Navigating Identity and Stereotypes: The Intersections of Orientalism, Black Culture, and South Asian Migration
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Bald’s chapter takes us through a very interesting historical interaction between minority groups in the 19th and 20th centuries. It details how black and brown men were able to exploit Orientalist tropes and stereotypes to evade racial restrictions and gain greater mobility and access to segregated spaces. By adopting and performing a servile "Oriental" identity, these individuals could navigate spaces otherwise closed to them and consequently gain access to opportunities for economic and social advancement. For example, South Asian merchants, largely Bengali, sold exotic curiosities which they claimed came from across the globe, an enterprise which allowed them to earn their livelihoods. Black men, on the other hand, would don caricaturized costumes of orientals (velveteen robes, fezes, turbans) to traverse the Jim Crow laws of the south with a reduced risk of violence due to the phenomenon of "passing." These costumes could, at-times, become so outlandish that they warranted caution from friends, some even invited commentary from a presumably local South Asian writer at the time. However, no matter how absurd the costumes became, they did not invite much scrutiny from the people they were designed to deceive. Some stories of turban-clad black men evading detection in the South even found their way into local folklore.
The invisibility that these black men exploited stems from the fact that the Orient, as conceived by the West, does not exist in a genuine or real sense. It is conjured in the minds of westerners as a diametrically opposed society to their own. Edward Said suggests that the Orient served as a contrasting image that allowed Europe to define itself. By constructing the Orient as backward, exotic, and irrational, Europe positioned itself as progressive, rational, and civilized. This dynamic even allowed Europe to project its own repressed desires, fears, and fantasies onto the Orient, using it as a space where Western anxieties about sexuality, morality, and power could be explored in a displaced manner. The idea of the orient as an “underground self” for Europe is illustrated quite clearly in the 1997 Italian film Steam: The Turkish Bath. In short, an Italian man has a homosexual awakening during an extended visit to Turkey. The concept of the Orient as an "underground self" allows the director to explore an otherwise taboo subject while also mitigating the risk of backlash associated with challenging local norms and societal constraints. In this way, the Orient became a mirror reflecting the hidden aspects of Western identity that Europe preferred not to acknowledge openly.
Although reductive stereotypes of the ‘other’ exist across various cultures, Said distinguishes the Orient-Occident relationship based on its underlying power dynamic. Orientalism is different and warrants special examination and critique because it involves a dominant culture (the West) imposing its interpretations onto another (the East) in ways that distort and diminish the subject. Ultimately, due to historical forces, these portrayals of the Orient serve to justify its imperial control and domination by the Occident. Beyond this, migration since the later part of the twentieth century has been characterized by a movement of people from the global south into the global north. This trend adds another element of complexity to this relationship. Migrants from the Orient often find themselves grappling with and being defined by stereotypes in their adoptive homes. This struggle reflects a tension between their personhood and an imposed non-self identity that is largely informed by Oriental stereotypes. The Swet Shop Boys address this issue in their song 'Batlavi.' Riz MC raps about a desire to 'stretch the culture' while feeling constrained by a 'silhouette' that limits his true self. This tension highlights the challenge of negotiating authentic personhood in the confines of a constructed non-self imposed by oriental perceptions. Interestingly, in the work of the Swet Shop Boys, we revisit a familiar but reversed historical dynamic. It is now the South Asian migrants who are navigating Western society by engaging with and incorporating aspects of Black culture and identity in an effort to assert a subversive personhood in "whitened spaces."