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“We have always been here, it's just that the world wasn't ready for us yet.” This is the melancholic queer diasporic experience. Reading Samra Habib’s was inspiring. The queer “Eastern” life was not just created, it has always existed. It is hard to recognize this as colonialism forced homophobia into our world, but queerness is inherently non-Western. I liked this reading because I believe the emphasis on representation is the most important thing, and the intersection of creativity and society is essential to preserving the identities that the world tries so hard to erase. The part on religion was especially significant, and it was beautiful reading about a utopia where one can be all while also not being alone in that being.
I never thought that religion, queerness, AND “ethnicness” could intersect. It feels like we can either get one or the other but not both; you either bring your religion and queerness in a white way, or you get your religion and ethnicity in a straight way. After looking up the photography project, I found joy in how the photography was not professional. It spoke to how Habib explained how some Queer Muslims “might not have the tools to understand the language wirttten by academics in Ivy League Schools,” but that doesn’t mean they shouldn't have access to queer conversations, just how it doesn't mean they shouldn't have access to queer representation. Mohamed Abdulkarim speaks to this religion, chosen family, and life path. Something that stood out to me was when he said, “I didn’t understand the value of literacy until that day,” which made me think of how Habib was trying to break this barrier of literacy through images of queer joy. Abdulkarim and Habib show how the melancholic migrant experience takes shape differently, specifically melancholia. We must combat its hopelessness, which Habib strives to do with the archival series of experiences.

namazie's poem is a guidebook for how to navigate queerness and diaspora. These are the guidelines for the reclamation of "the homeland" as the rightful queer inhabitants and keepers of the land. We assume the homeland wants to be as distant from us as our bodies are from it. The stories we hear are meant to keep us away as we are taught the land that we were meant to be on does not want us and will not love us back. Yet, namazie rejects this as we are desire with a destination. The use of contrasting ideas in the same sentence, "my homeland is alive, unknowable, and does not exist," forces us to rethink these strict guidelines that seek to define a homeland that does not include us. Instead, we are encouraged to commit to the dangerous act of reclaiming and maintaining our homeland. Our identities are our homeland and mix in "densely sensual, affectively relational, and miraculously mutable" ways. These ways we already know to be true about our homeland, as we get to feel its warmth in small pockets, but they are true about us. What is especially true at the intersection of queerness and diaspora is that "our erotic is our weapon," and that is what we must use to give us the strength to liberate and un-translate our homeland into one that works for us because that is how it was designed.

edit: I was just reading through a photography book my friend just gifted me, which is Beirut-based and queer, called "What's Ours." In the end, Boulos the photographer writes, "My friends and I used to take pictures naked in the streets of Beirut...It was our own way of reclaiming our streets and our bodies. Everything that is supposed to be ours." I think this really connects to what namazie's poem is saying.

I watched Narcy’s “Average Type” and “Makoo” and found them both interesting regarding the question of Arabness, both inside and out. In “Average Type,” the lyrics make up for the lack of a music video in “Makoo.”

In “Average Type,” Narcy says, “You thought that she was just your average type of Arab sister. Submissive, won't listen, you trippin' caught up in the midst of…” This poses the question of what he means by “average type” of Arab brother and sister.” These stereotypes of a submissive woman are contrasted with Meryem Saci, who says, “Remix all your stories and rewind all your facts. Militant, diligent, different, get the dividends.” We must challenge the harmful narrative that the world has given Arab women. She is many things. Meryem’s line is meant to have the listener challenge what the “stories” and “facts” that we have put onto the identity as it is so much more than that. She is proud to be an “Illegal border-crosser, rebel with a sand glow, Got it from my momma.” These are being reclaimed to show how strong and defiant Arab women are. This song is about the outside question of what it means to be an Arab.

“Makoo” poses what Arabness means on the inside. In the opening clip, Narcy is on the phone making plans for his night and embarrassed to bring his cousin, who is visiting from the Motherland and is “a little bit special and different.” It is interesting how the diaspora views the population that stayed as different. Again, it brings up the immigrant child dilemma of being Arab around white people but not Arab enough for the “actual” Arabs. In this, he is embarrassed by how his cousin dresses and acts, as it reflects his homeland, which he is so distant from now. At first, his cousin is met with disapproval from the people around, but by the end, everyone is doing “The Jassem,” essentially “Iraqi Dance Moves.” This also comments on cultural appropriation and how aspects of culture are taken for entertainment. In the end, Jassem, on the phone with his mom, comments how his cousin is “weird and didn’t dance.” This parallels the beginning and shows that these opinions and stereotypes are not one-sided. This validates and liberates the Arab identity from the constraints of the White American experience.

I found the ​​Gualtieri and Maghbouleh readings very interesting and intersect in ways that are important for understanding the concept of white and the context in which Middle Eastern people exist in/out of that concept. Considering my experience and knowledge of the United States Census, I found it particularly interesting. These readings provided the necessary background to the current debate on representation. My mom has been one of the main people working on adding the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) checkbox to the question on race/ethnicity in the US Census for as long as I can remember. Currently, all Arabs and Middle Eastern people are classified as “white,” no matter what they look like or how different their experiences differ from the white people around them. Our community has been trying to get this passed and our fair representation for quite some time.

Interestingly, in the 2020 census, the box would be added with all the necessary petition signatures, yet Trump vetoed it. This box is crucial to the identity and representation of the Arab American community. At the end of the article, Gualtieri discusses this by explaining that “minority status would render Arabs eligible for federally funded programs and provide greater protection under anti-discrimination laws.” Also, there is a “basic disconnect between their own self-perception as a people marked as outsiders and ‘un-American.’” Forcing people to identify this way leaves them invisible under the law while still hyper-visible to attack. This summer, I worked on a project with data on the changing Arab American demographics to help us understand how the different countries of origin and communities change over time in relation to the Census and lack of representation.

That's why I find this even more interesting: I was doing all this work without even knowing its history. It is incredibly crazy with my experience as a Syrian and Lebanese Christian. Crazy because my identity is rooted in white supremacy. It was used to uplift the Syrians who fought for naturalization against the “Other” of Black and Asian citizens. It was used to create a divide within the Arab community with both racial and religious differences. They argued that they were more civilized than even their neighboring countries. They threw everyone under the bus and did everything in their power to show how they could be considered similar to the Europeans. I get that it was for survival, and it was deemed necessary when it was a competition for the best fit to enter the US, but it's just crazy. Being not white was insulting to the Syrians. The religious division of the Middle East was making its way to the US to explain the hierarchy systems further. It really was a dog-eat-dog world, and even though in the eyes of a white person, a minority is a minority, in the eyes of a minority, there is a ladder to be climbed to whiteness. This also connected in exciting ways to Maghbouleh’s chapter on the Iranian community not wanting to be considered Arab and changing their language to be more European. These systems of hierarchy control the world and have seeped their way into damaging the solidarity of communities with each other, which is so harmful because, in the end, the whiteness that they fight so hard to achieve will never protect them.

The West’s role as a multicultural hub and haven is a facade that involves picking and choosing the parts of the cultures that are palatable. Buettner speaks to the selective acceptance that involves celebrating food but overlooking the challenges of the people who serve it. Not only are these challenges overlooked, but they are worsened when the racist stereotypes of a place bleed into the joy of the culture of a person. This was a problem I was forced to confront this past year with my grandma’s (Teta) food. Food in immigrant culture means everything and can be some of the only things that connect one to one's culture and identity. To cook and share food is how most immigrant families show their love and identity. I believe that it is a blessing to receive this food and should be treated as such. There is something so special about something that others can enjoy and is also so tied to a specific region and lineage. After October last year, something that upset me was this conditional tolerance of culture from the people closest to me. The people who have had many homecooked by Teta authentic Lebanese meals at my house were silent when it came to caring about Palestine. Their enjoyment of this cuisine was undeserving because it is deeper than that. I felt like sharing this food was to share myself and my Teta, who connects me to this culture I don’t know much about. I was angry at the world around me but also offended at the people around me and their selective acceptance of me and my culture. Don’t eat Arab food if you cannot call for the end of Arab hate, and this goes for all non-Western identities. The love of food doesn’t translate to the acceptance of people for white folks, but for my Teta, it is the opposite; the unconditional acceptance of people is shown through the love of food.

Teta has been famous my entire life. Her generosity and food are famous among everyone who has walked through our house. I feel so lucky to have grown up with her home-cooked meals of gold every day. I truly believe that food is the most crucial aspect of diaspora histories and communities. As someone born in the United States who has never lived in my country of origin recently, food was the first way I knew who I was. I could bond with other kids like myself on the food and find community and a piece wherever I went, as my parents were insistent on seeing the Lebanese. My family and I are sure every immigrant family's love language is food, and my earliest memories surround that. I was eating a Lebanese dish in kindergarten when some kids started making fun of me (I know, classic brown kid trope). But instead of letting it bring my perception of my identity down, my mother ensured that the class had a cultural food day where everyone would bring in food without judgment. Food makes me a melancholic migrant. Without food, I would be completely separated from my diaspora. Now, when I am missing home, I get Lebanese food, and what I look forward to the most is Teta’s. Without food, there is no vessel for the migrant to be melancholic.

When cultural food is trending and constantly appropriated, it is hard to find this line of sharing food and wanting to keep it all to yourself, not out of greed but protection.

I found that there is a weird relationship with luck when it comes to immigrating to the West. The ability to immigrate is considered a privilege nowadays, and that’s how I grew up with it. Interestingly, the ideas behind it change with different ethnic groups and the time. In the Ward reading, the East Indian immigrants, usually capable single sons, were seen as “making a sacrifice for the common good of his family.” Ward compares them to the Chinese before them, who had no “incentive to assimilate” and were there to work and send money back. It was a privilege to be able to immigrate, especially with the insane and harsh laws that closed the borders. As the quotas have increased over the years, the attitudes towards immigration from the places of origin have also changed. Something that was once a “sacrifice to leave” has become an act of selfishness and immense privilege and education to leave. Yet there is so much loss. It seems as though the hardest part might be the process of getting there, but the reality is that they are met with extreme cultural extension due to these legal discriminations once they arrive. To immigrate, one must have wealth, but how dehumanizing is it to go through so much to be called dirty, poor, and diseased once they arrive? What is peculiar is that the Chinese and Indian immigrants come from civilizations far older and more established than white settler Canada, which has far more hygienic and medical advancements. The entry monetary tax increased, and the emotional tax did as well. The ideas of racism rose with the rise of immigration. Some Canadian immigration legislation turns people away from the notion that it is too cold or too different for them and that things are just better staying where they came from. While it is true that Canada is cold as hell and that I would much rather prefer my sunny homeland, it is just so harmful to believe that some are more deserving of the opportunity for more economic and human rights that are presented to these immigrants. The notion of the “American Dream” has always been hard for me to grasp after experiencing how poorly immigrants were treated. How is it fair to create this propaganda of an idea of freedom and then do everything to take this freedom away?

“Even as U.S. laws and attitudes turned against Asian immigrants, these men worked the India craze to their advantage,” Bald writes in Chapter 1 of Bengali Harlem. In the United States, consistent legal frameworks have created obstacles to immigration, with the different countries of origin facing denial throughout history. Bald explains how, for Indians, there were acts such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Alien Contract Labor Law of 1885. These correlate to the period when Indian immigration to the United States was prevalent, as the British colonization of India had a great effect. In my Media and Empire class, we discussed how the British colonial project depicted Eastern societies, especially visually, as a foreign, exotic, and mystical land. Many tropes of colorfulness and luxury were fulfilled by propaganda. Interestingly, these merchants were using colonial strategies and stereotypes to their benefit and to have greater success in selling their goods. This connects to Said’s Orientalism as this “Otherness” that the Western world defined and described the Eastern society to be was just turned on itself for the business benefits of the East. Said says, “The Orient is not a free subject of thought or action; it is the object of the West’s imagination, which both sees and defines it” (Said 5). The West sees what they curate to see and defines it in a way that benefits them. In this time that Bald speaks about, Western consumers were in the “​​midst of a fin de siècle fashion for the exotic ideas, entertainments, and goods of India and ‘the East.’” Did playing into these ideas further stereotypes of Bengali and Indian merchants and further attitudes of hate towards them? Yes. But at the same time, playing into these ideas created an entire market where they could create their “global networks” and live successfully in the United States that had denied them and their existence. It is cool how there were legal frameworks that were systematically designed to keep immigrants out of the country and the playing field of labor, yet they were able to create their own industry and thrive off of the white man's dollars and naivety.

The Moriscos were Spanish Muslims who were forced to convert and practice Christianity so as to not be seen as undermining the Catholic community and the Crown. They practiced aspects of Islam in private to not be accused of being unloyal politically. Yet in the same ways that there is a spectrum of migrants, there was a spectrum of Moriscos and their beliefs; some fully clung to Catholicism while others still felt and practiced as Muslims. Their cultural aspects such as food and clothing were also under suspicion for being too Islamic so there was a lot of assimilation either by choice or by force. This assimilation into the dominant Catholic culture reminded me of Sara Ahmed’s discussions from the last class on being the perfect immigrant who assimilates for the social cohesion of the nation. The core of both of these schools of thought is in the colonial ruling power of the British Empire. The need to adhere to the public image, and appearance, and become European was a lot of pressure for the Moriscos and similarly for migrants that Ahmed speaks to. The repression of signs of Islam affected the Moriscos by taking their agency and their beliefs. There is a melancholia that Ahmed talks about in the Moriscos that comes from the cutting off of that history from them.

The way race is defined in the United States Census is very peculiar. There are skin colors mixed with countries of origin (White, Black, Native American/Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander) with no room for variety. Race is more than about skin color and it leaves Middle Eastern and South Asian people out from being properly represented when the only viable options are White or Asian. Rana explains this as the two options of the Syrian and the Hindu. There is a mass grouping of people that have completely different histories and racial breakdowns. I thought that the Rana reading was extremely interesting and I learned a lot about the history of the Muslim identity in the context of the modern systems of racism and oppression. It is especially interesting the way it intersects with my identity and my knowledge of the world. Rana explains how “the racial label “Muslim,” for example, was assigned to Arab Christians who, paradoxically, were racialized as the religious other of white European Christianity.” Growing up as an Arab Christian, the identity is one that is heavily debated in both the Arab world and the Christian world. European Christians do not align themselves with those that look different despite their religion being the main pillar of their identity. And as for the Arab world, Islam and the Middle East have become so interwoven that in most people's minds there is simply not any other viable religious option. They have become synonyms for each other and the identities are seen as one with the “Arab-Middle Eastern Muslim.” This completely ignores the not Middle Eastern Muslims the not Muslim Middle Easterners. Rana connects this back to the ways this played out in the legal system as the courts “view Arabs and Muslims ambiguously” which affected cases of naturalization. It is interesting now to circle this back to the current climate of the US Census where the MENA (Middle East North Africa) checkbox will be added as Arabs who used to beg to use whiteness for their benefit are now seeing the extreme negative effects of this misrepresentation. We cannot be white when whiteness is the very thing that harms us. Islamophobia has become a more expansive term in the way that “the Muslim” represents more than just the Muslim. Islamophobia will get anyone that looks like “the immigrant” and Rana says “perhaps ‘immigrant’ itself is a racial category in which xenophobia is expressed in perpetual scapegoating.” Categorization is just a tool to classify the “us vs them,” “the Other,” and the “West vs Rest.”

Baldwin, Yancy, and Said all speak to the idea of “othering” that is so integral to the white identity. According to Baldwin, this is why it is so difficult for white people to escape this nature in which they are trapped; because without the racism that their history is built on, there would essentially be no history to exist for them. He explains that they are trapped because “people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity.” This loss of their identity is directly based on the fear of the Black identity. Baldwin explains it is hard to escape because to escape is to take oneself out of the safety blanket of whiteness. The safety blanket of “ignorance is bliss.” Escaping means confronting the fact that their entire basis on identity was built on putting people of color below. Yancy also speaks to this when referencing bell hooks who explains that “many [whites] are shocked that black people think critically about whiteness because racist thinking perpetuates the fantasy that the Other who is subjugated, who is subhuman, lacks the ability to comprehend, to understand, to see the working of the powerful.” I thought it was very interesting that this “other” is also mentioned here as Said does in Orientalism. The “Other” is the subhuman people of color just as the Orient is the subhuman area of the world, while the white and Occident nature is built on and stems from this power. Ahmed discusses how whiteness is framed in opposition to blackness and to me this connected back to the Orient as well. Whiteness must be looked at through “the effects of that privilege on the bodies of those who are recognized as black.” These observations lead to another question about “white innocence” and complacency. Are the countrymen that Baldwin writes of or the white child that Yancy writes of innocent of racial prejudice? Baldwin answers “it is innocence which constitutes the crime.” This innocence connects directly with this history and nature as their entire being is intertwined with the dehumanization of the Other to make them the most human appearing. That goodness and humanness is only there as a medicine to the white people to deter them from confronting the fact that they are at the core not innocent as long as they continue to benefit from the systems that they created.

The Orient is not merely imaginative; how could it be when we see its effects on everything we do? The term “the Orient” is offensive, and it groups different cultures and social classes based solely on geographical location into something to be lesser than “the Occident” (Europe). Although the Orient began as “an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery and vocabulary … have given it reality and presence in and for the West.” The Orient both generalizes an entire group as well as isolates details and creates stereotypes and tools for oppression. It really affects people and how we conduct everyday life and interactions economically, politically, and socially. The positionality of “West vs Rest” is seen here, and the systematic discrimination of the “rest” is what Said insists is more than imaginative. He said, "​Europe culture gained in strength and identity by setting itself off against the Orient as a sort of surrogate and even underground self.” Said’s critique of the West is that it is dependent on this recurring othering of Orientals and Arabs. European and American culture get their strength by twisting the Orient to benefit from the good while harming all that is not for their benefit. This makes me think about how Said would critique the post-9/11 world. In our current political environment, the Arabs, Muslims, and Sikhs were the Others and the Evil that the West had to fight against to keep the illusion of protection. The demonization of immigrants brings the American and European identities together, as we also see with Brexit and Laïcité. There would be no European culture without the Orient to build it off of and this is beyond just the images of it, it finds itself manifest in very real ways as opinions shape actions. In writing “Orientalism,” Said basically explains how the Arab trope of 9/11 came to be and how it was essential for the American culture to strengthen in a time of turmoil. It is also interesting how American culture uses this villainization while also using the fetishization of this Other, and we see this with the practices Bald describes as “an exotic otherness.” Post 9/11, we see how “the Orient is not a free subiect of thought or action” in many ways.
A tangible example of this is the rise of anti-Arab and Muslim hate that was so prevalent in American culture and that rise justifying the endless wars in the Middle East. I think the Swetshop Boys music video does an interesting job of showing this abuse of the Orient with the visuals flashing between this exotic otherness and this bloodthirsty, dangerous, and violent otherness. But really, these have just been projected onto the Orient to give the West a better claim to creating this violence. I wonder how Said, Bald, and the Swetshop Boys would navigate the post-9/11 world in intersection with each other.

Fanon and Lamar discuss stereotypes and the Black self similarly, and the messages of responsibility are very interesting throughout. Lamar speaks to the racist stereotypes that white people have created for the Black man and alludes to the supposed self-fulfilling nature of those stereotypes. He says, “But homie, you made me,” and “You made me a killer.” The repetition of “you made me” is thought-provoking and relates the racist stereotype to the racist self by rightfully placing the blame on violence. The intertwining of these racist stereotypes against Black people and the white racist self/system further solidifies how these can not be separated; you cannot have one without the other. Fanon touches on this as well as he says, “My body was given back to me sprawled out, distorted, recolored, clad in mourning in that white winter day.” The word choice of “given back to me” stuck out to me as it encapsulates how the selfhood and identity of the Black self were robbed and contorted to become a vessel for the stereotypes to live. They both address the lack of agency over the self and that the fault of the violence of racism lies within the system that created it.
Another topic is discussed between the two in a similar manner, and that is the combination of racist stereotypes and the relationships that are had within them. Lamar raps, “You never liked us anyway, fuck your friendship, I meant it.” Combined with what Fanon said, this is very interesting; “When people like me, they tell me it is in spite of my color. When they dislike me, they point out that it is not because of my color. Either way, I am locked into the infernal circle.” This infernal or hellish circle is color being seen first before humanity and the association that that color holds.
Something that stood out to me while I was watching Lamar’s and Youssef’s music videos was the similar visuals of the hair being braided. The comparison of these shows the importance of the Black self and storytelling. In Lamar’s video, these hair-braiding scenes were starkly contrasting with the videos of police brutality. The visual flashing between the two differing scenes is intentional in furthering the message of the violence imposed on the Black self and the beauty and culture of the Black self, which also ties to these questions of agency and responsibility.

I agree with Johnson’s notion of preserving an alliance with family/community members, even if they are homophobic. As much as “queerness” is a community in-itself, I believe that the cultural and racial community that a person is raised within and primarily associated with should be prioritized and preserved. As “quare” people of color, no matter how queer you are, the world sees you as a person of color first and will treat you as that. The queer identity and community cannot protect you, and the presumed whiteness of it will leave you behind. Homophobia is a real and dangerous issue in some communities of color, yet its weaponization by white people against the communities creates a challenge. Zine describes this notion in regards to the intersection of Islam and Feminism: “the challenge for Muslim feminists: when we begin to interrogate issues of sexism within our communities our efforts becomes subject to the sensationalised racism outside of the community which feeds off such revelations.” As Johnson suggests; “quare” folks cannot afford to exclude even their homophobic family members from their alliances because the primary struggle is against oppression and for most “quare” folk that dominating oppression is from a colonial/racist power. When looking through “Queering the Map” in Gaza, one pin really stuck out to me in relation to this notion: “as a queer Palestinian, the only time I felt angry and broken about seeing a pride flag was when I saw it flying on grandparents house, on my stolen land.” Like Black quare individuals, quare Palestinians must struggle alongside their community regardless of homophobic family members because there is a larger systematic threat: colonialism/racism. Because of the rise of media propaganda and tools such as pinkwashing, we are seeing a rise in stereotypes such as “the beaten, burnt, oppressed, foreign woman of color” that Zine talks about. Another quote from “Queering the Map” in Haifa explains the emotions behind this: “I get jealous when I see people that don't deserve to live there enjoying their lives, having pride parades, while turning ours into hell…but this actually made me realize I can handle someone being homophobic to me but I can't handle someone supporting settler colonialism.” We must create an alliance within cultural communities, even if it means putting cultural identity above queer identity at times because the perception of racialized identities and the struggles that accompany these identities pose a more immediate threat.