An Invitation

Dear Friends,
I cannot say much at this moment because it is report writing time, but I did want to invite you to my personal blog which I've been updating since leaving America for an indefinite period. Link is: http://raffijoewartanian.blogspot.com/

Peace
Paz
Khaghaghoutyoun
Raffi

On the Arab world and racial discourse

Friday, June 20, 2008
L'Institut du Monde Arabe and Restaurant de la Mosquée de Paris

It has been said that, of all the topics to avoid in polite company, race and religion rank the most highly. Such trivial minutiae of etiquette, however, apparently do not apply at L’Institut du Monde Arabe. (Or perhaps we’ve simply failed to reach polite-company status. But I think not.)

The first activity was a guided tour of the institute. Designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, the building was quite unique. (Joan from DC just made a quick cameo in my subconscious solely to remind me that uniqueness does not exist, inherent proof that Humanity in Action has already left an indelible imprint. But I digress.) Equipped with computer-controlled shutters, the windows of the institute emphasize what the tour guide described as the Arab desire to “see without being seen.”

Soon we moved on to other issues. Of most interest to me personally was the distinction stressed between the oft-confused Arab and Islamic worlds. The Arab League defines an Arab as “a person whose language is Arabic, who lives in an Arabic speaking country, who is in sympathy with the aspirations of the Arabic speaking peoples.” (Merci beaucoup, Wikipedia.) It is a depressing social commentary that so few casual observers in the Western world seem to grasp the significance of the above statement’s omission of religious language. While the region generally referred to as ‘Arab’ is predominantly comprised of Muslims, the Islamic world encompasses a far greater geographical and ethnic spectrum. However, in our desperation to comprehend the ‘post-9/11 era,’ a tragic oversimplification of two overlapping yet quite distinct people-groups has become the status quo. Ironically, America’s understanding of Muslims and Arabs today could be seen as more primitive now than pre-9/11: then, we remained blissfully unaware; now, our rapidly constructed paradigms have dogmatically attached us to dangerous fallacies. Islam has been carelessly branded as inherently militant; the term jihad has been mutilated beyond recognition; Arabs are frequently associated with extremism and fundamentalism. Fear and anxiety have driven us to illogical conclusions, and these untruths have helped to trigger the mutual negative sentiments between countless Western and Middle Eastern peoples. “Know thy enemy” indeed.

Following the tour, we spoke with Ouerdia Oussedik, who discussed the various faces of L’Institut du Monde Arabe. Broadly defining the institute’s role as the spread of knowledge of the Arab world, Oussedik then detailed the various methods and programs used towards that end. Education was highlighted; specialists and guest lecturers appear every week to speak on Islam in France, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and other relevant contemporary issues. These events are complemented by weekly literary discussions, a magazine, language and culture classes, etc.

The last event of the day took place at Restaurant de la Mosquée de Paris. Claude Grunitzky of Trace Magazine, at times vacillating between courage and naïveté, plugged his personal brand of ‘transculturalism.’ (Incidentally, he also shamelessly plugged his book of the same title, leading me to conclude that while perhaps racially-defined identities may someday become passé, authors of all races are forever doomed to collective homogeneity.)

Grunitzky called for a new epoch, one in which identity – both of self and others – would transcend race and describe choices, interests, and experiences instead. But while he envisioned a world in which Barack Obama could be appreciated for his policies, ambition, and charisma without being confined to a racial paradigm, I doubt that such a moment could ever arrive without first traversing the uncomfortable racial overemphasis America is undergoing in the current election cycle. It would be ludicrous to suggest that we could ever achieve authentic trans-racial egalitarianism without first lauding the painful, halting steps necessary to initiate it. Ignoring Obama’s race today would be allowing one of the crowning achievements of the past forty years of civil rights triumphs to slip by without the fanfare appropriate to its monumental nature.

And yet I am reluctant to charge Grunitzky with ignorance. It seems unlikely, given his understanding of America’s recent racial history, that he has somehow failed to understand the inevitability of its current obsession with race. Instead, what is somewhat more irritating is his lack of clarity on the actual destination of the Western world’s awkward, lumbering move towards ‘transculturalism.’ Although he provided a concise (and yet vague) definition of the term – the ability to transcend cultural borders – he was considerably less transparent in regards to his hope for what he termed a “post-black” world.

Once Grunitzky commenced with his description(s) of post-blackness, the discussion quickly devolved into a question of language. The students were divided over exactly what such a term entailed. Initially, it appeared that Grunitzky’s post-blackness referred to a sort of social utopia in which individuals would be defined by what they do. This world would be virtually devoid of racial discourse, not out of denial but out of its eventual irrelevance. In defense of the potential for such a reality, Grunitzky used Tyra Banks and Oprah Winfrey as two examples of public figures who are no longer characterized by their race.

Not everyone felt that Grunitzky had advocated the utter abolition of racial identity, however. Perhaps, some argued, his was simply a plea for a moratorium on the pervasive gross racial mischaracterizations common to popular culture (and exemplified by Hollywood). Only after we finally tire of these inane typecasts could we begin a genuine discourse on our racial similarities and particularities.

Which post-blackness, then, was Claude Grunitzky advocating? His seeming unwillingness to be confined to one specific definition was aggravating. However, other comments he made during the course of his lecture seemed to indicate that his version of post-blackness referred more to abolition of race-based identity than simply to an eradication of pejorative depictions of minorities in the media. His reflections on his frustration with a lack of acceptance among the African-American community in the States, his persistent feelings of being an outsider in Togo, and his struggles with identity crisis while in France all appeared to correspond to a desire to eliminate race as a defining characteristic and replace it with more relevant categories.

Could such an era ever arrive, though? Would it truly be beneficial to discard all notions of race in favor of alternative criteria? Aside from the proposition’s obvious idealism, there exists also an inherent danger that, in attempting to diminish the history of racial culture, one could actually create more confusion as a result.

Another fascinating aspect of Friday’s discussion was the way in which language played such a crucial role in framing the discourse. It provided much material for later reflection, and I couldn’t help but marvel at just how much gravity is often assigned to word choice – and by extension, I wondered if such attention to detail is simply a responsible prerequisite for fruitful discussion, or at least partially the product of our fragmented society’s collective inability to move past the safety of politically correct nitpicking. (I’m inspired mostly by our debates over the term “post-blackness,” but the linguistic phenomenon extends much farther than this.) While the value of carefully chosen terminology is nonnegotiable, I must admit that I often grow weary of debating language instead of the case itself on its own merits. Maybe I’m just lazy…which is precisely the same reason that I’ve decided to stop writing this post in the middle of a thought.

Reflections and a Comment

Dear Bosnian, France and U.S. fellows,

I have expressed to several of you how much I have really enjoyed group discussions both inside of the classrom when given class time to debrief and outside of HIA when we're walking around Paris -getting lost- and/or savoring crepes together. Personally, I have learned a lot from fellows, especially the French and Bosnian fellows, during discussions. I will not use names but I thank those of you who have been in my discussion groups and have had the patience to answer my questions. I really wish we could have had more time to digest information and deconstruct arguments together in an effective fashion since the beginning.

My short comment for you all is actually taken from a group discussion I recently participated in. At times, there seems to be a celebration for the U.S.' success in approaching race discourse, whenever it is compared to France. I personally think it is quite hypocritical for the U.S. fellows to allow our speakers and other fellows to make comments that may even hint such success without presenting any challenges to this notion of U.S. victory when talking about issues pertaining to minorities and race.

Yes, the U.S. may embrace dialogue about our history rooted in slavery and institutional segregation and celebrate its history of immigrants and present day diversity, BUT let's not forget that people in the U.S. are still generally afraid to talk realities like modern day slavery (ex: garment industry sweatshops in Los Angeles and agriculture) and modern day educational apartheid in the U.S. -both topics deeply rooted and intertwined with issues of race, socio-economic status, legal status, but also (let me emphasize this) race.

I do recognize that the people of the U.S. have made progress in addressing race -and this is mostly attributed to our willingness to recognize our history and talk about racism. However, mainstream society is still not willing to recognize the legacy of inequalities that continues to thrive today (elimination of affirmative action demonstrates this) and is reluctant to see the complexities of race in the present.

I don't mean to be preaching to the choir, but I hope that during this program and later, in the future, when we become human rights activists and spokespeople for our country we are more honest with ourselves and with others about the realities of our own country. The U.S. has a lot to learn from the situation in France, because we are not too far ahead in this dialogue about race (as some may think) and the fact that Obama may be the first black president of the U.S. does not and should not lead us to conclude that struggle of ethnic minorities in the U.S. is over.

Paz,
A

13th of June: the suburban youths in France

This day focused on the topic of the suburban youths in France.

In the morning, we met Fabien Jobard, a sociologist and a researcher at the CNRS who used to work with the police headquarters and who talked about the relationship between the police and suburban youths. He reminded us the circumstances of the trigger of the 2005 riots with the death of two young men. He underlined that both the attitude of the Minister of the Interior (in 2005 it was N.Sarkozy) and the government were much more at the origin of the riots than the event itself, claiming that the two young men were at that time well known by the police without any material clue. Moreover, he insisted both on the duration of those riots which lasted two weeks and on their intensity (the damages were estimated at 200 million of euros). His explanation about the end of the riots was very interested and a bit amazing because he argued that the fall of the temperature and the beginning of the soccer game were the main reasons of the end of the riots (the youth could not gather anymore). In addition, he highlighted the fact that the race had not a large role in the riots. According to him, the main justifications of those riots were: to protest against Sarkozy and his police forces but also to struggle against the silence of the Older toward their own situation of immigrants.

At the end, he underlined that there was not any political meaning of the riots: no leader voice, no political party involved, and no influence of any religious group. In fact, the riots were mainly motivated by the fear of the future, the economic situation of the youths in the “cités” and the local events which reinforced the feeling of injustice among this population.

In the afternoon, we had a roundtable with two institutional actors in a Parisian suburb called Ivry. The first was Mehdi, a 29 years old official of the communist party and the second was André Added, an entreprenor. Both grew up in a project and come from an immigrant family but they have two different views about the youth in the “cites” especially in terms of action. Mehdi focus on a social action although André Added argues that the main thing we have to do is to invest in the projects.

Moreover, it was very interesting and thoughtful to hear different opinions about the challenges towards the youth in the suburbs today. For Mehdi, it is clear that we have to give them a chance to create their own way to success. For, André Added, the most important thing is that they have to take this chance, underlining that in the suburbs the youth is hardly convinced that they cannot avoid their own fate and change the system. Beyond their disagreement, both embody an image of hope for the youth in suburbs: showing that if you want, you can. But for them, it’s obvious that the society has a role to play, establishing some mechanism to guarantee their inclusion.

"Today", Wednesday June 6

On Wednesday we started at Respect Magazine, where we heard from a journalist for the magazine, and then from Pap Ndiaye on why he believes French politics needs diversity in order to improve the government's diversity and anti-discrimination policies. In the afternoon we attended a panel at the Institute Montaigne, where we heard from a variety of panelists on the challenges of diversifying institutions and the pros and cons of racial statistics.

Two things have come up that I'd like to address. First, Patick Simone, in the panel at Institute Montaigne, said something off the cuff about discrimination based upon behavior. Regardless of whatever it was that P. Simone said in specific, I began to wonder about the logical limits of discrimination and diversity. I think most people would permit that nothing morally obliges us to put up with inappropriate behavior - thus I don't chew gum at interviews. To jump tracks for a second, we've heard a few times this week that the immorality of "race"-based discrimination lies in the fact that, at least from the French, deconstructionist perspective, "race" is an artificial social construct applied to arbitrarily categorized populations and is thus inadmissible as a basis for judgements about people. Racial discrimination has no basis. An individual's behavior, however, is a legitimate basis for discrimination against that individual. What is bothering me is that, to many, sexual orientation is more-or-less a series of behaviors, not a necessary biological difference. Also, if universalism holds, and women and men are biologically but not essentially different, couldn't one treat "femininity" as a behavioral choice? This opens the door to a bigot or chauvinist feeling justified for his/her discriminatory thinking. To avoid this, I think one would need to draw lines between which types of behavior can serve as the basis for discrimination and which types can't. I imagine (hope) that there is a hole in my logic. Help me find it please.

Second thing I wanted to bring up: I read Chris's blog post about what is at stake in our discussions and I had a couple problems, but I'll restrain myself to one. And I realize that this might seem like a nit-picky point made at the level of theory, but I think it should be said nonetheless. Chris wrote: "I believe the lack of racial language is one reason for the fact that racial difference cannot be explored, and therefore cannot be addressed in any way to alleviate the experiences of the minority here." I think Chris is only seeing half the picture here. France is the land of critical theory, and Saussure held that the thoughts we think are conditioned by the language we have at our disposal. We can't think thoughts for which we don't have the appropriate language. So, on the one hand, Chris is right: if France lacks the language to explore racial differences, then indeed the discourse will be impeded. On the other hand, if the language doesn't exist in France, maybe that has conditioned the experiences of minorities in France to have actually had a fundamentally dissimilar experience than that of American minorities, even if the symptoms of their experience appear similar. I don't know if even I agree with this idea, but it might serve as a partial explanation for why I, at least, have found it so hard to comprehend what I've heard about the French minority experience. 

In general, I think Americans are so steeped in the language of diversity and inequality that we might not be able to see socio-economic/race-relations in other situations outside of our internalized frameworks. Speaking personally, the notion of universalism (as opposed to a difference-embracing and -celebrating multicultural model) had never occurred to me before a week and some ago. I don't know yet if I agree with it or not, but if the French do, I think us Americans should pay more attention to how that might have actually shaped a person in the minority's lived experience of his/her minority-ness.

Martin is up for next wednesday.

-pr

Time's running fast...

Today was our 5th day together and still no tensions in the group, no murders... Guys, we can be proud of us, we're superfellows!

After the Home Fellows' exposés, we reflected about multiculturalism in France, then we met a modern form of resistance and we went over almost 2 centuries of the History of immigration in France in 30 minutes. So, yes we're tired, but it's a sane tiredness, isn't it?

Everybody will agree with me if I say that we learned a lot today and, for some of us, it helped make ideas about our report and our action plan more and more precise). Little by little, things are answering each other, we make connections between all the lectures, the sessions and the visits.

It's time for me to go to bed now (actually, after you dear fellows, my bed is my bestfriend) but I can't wait for tomorrow!

K.ryn

Immigration and colonialism

Today was a very interesting day, talking about immigration and colonialism.
We started by 10 this morning at the Cité Nationale de l'Histoire de l'Immigration and we visited the temporary exhibition on the 1931 colonial exhibition. It was Maureen Murphy, an art historian, who was our tour guide.
So, during the colonial period, France (as other colonialist countries, like the UK) was only promoting the "bright" side and the virtues of colonialism... only showing like 'France at work' but hiding the fact that many workers were Italians. It was a very good idea that yesterday we watched the movie on immigration because it helped a lot to understand the immigration situation and policies in France. Then after the exhibition we moved to a room to discuss about "the challenges of designing and exhibition at the CNHI" with Maureen and Marianne Amar. The Cité de l'Immigration is a new-born museum, it just opened last year. Many of the objects that were in the museum formerly belonged to the Museum of African and Oceanian arts + Musée de l'homme (the one in Trocadéro). After we had another speaker, Virigine Guiraudon, with whom we spoke about immigration policies in France. We mainly discussed on Sarkozy's new immigration policies and how to deal with EU laws, since France has entered the Espace Schengen, there's like no more boundaries with other European countries that are within Schengen... But today, the focus of immigration is really to prevent the arrival of "foreigners".



Then, we had lunch in the park near the Cité de l'immigration, in Bois de Vincennes. The weather was nice, it was a nice break being outside, lying in the grass under the sun. Thanks Marty for the sandwiches (and I hope you finished your carrots!! lol)





Then next step, in the afternoon we all moved together to the Musée du Quai Branly, nearby the Eiffel tower.

















Paris symbol was built for the 1889 universal exhibition


We all had like one hour to move around the museum to see either the permanent exhibition or the temporary ones. Since I've already seen the permanent exhibition (for those who would like to go visit the Musée again, know that it is FREE on saturday evening from 6 to 9 PM, you just to show you ID card, to prove that you're under 25), I decided to go visit the temporary exhibit on Polynesia. In fact, it was the first day of the exhibition !!! It was pleasant to see so many art pieces coming crafted in Fidji, Cook Islands and many from French Polynesia, my "native" land if I may say so. After, Anne Christine Taylor talked to us about the discourse of the Musée. As for the audience of the museum, it really has success among Africans, so I believe the museum really achieved its goal. Then, we had another speaker, Michel Giraud, on the memory of slavery in the French Carribean population : silence or amnesia? This speaker really had his own convictions, criticizing by many ways Sarkozy's policies. Then we went on to talk about Obama running for presidential election.
We finally finished by 6:30, we left straight away, it's a shame, we should have spent some time in the Garden, it really is an architectural pleasure !

With some of the fellows we walked from Quai Branly to the Champs-Elysées... and tonight we were hoping to see France beat Italy... but no... it's over, there's just no more hope now... That's so sad !
Well I guess that's all for today, pretty tired now, have to get some sleep to stay awake for tomorrow... (easier said than done :D)