some point you find yourself sacrificing and compromising even in your hometown which I find extremely complex.

I really liked the opening and ending quote " Life is a slow suicide " I feel it says a lot with few words.

Thank you for your comment, Safiya. I think you make a great connection with Muñoz's idea of disidentification. Your point that "their culture and identity is solidified through the existence of the Other ..." reminds me very much of what Said was saying in Orientalism as well.

Cathy, this was a beautiful analysis, and I agree with you, the song's voice is undoubtedly rooted in the perspective of the child, who begins to grasp the depth of her parents' experiences and sacrifices. The lyrics seem to trace a journey of recognition and empathy—a realization of the parents’ identities beyond their roles as caretakers. This perspective resonates strongly in immigrant households, where parents often embody resilience and silence about the past, creating an invisible barrier for their children to fully understand the gravity of their sacrifices.

The imagery in the lyrics—"I can touch your memories," "I can almost feel the hopes you left behind," and "I can almost touch the soil beneath your whisper"—suggests that the child is piecing together a narrative through the landscape of her parents’ homeland. The act of visiting the parents’ country becomes an act of connection, allowing her to see fragments of their former lives and the dreams they carried. This physical journey mirrors an emotional one, as the child tries to bridge the gap between their past and her present.

Yet, as the child sings, “But I can't hear you,” it suggests an acknowledgment of the limits of her understanding. Despite her efforts to see and feel her parents’ past, the depth of their experiences—marked by loss, hope, and resilience—remains partially inaccessible.Kind of like the common phrase: "You are listening but you are not hearing me." This line underscores the gap between generations, shaped by displacement, cultural transitions, and unspoken pain.

Your use of Sara Ahmed’s distinction between mourning and melancholia adds a profound dimension to this interpretation. The parents, as you describe, appear to be in a state of mourning. They acknowledge their loss—the homeland, dreams, and lives they left behind—but they have also found a way to move forward. Their gratitude for their current lives and their children’s well-being suggests they’ve found peace in their journey, embodying what Ahmed calls “a return to life.”

The child, however, may still occupy a space of longing, grappling with a mourning of her own: the loss of a connection to a homeland that was never fully hers but which shapes her identity. Her visit to the homeland becomes both an act of healing and a reminder of what remains out of reach. This duality—understanding yet not fully comprehending—is a poignant reflection of the intergenerational experiences of displacement and migration.

The song reflects the complex interplay of memory, connection, and loss. It is a meditation on how physical spaces—homelands—carry emotional weight, shaping identity and belonging across generations. The child’s voice is one of empathy and gratitude but also of yearning, as she navigates the inherited legacy of her parents’ sacrifices while striving to make sense of her place in this narrative.

@arismita_ghosh’s point about the melancholia experienced by different generations is important. In class, we should think about how 1st- and 2nd-generation melancholia differ.

The Lie of integration has so much room to be analyzed, tore down, and debunked. Not only does integration ask someone to strip themselves of their cultural identity just to conform to the societal norm but often it asks the same individual to condemn their original identities and views. Majority cultures, especially European cultures but most especially the British, love to flaunt how 'accepting' and 'educated' they are of/on the diaspora of minority (conquered) cultures that were present in the British Empire, and then in the same breath condemn multiculturalism and promote the systematic condemnation and destruction of these cultures within Britain. It is not just a 'cultural conversion' that is pressed onto melancholic migrants but the active condemnation of their mother culture, once 'cultural conversion' has been completed society seeks to implicate the melancholic migrant in the destruction of their old identities. All of this, just to never truly be accepted by the Majority as a "proper British bloke".

In a far less literal sense than the example of Black American Veterans that you gave, "Integration" seeks to enlist the migrant/minority population in a war against their own communities. "Multiculturalism" is dead only because the societal Majority is too lazy or ignorant to seek an understanding with its minority populations. Every mention of "seeking understanding through 'shared values'" makes me laugh and cringe, knowing that the real intention behind those words is 'British values'.

Thank you @pierre-augustin_habrih ! You are right, the situation of Muslims in France is also a great example of it.

I love both @rufus_seward and @nickolas_mazza's posts and the dialogue here!

''They claimed that Islam was semi-civilized. Thus, they claimed that Africans were not uncivilized, but that Islam is what brought them to be (GhaneaBassiri, 49)''. I just realized I wrote the opposite of what I meant to write. Muslim Africans were seen as superior to pagan Africans since Islam brought them to be semi-civilized. I apologize for that mistake.

Anna, your post effectively highlights how Orientalist perceptions of Islam influenced the experiences of Black Muslim enslaved people, creating unexpected hierarchies within the dehumanizing system of slavery. The idea that African Muslims were seen as "half-civilized," while other Africans were viewed as uncivilized, underscores the complexities of colonial attitudes toward religion and culture. This perception, despite Islam’s association with "debauchery," allowed some enslaved Muslims to gain relative advantages, such as improved treatment or opportunities for freedom. The example of Job Ben Salomon, who assisted British commerce and ultimately secured his freedom, exemplifies how some individuals strategically navigated these hierarchies to their benefit. This agency, even under extreme oppression, reveals the resilience and resourcefulness of African Muslims in leveraging their status to challenge their circumstances.

The concept of "de-Islamization" as both a tool of oppression and a strategy for survival adds another layer to this analysis. While white Anglo-Americans used it to strip enslaved Muslims of their identity and integrate them into Christian frameworks, many complied outwardly while maintaining their faith or using their roles to secure freedom. This mirrors strategies like taqiyya (check out my previous reply to shouzab in the "Out of Andalus" discussion post), showcasing how religious dissimulation served as a means of resistance. Additionally, the commodification of religion, where African Muslims were valued for their utility in trade and Christianization efforts, highlights the intersection of economic exploitation and cultural dehumanization. This nuanced discussion underscores how enslaved African Muslims used resilience and adaptability to navigate a brutal system, leaving a legacy of resistance within a profoundly oppressive context.

@eva_rajzman said in Colonialist capitalism or capitalist colonialism:

“The fruit of our labour was used to build your nation”

This discussion provides a compelling analysis of how capitalist and colonial systems intertwined to exploit Asian labor for Britain’s economic gain while simultaneously marginalizing and abandoning those same workers. Your connection to the Asian Dub Foundation’s Debris and its lyrics, “The fruit of our labour was used to build your nation,” captures the extractive relationship between Britain and its colonies. The exploitation of Ayahs and Lascars, as detailed in Visram and Gilliat-Ray & Mellor’s writings, exemplifies how colonialism’s logic extended beyond land acquisition to the systemic commodification of human labor. Ayahs and Lascars were treated not as people but as disposable commodities, useful only as long as they served Britain’s economic interests, and then left destitute and excluded from society.

Your point about how colonialism and capitalism are deeply intertwined is particularly striking. The idea that “capitalist hunger” drives colonial practices offers a critical perspective on imperialism. Often understood primarily as military conquest, imperialism also represents the highest form of economic domination, using cheap labor and resource extraction to fuel capitalist expansion. The East India Company’s reliance on cheap local labor to maximize profit is a clear example of this, showing how the British colonial apparatus commodified both land and people. This reinforces your observation that colonialist and racist ideas were not separate but integral to this process—without the dehumanization of Asians as “cheap labor,” such systems could not have functioned.

The paradox you highlight between the exploitation of labor and racism is also well-illustrated. The lyrics “we’re only here ‘cos you were there” resonate strongly with Visram’s depiction of British families importing servants for their convenience and then abandoning them when they were no longer useful. This contradiction continues today, as seen in the gentrification of formerly working-class or immigrant neighborhoods like Cardiff’s Muslim area. The commodification of multiculturalism as a “charm” for outsiders, while displacing the very communities that created it, mirrors colonial logics of extraction and erasure. Your comparison to gentrification in other cities adds a contemporary lens to this discussion, showing how colonial and capitalist dynamics persist in modern urban contexts.

An additional layer to consider is the cultural and psychological legacy of this economic imperialism. The abandonment of Ayahs and Lascars not only left them destitute but also alienated from both the societies they served and their homelands. Similarly, modern gentrification reproduces cycles of displacement and alienation for marginalized communities, reinforcing a sense of cultural erasure. This invites a broader reflection on how imperialism, in its economic form, continues to shape global and local dynamics, embedding structural inequities that persist long after military conquest has ended. By framing imperialism as economic domination rather than merely military conquest, we can better understand its enduring and systemic impact.

Adding to this idea of self-hatred, it’s striking to see how the notion parallels Khatun’s critique of white Australia’s obsession with progress narratives. Khatun emphasizes how the movement of non-white women goes against linearity—appearing almost dreamlike, as they traverse borders and identities in ways that reject the rigid path from "traditional" to "modern."

Nonetheless, these very progress narratives have been internalized by non-white families like Rajiv's, who bear the weight of their ancestors’ complex journeys: "For her, going to India was a reversion to an uncouth past. To return from India would mean that I would come back less intelligent, having regressed." To believe in this progress narrative is to further engage in self-hatred, to discard ancestral narratives and epistemes. It’s depressing to see how deeply these attitudes, nurtured by whiteness, have taken root.

This idea of melancholia extending to indigenous peoples is also interesting. Ahmed’s definition suggests a melancholia rooted in not knowing, an ignorance that shapes the migrant experience. But for indigenous peoples, knowledge of what their land once was—and could still be—is painfully clear. For many melancholics (not all), their landscapes are dead fictions. For many indigenous peoples, that death is still ongoing, all around them.

Maimuna and Saarah, I really liked your discussion posts and I was also thinking about this matter while reading the text. It is really fascinating that despite the discrimination and the racial inferiority which was imposed upon the peddlers, there had been this great demand for exotic goods which as Maimuna said, makes this condition a double edged sword. However, I was thinking of the power of culture when it comes to the systematic discrimination and exclusions. The desire for Oriental goods allowed these peddlers to establish networks and livelihoods across the U.S., despite systemic discrimination. The text even describes how Americans' fascination with the “mysterious and exotic Orient” created both opportunities and exclusions for these peddlers​ Actually this desire for the Oriental goods and the mysterious and exotic Orient made me think about the significance of culture on both ends. The opportunities and the possibilities of inhabiting a culture other than their own have played an important role in this context. The culture indeed found its way into American homes, but the people behind it were still often treated as inferior.