Collapsing Identities - Heems, Arora and Rana
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When listening to “Benny Lava” and “Soup Boys”, I found clear thematic connections to the concept of racial and cultural collapse that I discussed during our discussion about Orientalism two weeks ago, where I wrote:
"Bald uses the term “Indianness” which I think directly shows that the West has a desire to collapse entire parts of the world into a select few stereotypes and then use them as a means to entertain themselves (the rich going to the South and interacting with these peddlers)."
Similarly to Bald’s depiction of Indianness, Rana says, “Islamophobia is a gloss for the anti–Muslim racism that collapses numerous groups into the single category “Muslim”.”
Beginning with the Swetshop Boys’ “Benny Lava”, the song references negative perceptions and stereotypical views associated with South Asians, particularly Hindus. I think that by self-characterizing as a Hindu, he is referring to the fact that these groups are often seen as exotic or as “the other”. On a larger scale, I think this song also plays as a tribute to all of the struggles faced by brown people in the West following 9/11, including stop-and-frisk policies and many of them being stereotypically categorized as “squeegee men”. Heems even goes so far as to mention historical racial issues such as the Syphilis experiments that were conducted on the Tuskegee men, all of which are a testament to the deep and systemic nature of socialization in America.
Heem’s “Soup Boys” — first of all is a great song and easily made its way into my playlist. However, in terms of its impact, there are a few key moments to highlight. Heems tackles various religious identities when he, on 3 occasions, mentions different places getting stones thrown at them (mosque, temple, his home). This ties back again to Bald’s argument regarding Orientalism as a way for the Occident to neglect the differences between groups, and places of worship that stray from the norm of Christianity become targets in the minds of the West — a topic that is even more relevant today following the incident this past week in Quebec.
The final portion of Heem’s video that I found interesting was the use of both literal and metaphorical drones during the chorus and intro where Obama avoided a question about who is considered a threat. Literally, the military drone footage is in reference to the West’s military presence in the Middle East, and metaphorically it represents the post-9/11 continuous surveillance and subsequently, profiling of brown people in the US where they are treated as suspicious without cause.
This theme of grouping individuals continues in Arora’s article where she speaks about anti-Sikh racism as well as Islamophobia, and while she notices them being lumped together, rather than feeling oppressed, she chooses solidarity and empowerment, saying “While I condemn the horrible tragedy in Wisconsin, I refuse to identify myself as 'not Muslim' and thus validate hate crimes against Muslims, Indigenous groups and other racial and religious minorities”. Rather than becoming a bystander similar to all of those who were in the hospital waiting room with her, she chooses to stand with all marginalized communities, showing that the West grouping them together can be advantageous.
Arora’s experience also allowed me to reflect on my own experiences (which will be discussed in my personal connection essay), but in short, as a coloured Muslim person growing up in an entirely white town in rural Saskatchewan, I was quite ignorant of any oppression I faced as a child. Over the past few years, I have been able to reflect on some experiences and I realized that when the kids on the playground yelled slurs, they never specified a difference between race and religion. A portion of the reading from Rana discussed this exact phenomenon:
"Resurrecting this genealogy complicates the history of the concept of race by revealing a complex, overlapping racialization of categories such as ‘‘black’’ and ‘‘brown’’ with religious categories such as ‘‘Islam’’ and ‘‘Muslim.’’ The racialization of Islam emerged in the Old World, was transposed on indigenous peoples of the New World, and subsequently took on significance in relation to black America and the Muslim immigrants."
Being the only coloured person in the town made me an easy target on the playground for verbal abuse for anything from the n-word, to a terrorist, to just being minimized to my skin colour — “brown”. From this experience, I was able to understand how these different labels and pieces of my identity could overlap when it came to discrimination.