#And I might not be muslim but 1) white folks can’t tell the difference 2) I’m one fucking rung above on this hate ladder aren’t I

[aeolianblues]

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[avocado-ramen]

I should be sleeping. Instead, allow me to say some things that, to me, are fairly obvious, but might not be for the folks that follow me. 1. My blog/feed/whatever this is, is a safe space for everyone. 1a. Exceptions: Nazis, TERFs, Trump supporters, racists, and the like. No warning, you will be blocked if I figure out you fall into any of these categories. 2. I am a trans man, this place is safe for trans folks. 3. This place is safe for Black folks, Brown folks, and all POC folks. 4. This place is safe for those of all faiths and ethnic groups (yes, in some cases, these can/have blended together). Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Sikh, Pagan, Christian, Roma, Hindu, etc. 4a. Exceptions: Christo-fascists/evangelicals, and other fanatics. No warning, you will be blocked if I figure out you fall into any of these categories. 5. This place is safe for disabled/differently abled folks. I always try to remember to put alt text on any images I post, but I might forget. If you see an original post of mine without alt text, please nudge me. It’s not much, but it’s something I can do to try to make my posts accessible. 6. This place is safe for neuro-divergent folks. While undiagnosed, I’m fairly certain I fall into at least one neuro-spicy category, and I’m always happy to share my wobbly, leaky raft. 7. I mentioned trans folks specifically in # 2, but allow me to broaden that here and say that all LGBTQIA2+ folks are welcome here. 8. This place is safe for sex workers, but not the 80 bajillion bots. Those get reported for spam and blocked. I apologise to any random white woman that is ‘untitled’ with no posts that is an actual person that tried to follow me. I couldn’t tell you from the bots. 9. This place is accepting of minors on social media platforms, but may occasionally contain or link to adult content. I am not your parent or guardian. I am not responsible for policing the content you are looking at. If you follow me, you accept responsibility for your own actions and acknowledge you may see content that is not suitable for minors. Don’t like it? Don’t follow. 10. In today’s political climate in the US, I lean so far left I might as well be laying down. I have to be in order to survive. My country is on fire. Republicans are actively trying to legislate myself and others like me into extinction. (Not to mention all the other terrible things they’re doing and demographics they’re attacking.) I can be vocal, usually in extensive reblogging, when it comes to political matters in the US that I feel are important. This is your only warning. If you can’t deal with it, you might want to unfollow.

[keplercryptids]

nonfiction LGBTQ+ books i read this year

i read a lot this year, and a good chunk of it was LGBTQ+ nonfiction. so i thought it might be nice to list what i read. as a note, many of these books deal with LGBTQ history in the United States. too often, mainstream US-centric LGBTQ texts focus on white middle-class cisgender folks, though I’ve done my best to balance that as much as possible with other perspectives. (that being said, if you got ‘em, i would LOVE book recommendations that tackle worldwide/non-white LGBTQ issues!)

Accessibility notes: Given the nature of the genre, there’s a lot of intense discussion re: homophobia and transphobia. Basically every book listed covers those things to some extent, and I’ve specified where there’s additional potentially triggering content. (If you have specific questions about triggers, please let me know!) also, some of these books are on the academic side. I’ve done my best to note when a book was very academic or when I found it to be more readable. (full disclosure on that note: I’m a college grad and voracious reader without any reading-specific learning disabilities, so my opinion may be different than yours!) as a final note, I was able to access most of these as e-books/audiobooks through my local library. I live in a major metropolitan area, if that gives you any idea of how easy it’ll be for you to find these books. I’ve noted when a book was more difficult to get my hands on.

History

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940 by George Chauncey. As the title suggests, this book focuses on gay male communities in NYC pre-World War 2. Even with that limited scope, this is an important read to better understand gay male history in the early 20th century. Gay communities thrived in the early 1900s and this snapshot of that is really wonderful. This is definitely more of an academic read, but I highly recommend it. while it definitely focuses on white middle-class gay men, there was more discussion of poor and/or gay men of color than i had actually expected, so that’s nice. (CW for rape and sexual assault, homophobic violence and medicalization of homosexuality.)

Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture by Siobhan B. Somerville. Finally, a book about queer history that actually talks about black people! I was expecting more of a history book, whereas this was more of a critique of specific novels, plays and movies of the early 1900s and was way more focused than i was expecting. don’t get me wrong, I majored in English lit so i’m super into that kind of analysis as well, it just wasn’t as far-reaching as I would have liked. Also, it’s very academic. (Only the print version was available at my library.) (CW for racism, mentions of slavery.)

Transgender History by Susan Striker. This book describes itself as an “approachable introductory text” to transgender history in the US, which I agree with. It’s a pretty short read given the enormity of the topic, so it doesn’t go into much detail about specific groups or events, but imo it’s a good introduction. Especially interesting to me was the information about where and when TERF ideology began. Academic but on the easier-to-read side. (CW for transphobia, gross TERF rhetoric, brief mentions of the AIDS crisis, police violence.)

Gay Revolution by Lillian Faderman. okay so, I gave this 1 star. it’s probably a good book if you know absolutely nothing about US LGBTQ history and want an intro, but a review on goodreads said that it should be called Gay Assimilation instead and i completely agree. Faderman focuses on white middle-to-upper class gay and lesbian assimilationists, often at the expense of radical queer and trans people of color. The latter is hardly mentioned at all, which is ridiculous given trans folks’ contributions to the LGBTQ movement. When radical people ARE mentioned, it’s often in a disparaging way, or in a way that positions the radicals as too extreme. Faderman constantly repeats the refrain that the fight for LGBT rights was “just like what black people did for their rights” without any addendum about why that is...not a good take. There’s no meaningful discussion of race, class or intersectionality. She lauds Obama as a hero for the gays and there’s a ton (I mean a TON) of content about how military acceptance + gay marriage = we won, or whatever. anyway, i wasn’t a fan, although many of the events and organizations discussed in this book are important to know just from a factual basis. (CW for all the stuff I mentioned, plus police violence, medicalization of homosexuality. it’s also fucking LONG so i recommend the audiobook, lol.)

Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States by Joey L. Mogul,  Andrea J. Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock. This is “a searing examination of queer experiences--as ‘suspects,’ defendants, prisoners, and survivors of crime.” A frequently upsetting but super important read about how LGBTQ identities have been policed in the past, and currently are policed today. i wish there was more focus on trans folks, but other than that it’s a solid read. (CW for all the things you’d expect a book about policing and imprisoning LGBTQ folks to include: police and institutionalized violence, sexual assault, transphobia, homophobia.)

Stonewall by Martin Duberman. This book follows the lives and activism of six LGBTQ folks before, during and after the Stonewall riots. Note: Stonewall itself is only discussed in one chapter about 2/3 of the way through, the rest of the book dedicated to the six individuals’ lives and activism up to and after that point. It’s a history book with a strong narrative focus that I found to be a fairly accessible read. (CW for minors engaging in sex work and sexual predation by adults, sexual and domestic violence, police violence, drug and alcohol abuse, mentions of suicide.)

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts. This is a HEAVY but really important read about the AIDS epidemic in the US, tracking the disease and the political/cultural response from about 1980-1985. It’s journalistic nonfiction, so although it’s a very long book I found it easier to read than more academic-y books. the only thing i really disliked was how the book demonized “Patient Zero” in quite unfair ways, but it was originally published in ‘87 so that explains part of it. I want to stress again that it’s heavy, as you’d expect a book about thousands of deaths to be. (CW: oh boy where to start. Graphic descriptions of disease/death, graphic descriptions of sex, medical neglect, republican nonsense.)

Memoirs, essays, etc

Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme edited by Ivan E. Coyote. i felt mixed about this one! i appreciated the different perspectives regarding gender and desire, especially since this anthology contains a lot of essays by people who came of age in the 60s-80s (so there’s a historical bent too). but some of the essays feel dated, at best, and offensive at worst. there was more than one instance of TERF-y ideology thrown in. probably 1/4 of the essays were really really great, and i’d still recommend reading it in order to form your own opinions--also, imo it’s useful to see where TERF ideology comes from. this book was harder to find, and i had to order a print version through interlibrary loan. (CW for a few TERFy essays. i read this earlier in the year so it’s possible i’m forgetting some other triggers, sorry!)

Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation by (editors) Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman. Serving as a follow-up of sorts to Bornstein’s Gender Outlaw, this is a collection of narratives by transgender and gender-nonconforming folks. While not “history” in a technical sense, many of the writers are 30+ and give a wide array of LGBTQ+ experiences, past and present, that are important. I didn’t agree with every single viewpoint, of course, duh! But some of the essays were really powerful and overall it’s a good read. (CW for one essay about eating disorders, some outdated language/reclaimed slurs as to be expected--language is one of the main themes of the collection actually so the “outdatedness” is important.)

S/He by Minnie Bruce Pratt. A memoir published in 1995, focusing on Minnie’s life, marriage, gender identity, eventual coming out and relationship with Leslie Feinberg. i really enjoyed this one. it was beautifully written. there are many erotic elements to this memoir so keep that in mind. also was a little harder to get, and i had to order a print version via interlibrary loan. (i read this awhile ago and can’t remember specific triggers, sorry! if anyone knows of some, please let me know.)

I’m Afraid of Men by Vivek Shraya. A memoir by a trans woman ruminating on masculinity. it’s beautiful and very short (truly more of a longform essay), so it’s a good one if you don’t have the attention span/time for longer books. (CW for sexism, harassment, transphobia.)

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde. god, this memoir is gorgeous and is one of my favorite books of the year. it chronicles Audre’s childhood in Harlem and her coming-of-age in the 1950s as a lesbian. ultimately, this is a book about love and that resonates throughout every page. idk can you tell i loved this book so much??? (CW for child abuse, sexual assault, a friend’s suicide, racism.)

We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir by Samra Habib. suuuuch a good book! Samra writes about her life as she and her family arrive in Canada as refugees from Pakistan in her early childhood, onto her life today as a queer Muslim woman of color, photographer and activist. beautifully written and just such an important perspective. Only the print version was available at my library. (CW for child sexual assault, a suicide attempt and suicidal ideation, non-graphic mentions of domestic violence, racism and sexism.)

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kababe. this is a beautifully illustrated graphic novel memoir about the author’s journey of discovering eir identity as queer. i related to a lot of it, which was great on a personal level, but i also think it could be a great educational tool for those wanting to know more about gender queerness (especially for those who prefer graphic novels!) (CW for gender dysphoria, descriptions of gynecological exams, imagery of blood and a couple pages depicting being impaled, some nudity, vomit.)

[courtreadsmostlyfiction]

Best books of 2019

I read 179 books in 2019 (and finished the 179th, The Handmaid’s Tale, on 12/31, so I can watch the series and read The Testaments). This is the most I’ve ever read in one year (in 2018, I read 173). I was sharing this update with my grandmother, and she asked me if my goal was to read as many books as possible. I thought about it for a bit, and it’s not but it is? I told her how I knew I only had so many books I’d get to read in a lifetime, and I probably think about that fact too much. I don’t want to read just for quantity’s sake, yet I know that I find some of the best books because I have an insatiable appetite for reading. Too many books, too little (life)time.

I also read instead of watching TV (generally), and love when I’m reading something that pulls me away from social media. I love reading when Grant is reading next to me (on the couch, in bed, across from me at a restaurant on an introvert date).

And last but not least, books have saved my life before many times, and making time for reading helps keep me sane. 

...now onto our program - my favorite books of the year! This year I also blogged more, if not *regularly*, so some of the books below were suggested before. If you got my Christmas card, some of these might not be surprises, either, since we had the fun idea of listing our family member’s favorite books. Some of mine are different, though, since I had to have that done in early December, and there was so much good reading time left in the year! I went on holiday break on the 17th and had saved a lot of good books for my vacation.

TOP ELEVEN (I wrote about all except the last three -- thanks December reading for those books that made this list! -- in previous posts, so will try to capture in one sentence why you might want to pick it up): 

Good Talk (graphic memoir) - I bought my copy at The Strand, and have bought at least 10 copies to give to friends who are parenting in the age of Trump.

(posting this pic to prove my point, even though I’ll likely get shit from Grant about our Amazon bill)

The Most Fun We Ever Had (literary fiction) - a book with a dysfunctional family (yes, please!) and a character who cusses a lot PLUS a ginkgo biloba tree.

Fleishman Is In Trouble (literary fiction) - I want to reread this, and I rarely reread things; a rare 5-star rating from me that made me think about how I participate in misogyny without even realizing it.

Speak No Evil (literary fiction) - a queer, black immigrant high schooler in DC grapples with his identity.

The Nickel Boys (literary fiction) - a fictionalized story of real history: a disciplinary school in Florida where black boys are sent (and often “disappear”); the ending had me crying. (Also on Obama’s list of his fave reads of 2019)

Red, White & Royal Blue (romance) - more romance with bi relationships and politics, please!

Educated (non-fiction, memoir) - it wasn’t what I expected at all, I couldn’t put it down, and ultimately I think it’s about surviving.

Heads of the Colored People (short stories) - stories (and usually I hate short stories) about black identity that I’m STILL thinking about.

Disappearing Earth (mystery) - this was on so many best of lists (including the NYTimes top TEN for the year), and the hard cover had been sitting on my shelf for two long. I had it first on my read-during-winter-break list. As soon as I read two pages, I was sucked in. Two young sisters disappear in Russia’s Far East, and then the story unfolds, told by the perspectives of folks directly and indirectly connected to the crime. 

All This Could Be Yours (literary fiction) - I requested this at the library before it even had a cover :) because I’m a Jami Attenberg fan. A dysfunctional family’s patriarch is dying, and his son and daughter are called to his bedside, where the whole family grapples with his life of crime and abuse.

Juliet Takes A Breath (YA) - Juliet (Nuyorican lesbian) gets a coveted internship with hippy, white feminist author, and white feminism rears it’s ugly head.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: 

Nothing To See Here (literary fiction) - one time, a guy in Chicago had a job at a newspaper where he was the Biblioracle and he would recommend books to folks who wrote in if you told him favorites and what you read recently. 1) I need that job! and 2) he recommended Kevin Wilson’s The Family Fang to me, and I loved it. I was excited to read this, and it felt like such a real representative of politics and friendship even though people literally burst into flames.

The River (literary fiction / mystery) - in Grant’s top 5 of the year, and one of my favorite Peter Heller books (which is saying something, since I loved The Dog Stars and Celine). Two high school boys go for a graduation trip in the boundary waters, and there’s a brushfire growing and possibly a woman missing.

The Chain (thriller) - I keep picking up thrillers that people swear are the next Gone Girl or even better, and nothing is. This didn’t make my top ten, but if you want a page turner with a twist and also think about the banality of evil and what you might or might not do, try this.

Royal Holiday (romance) - Jasmine Guillory is always on point! I couldn’t even save this for Christmas reading!* A personal stylist gets to go to England to style the Meghan Markle (shout out to Suits!) fictionalized equivalent, and her mom goes along and finds romance. 

Intercepted, Fumbled, Blitzed (romance series) - have you read all of Jasmine Guillory? Pick up Alexa Martin next! It’s funny and captures the nuance of being a football fan or former football fan; the book doesn’t deny how it exploits men of color or the traumatic brain injuries. 

They Called Us Enemy (graphic memoir) - I don’t think that I would have ever picked up a graphic memoir if I didn’t already love Mira Jacobs (see Good Talk, above) and George Takei (LOVE him on facebook) already. Now I might seek them out. It’s George’s story of the Japanese internment camps that America likes to not remember.

Slay (YA) - Q: Do you need a YA version of Ready Player One written by a black woman? A: YES! After all of the racism she experiences in gaming, a black high schooler creates a video game only for black folks. No one knows she’s the creator. When a young kid is killed supposedly due to the game, she faces being revealed and wonders what she created.

The Love and Lies of Rukhsana Ali (YA) - I couldn’t put this book down; it’s about a young, queer Muslim woman whose parents want to marry her off. It’s never the right time to come out, and when they find out unexpectedly, she’s sent off to Bangladesh.

Heaven, My Home (mystery) - The follow up to Bluebird, Bluebird, and just as wonderful. Black Texas Ranger Darren Matthews is back, and is tasked with finding a missing 9 year-old boy from a white supremacist family.

Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed (non-fiction) - I asked my therapist if she had read this, but she hadn’t yet. She did tell me that she sees a therapist, though. Reading this (and hearing that) made me feel less alone and less crazy. It’s also pretty funny. (AND you know I don’t like non-fiction!!!)

What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About (non-fiction, essays) 

Southernmost (rural fiction) - did I just make up a genre? Yes! If you liked Plainsong or anything by Kent Haruf (and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, read that instead), I think you’d like this. A rural town, where a preacher decides not to turn his back on a gay couple, and then faces the consequences. I found it thoughtful, nuanced, and real. 

The View from Penthouse B (light fiction) - hmm, can’t stop making up genres! This is witty and well written, and I think is the book equivalent of a warm bath. I loved these sisters who end up living together in an NYC penthouse (the sister who owns it: separated from her scandal-ridden husband and lost her fortune in a Madoff-like ponzi scheme, and the sister who moves in is fairly recently widowed and everyone but her is ready for her to get over it).

Daisy Jones & The Six (historical fiction) - I think this was Grant’s favorite of the year, and it was definitely in the top 5. I loved it, too. It felt like the book version of Almost Famous.

American Spy (spy thriller) - it has so many things I’m looking for in a book all-in-one: excellent writing, fully developed characters, and moving plot. The premise is a black woman in U.S. intelligence during the Cold War, and the book grapples with racism and sexism and patriotism and family. So good!

To Night Owl from Dogfish (middle grade fiction) - I picked this up because Meg Wolitzer is one of the authors (wrote The Interestings) and because I’ve seen it on so many (non-middle grade) lists. It didn’t disappoint! Q: Do you need an LGBTQ Parent Trap-like book in your life (A: Yes, obvs). Pick this one up! I will try to read it with Ox in a year or so.

WHEW!

In 2020, I’m hoping for more 5 star reads (only five in 2019 - Good Talk, Fleishman Is In Trouble, Educated, Speak No Evil, Heads of the Colored People), more mysteries to make this list (bonus if it’s a new series [or new-to-me series] I can get lost in), and that I find the time to paint more book covers.

BONUS MEME

*Gah this meme is me, but this is my blog, so whatevs! Also a lot of these memes, too, which I hadn’t seen before!

[newsnigeria]

Check out New Post published on Ọmọ Oòduà

New Post has been published on http://ooduarere.com/news-from-nigeria/world-news/deconstructing-islamophobia/

Deconstructing Islamophobia

[this article was written for the Unz Review]

Introduction: a short survey of the cuckoo’s nest

My initial idea was to begin with a definition of “Islamophobia” but after looking around for various definitions, I decided to use my own, very primitive definition.  I will define Islamophobia as the belief that Islam (the religion) and/or Muslims (the adherents to this religion) represent some kind of more or less coherent whole which is a threat to the West.  These are two distinct arguments rolled up into one: the first part claims that Islam (the religion) represents some kind of threat to the West while the second part claims that the people who embrace Islam (Muslims) also represent some kind of threat to the West.  Furthermore, this argument makes two crucial assumptions:

there is such thing out there as a (conceptually sufficient) unitary Islam

there are such people with (conceptually sufficient) common characteristics due to their adherence to Islam

Next, let’s summarize the “evidence” typically presented in support of this thesis:

The god of Islam is not the same god as the God of Christianity

The Muslim world was created by the sword

The Prophet of Islam, Muhammad, was an evil person

Islam is incompatible with western democracy and represents a threat to what are referred to as “values” in the modern day West

Muslims have treated Christians horribly in many different historical instances

Muslims often turn to terrorism and commit atrocities

Islam is socially regressive and seeks to impose medieval values on a modern world

There are more such as these, but these, I believe, are the main ones.

What is crucial here is to point out that this evidence relies both on theological arguments (#1 #4 #7), and historical arguments (#2 #3 #5 #6).

Finally, there is a most interesting phenomenon which, for the time being, we shall note, but only discuss later: the legacy corporate Ziomedia on one hand denounces Islamophobia as a form of “racism” but yet, at the same time, the very same circles which denounce Islamophobia are also the ones which oppose all manifestations of real traditional Islam.  This strongly suggests that the study of this apparent paradox can, if carefully analyzed, yield some most interesting results, but more about that later.

Of course, all of the above is sort of a “bird’s eye” view of Islamophobia in the West.  Once we go down to the average Joe Sixpack level, all of the above is fused into one “forceful” slogan as this one:

This kind of crude fearmongering is targeted at the folks who don’t realize that the USA is not “America” and who, therefore, probably don’t have the foggiest notion of what Sharia law is or how it is adjudicated by Islamic courts.

[I have lived in the USA for a total of 22 years and have observed something very interesting: there is a unique mix of ignorance and fear which, in the USA, is perceived as “patriotic”.  A good example of this kind of “patriotism through ignorance” is in the famous song “Where Were You When the World Stopped Turning” by Alan Jackson which includes the following words: “I watch CNN but I’m not sure I can tell you the difference in Iraq and Iran, but I know Jesus and I talk to God“.  Truth be told, the same song also asked in reference to 9/11 “Did you burst out with pride for the red, white and blue?“.  Why exactly the massacre of 9/11 should elicit patriotic pride is explained as follows “And the heroes who died just doin’ what they do?“.  Thus when the “United American Committee” declares that Sharia law is a threat to “America” the folks raised in this culture of fear and patriotism immediately “get it”.  David Rovics hilariously described this mindset in his song “Evening News” where he says: “Evil men are plotting, to blow up Washington, DC, ’cause they don’t like freedom and democracy, they’re fans of the Dark Ages, they are all around, they’re marching from the desert sands, and coming to your town“.  I have had the fortune of visiting all the continents of our planet (except Oceania) and I can vouch that this blend of fear+patriotic fervor is something uniquely, well, not “American” but “USAnian”.]

Having quickly surveyed the Islamophobic mental scenery, we can now turn to a logical analysis of the so-called arguments of the Islamophobes.

Deconstructing the phobia’s assumptions: a unitary Islam

Let’s take the arguments one by one beginning with the argument of a unitary Islam.

Most of us are at least vaguely aware that there are different Islamic movements/schools/traditions in different countries.  We have heard of Shias and Sunni, some have also heard about Alawites or Sufism.  Some will even go so far as remembering that Muslim countries can be at war with each other, and that some Muslims (the Takfiris) only dream about killing as many other Muslims (who, obviously, don’t share the exact same beliefs) and that, in fact, movements like al-Qaeda, ISIS, etc have murdered other Muslims in huge numbers.  So the empirical evidence strongly suggest that this notion of a Muslim or Islamic unity is factually simply wrong.

Furthermore, we need to ask the obvious question: what *is* Islam?

Now, contrary to the hallucinations of some especially dull individuals, I am not a Muslim.  So what follows is my own, possibly mistaken, understanding of what “core Islam” is.  It is the acceptance of the following formula “There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God” or “lā ʾilāha ʾillā llāh muḥammadun rasūlu llā“.  Note that “Allah” is not a name, it is the word “God” and “rasul” can be translated as “prophet”.  There are also the so-called Five Pillars of Islam:

The Shahada or profession of faith “There is no god but God and Muhammad is the messenger of God“

The Salat or a specific set of daily prayers

The Zakat or alms giving

The Sawm or fasting

The Hadjj or pilgrimage to Mecca

That’s it!  A person who fully embraces these five pillars is considered a Muslim.  Or at least, so it would appear.  The reality is, of course, much more complex.  For the time being, I will just note that in this “core Islam” there is absolutely nothing, nothing at all, which could serve as evidence for any of the Islamophobic theories.  Yes, yes, I know, I can already hear the Islamophobes’ objections:  you are ignoring all the bad stuff in the Quran, you are ignoring all the bad stuff about spreading Islam by the sword, you are ignoring all the bad things Muhammad did in his life, you are ignoring the many local traditions and all the normative examples of the tradition (Sunnah and it’s Hadiths).  Yeah, except you can’t have it both ways.  You can’t say:

Islam is inherently evil/dangerous  AND

use local/idiosyncratic beliefs and actions to prove your point!

If Islam by itself is dangerous, then it has to be dangerous everywhere it shows up, irrespective of the region, people, time in history or anything else.

If we say that sometimes Islam is dangerous and sometimes it is not, then what we need to look into is not the core elements of the Islamic faith, but instead we need to identify those circumstances in which Islam was not a threat to anybody and those circumstances when Islam was a threat to others.

Furthermore, if your argument is really based on the thesis that Islam is evil always and everywhere, then to prove it wrong all I need to do is find one, just ONE, example where Muslims and non-Muslims have lived in peace together for some period of time.

[Sidebar: while I was working on my Master’s Degree in Strategic Studies I had the fortune of having the possibility to take a couple of courses outside my field of specialization and I decided to take the most “exotic” course I could find in SAIS‘ curriculum and I chose a course on Sharia law.  This was an excellent decision which I never regretted.  Not only was the course fascinating, I had the chance of writing a term paper on the topic “The comparative status of Orthodox Christians in history under Muslim and Latin rule“.  My first, and extremely predictable, finding was that treatment of Orthodox Christians by Muslim rulers ranged from absolutely horrible and even genocidal to very peaceful and kind.  Considering the long time period considered (14 centuries) and the immense geographical realm covered (our entire planet from Morocco to Indonesia and from Russia to South Africa), this is hardly surprising.  The core beliefs of Islam might be simple, but humans are immensely complicated beings who always end up either adding a local tradition or, at least, defending one specific interpretation of Islam.  My second finding was much more shocking: on average the status of Orthodox Christians under the Papacy was much worse than under Muslim rule.  Again, I am not comparing the status of Orthodox Serbs under Ottoman rule with the status of Orthodox Christians in modern Italy.  These are extreme examples.  But I do claim that there is sort of a conceptual linear regression which strongly suggests to us that there is a predictive (linear) model which can be used to make predictions and that the most obvious lesson of history is that the absolute worst thing which can happen to Orthodox Christians is to fall under their so-called “Christian brothers” of the West.  A few exceptions here and there do not significantly affect this model.  I encourage everybody to take the time to really study the different types of Muslim rulers in history, if only to appreciate how much diversity you will find].

Deconstructing the phobia’s assumptions: the “Muslim god” vs the “Christian God”

This is just about the silliest anti-Muslim argument I have ever heard and it come from folks inhabiting the far left side of a Bell Curve.  It goes something like this:

We, Christians, have our true God as God, whereas the Muslims have Allah, which is not the God of the Christians.  Thus, we worship different gods.

Of course, the existence of various gods or one, single, God does not depend on who believes in Him or who worships Him.  If we can agree on the notion that God is He Who created all of Creation, and if we agree that both Christians (all denominations) and Muslims (all schools) believe that they are worshiping that God then, since there is only one real/existing God, we do worship the same God simply because there are not “other” gods.

I wonder what those who say that “Muslims worship another god” think when they read the following words of Saint Paul to the Athenian pagans: “For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, To The Unknown God. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you” (Acts 17:23).   What Saint Paul told them is that they ignorantly worship a god whom, in spite of that ignorant worship, Saint Paul declared to them.  I submit that “ignorant worship” is not an insult, but a diagnosis of heterodoxy, and that such an “ignorant worship” can nonetheless be sincere.

The issue is not WHOM we worship, but HOW we worship (in terms of both praxis and doxa).

And yes, here the differences between Christians and Muslims are huge indeed.

In my 2013 article “Russia and Islam, part eight: working together, a basic “how-to”” I discussed the immense importance of these differences and how we ought to deal with them.  I wrote:

The highest most sacred dogmatic formulation of Christianity is the so-called “Credo” or “Symbol of Faith” (full text here; more info here).  Literally every letter down to the smallest ‘i‘ of this text is, from the Christian point of view, the most sacred and perfect dogmatic formulation, backed by the full authority of the two Ecumenical Councils which proclaimed it and all the subsequent Councils which upheld it.  In simple terms – the Symbol of Faith is absolutely non-negotiable, non-re-definable, non-re-interpretable, you cannot take anything away from it, and you cannot add anything to it.  You can either accept it as is, in toto, or reject it.

The fact is that Muslims would have many problems with this text, but one part in particular is absolutely unacceptable to any Muslim:

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, Begotten of the Father before all ages, Light of Light, Very God of Very God, Begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father, by whom all things were made

This part clearly and unambiguously affirms that Jesus-Christ was not only the Son of God but actually God Himself. This is expressed by the English formulation “of one essence with the Father” (ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί in Greek with the key term homousios meaning “consubstantial”). This is *THE* core belief of Christianity: that Jesus was the the anthropos, the God-Man or God incarnate.  This belief is categorically unacceptable to Islam which says that Christ was a prophet and by essence a ‘normal’ human being.

For Islam, the very definition of what it is to be a Muslim is found in the so-called “Shahada” or testimony/witness.  This is the famous statement by which a Muslim attests and proclaims that “There is no god but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God”.  One can often also hear this phrased as “There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is His prophet”.

Now without even going into the issue of whether Christians can agree or not that “Allah” is the appropriate name for God (some do, some don’t – this is really irrelevant here), it’s the second part which is crucial here: Christianity does not recognize Muhammad as a prophet at all.  In fact, technically speaking, Christianity would most likely classify Muhammad as a heretic (if only because of his rejection of the “Symbol of Faith”).  Saint John of Damascus even called him a ‘false prophet’.   Simply put: there is no way a Christian can accept the “Shahada” without giving up his Christianity just as there is no way for a Muslim to accept the “Symbol of Faith” without giving up his Islam.

So why bother?

Would it not make much more sense to accept that there are fundamental and irreconcilable differences between Christianity and Islam and simply give up all that useless quest for points of theological agreement?  Who cares if we agree on the secondary if we categorically disagree on the primary?  I am all in favor of Christians studying Islam and for Muslims studying Christianity (in fact, I urge them both to do so!), and I think that it is important that the faithful of these religions talk to each other and explain their points of view as long as this is not presented as some kind of quest for a common theological stance.  Differences should be studied and explained, not obfuscated, minimized or overlooked.

Bottom line is this: it is PRECISELY because Islam and Christianity are completely incompatible theologically (and even mutually exclusive!) that there is no natural enmity between these two religions unless, of course, some Christian or Muslim decides that he has to use force to promote this religion.  And let’s be honest, taken as a whole Christianity’s record on forced conversions and assorted atrocities is at least as bad as Islam’s, or even worse.  Of course, if we remove the Papacy from the overall Christian record, things looks better.  If then we also remove the kind of imperialism Reformed countries engaged in, it looks even better.  But even Orthodox rulers have, on occasion, resorted to forceful conversions and mass murder of others.

And here, just as in Islam, we notice that Christians also did not always spread their faith by love and compassion, especially once Christian rulers came to power in powerful empires or nations.

Deconstructing the phobia’s assumptions: Islam was spread by the sword

In reality the “Islam spread by the sword” is a total canard, at least when we hear it from folks who defend “democracy” but who stubbornly refuse to concede that 1) most democracies came to power by means of violent revolutions and that 2) just a look at a newspaper today (at least a non-western newspaper) will tell you that democracy is STILL spread by the sword.  As for the USA as country, it was built on by far the biggest bloodbath in history.  If anything, Sharia law and Islam could teach a great deal to the country which:

spends more on aggression than the rest of the world combined

has the highest percentage of people incarcerated (and most of these for non-violent crimes)

whose entire economy is based on the military-industrial complex

and who is engaged in more simultaneous wars of choice than any other country in history

So “Sharia Law Threatens America” is a lie.  And this is the truth:

Was Islam really spread by the sword?

Maybe.  But anybody making that claim better make darn sure that his/her religion, country or ideology has a much better record.  If not, then this is pure hypocrisy!

Finally, I will also note that Christ said “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence” (John 18:36).  In contrast, the Prophet of Islam established the first Islamic state in Medina.  So when we compare Muhammad’s actions to Christ, a better comparison should be with the various Christian rulers (including Byzantine ones) and we will soon find out that the Christian Roman Empire also used the sword on many occasions.

Next:

Deconstructing the phobia’s assumptions: the Prophet of Islam was a bad man

You must have all sorts of stories about how the Prophet Muhammad did things we would disapprove of.  I won’t list them here simply because the list of grievances is a little different in each case.  I actually researched some of these accusations (about marrying young girls, or sentencing people to death for example) and in each case, there is a very solid Muslim defense of these incidents which is almost always ignored and which provides a crucial context to, at least, the better understanding of the incident discussed.

Since I am not a historian or a biographer of the Prophet Muhammad I don’t have any personal opinion on these accusations other than stating the obvious: I am not a Muslim and I don’t have to decide whether Muhammad was a sinful man or a infallible person (that is a purely theological argument).  I will simply say that this ad hominem is only relevant to the degree that some Muslims would consider each action of their prophet as normative and not historical.  Furthermore, even if they would consider each action of their prophet as normative, we need to recall here that we are dealing with a prophet, not a God-Man, and that therefore the comparison ought not to be made with Christ, whom Christians believe to be 100% sinless, but with a Christian prophet, say Moses, whom no real Christian will ever declare sinless or infallible.  As for the Quran, let’s not compare it to just the New Testament but to all the books of the Bible taken together, including those who were eventually re-interpreted by the new religion of (some) Jews after the fall of Jerusalem: rabbinical/Phariseic Talmudism which found plenty of passages in its (deliberately falsified) “Masoretic” text of the Old Testament “Tanakh” (please see here if you don’t know what falsification I am referring to).

Finally, NO religious text worth anything is self-explanatory or “explains itself” by means of comparing passages.  This is also why all major religions have a large corpus of texts which explain, interpret, expand upon and otherwise give the (deceptively simple looking) text its real, profound, meaning. Furthermore, most major religions also have a rich oral tradition which also sheds light on written religious documents.  Whatever may be the case, simply declaring that “Islam is a threat” because we don’t approve of the actions of the founder of Islam is simply silly.  The next accusation is much more material:

Deconstructing the phobia’s assumptions:Islam is incompatible with democracy

That is by far the most interesting argument and one which many Muslims would agree with!  Of course, it all depends on what you mean by “democracy”.  Let me immediately concede that if by “democracy” you mean this:

Then, indeed, Islam is incompatible with modern western democracy.  But so is (real) Christianity!

So the so-called “West” has to decide what its core values are.  If Conchita Wurst is an embodiment of “democracy” then Islam and Christianity are both equally incompatible with it.  Orthodox Christianity, for sure, has not caved in to the homo-lobby in the same way most western Christian denominations have.

But if by “democracy” we don’t mean “gay pride” parades but rather true pluralism, true people-power, and the real sovereignty of the people, then what I call “core Islam” is not threat to democracy at all.  None.  However, there is also no doubt about two truisms:

Some Muslim states are profoundly reactionary and freedom crushing

Traditional Islam is incompatible with many modern “western values”

Still, it is also very easy to counter these truism with the following replies

Some Muslim states are pluralistic, progressive and defend the oppressed (Muslim or not)

Traditional Christianity is incompatible with modern “western values”

Again, Iran is, in my opinion, the perfect illustration of a pluralistic (truly diverse!), progressive and freedom defending Muslim state.  I simply don’t have the time and place to go into a detailed discussion of the polity of Iran (I might have to do that in a future article), and for the time being I will point you to the hyper-pro-Zionist Wikipedia article (which nobody will suspect of being pro-Muslim or pro-Iranian) about the “Politics of Iran” which will show you two things: Iran is an “Islamic Republic” meaning that it is a republic, yes, but one which has Islam as its supreme law.  There is absolutely nothing inherently less democratic about a Islamic republic which has a religion as its supreme law than a atheistic/secular republic which has a constitution as its supreme law.  In fact, some countries don’t even have a constitution (the UK and Israel come to mind).   As for the Iranian polity, it has a very interesting system of checks and balances which a lot of countries would do well to emulate (Russia for starters).

As for modern “western values”, they are completely incompatible with Christianity (the real, original, unadulterated thing) even if they are very compatible with modern western (pseudo-) Christian denominations.

So, now the question becomes: is there something profoundly incompatible between the real, traditional, Islam and the real, traditional, Christianity? I am not talking about purely theological differences here, but social and political consequences which flow from theological differences.  Two immediately come to my mind (but there are more, of course):

The death penalty, especially for apostasy

Specific customs (dress code, ban on alcohol, separation of genders in various settings, etc.)

The first one, this is really a non-issue because while traditional, Patristic, Christianity has a general, shall we say, “inclination” against the death penalty, this has not always been the case in all Orthodox countries.  So while we can say that by and large Orthodox Christians are typically not supporters of the death penalty, this is not a theological imperative or any kind of dogma.  In fact, modern Russia has implemented a moratorium on the death penalty (to join the Council of Europe – hardly a moral or ethical reason) but most of the Russian population favor its re-introduction.  Note that Muslims in Russia are apparently living their lives in freedom and overall happiness and when they voice grievances (often legitimate ones), they don’t have “reintroduce the death penalty” as a top priority demand.

The simple truth is that each country has to decide for itself whether it was the use the death penalty or not.  Once a majority of voters have made that decision, members of each religion will have to accept that decision as a fact of law which can be criticized, but not one which can be overturned by any minority.

As for religious tribunals, they can be easily converted by the local legislature into a “mediation firm” which can settle conflicts, but only if both sides agree to recognize it’s authority.  So if two Muslims want their dispute to be settled by an Islamic Court, the latter can simply act as a mediator as long as its decision does not violate any local or national laws.  Hardly something non-Muslims (who could always refuse to recognize the Islamic Court) need to consider a “threat” to their rights or lifestyles.

An “Islamic Matrioshka”?!

As for the social customs, here it is really a no-brainer: apply Islamic rules to those who chose to be Muslims and let the other people live their lives as they chose to.  You know, “live and let live”.  Besides, in terms of dress code and gender differentiation, traditional Islam and traditional Christianity are very close.

Check out this typical Russian doll, and look at what she is wearing: this was the traditional Russian dress for women for centuries and this is still what Orthodox women (at least those who still follow ancient Christian customs) wear in Church.

Furthermore, if you go into a Latin parish in southern Europe or Latin America, you will often find women covering their heads, not only in church, but also during the day.  The simple truth is that these clothes are not only modest and beautiful, they are also very comfortable and practical.

The thing which Islamophobes always miss is that they take examples of laws and rules passed by some Muslim states and assume that this is how all Muslim states will always act.  But this is simply false.  Let’s take the example of Hezbollah (that name means “party of God”, by the way) in Lebanon which has clearly stated on many occasions that it has no intention of transforming Lebanon into a Shia-only state.  Not only did Hezbollah say that many times, but they acted on it and they always have had a policy of collaboration with truly patriotic Christians (of any denomination).  Even in today’s resistance (moqawama) there are Christians who are not members of Hezbollah as a party (and why would they when this is clearly and officially a Muslim party and not a Christian one?!), but they are part of the military resistance.

[Sidebar: by the way, the first female suicide bomber in Lebanon was not a Muslim.  She was a 18 year old from an Orthodox family who joined Syrian Social Nationalist Party and blew herself up in her car on an Israeli checkpoint (inside Lebanon, thus a legitimate target under international law!), killing two Israeli invaders and injuring another twelve.  Her name was Sana’a Mehaidli]

A Hezbollah fighter respectfully picks up an image of the Mother of God from the ruins of a church destroyed by US-backed Takfiris

Recent events in Syria were also very telling: when the AngloZionist Empire unleashed its aggression against Syria and the “good terrorists” of al-Qaeda/al-Nusra/ISIS/etc. embarked in a wholesale program of massacres and atrocities, everybody ran for their lives, including all the non-Takfiri Muslims.  Then, when the plans of the Axis of Kindness (USA, KSA, Israel) were foiled by the combined actions of Russia, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, something interesting happened: the Latin Christians left, whereas the Orthodox Christians stayed (source).  Keep in mind that Syria is *not* an Islamic state, yet the prospects of a Muslim majority was frightening enough for the Latins to flee even though the Orthodox felt comfortable staying.  What do these Orthodox Christians know?

Could it be that elite traditionalist Shia soldiers represent no threat to Orthodox Christians?

Deconstructing the phobia’s assumptions: Islam generates terrorism

In fact, there is some truth to that too.  But I would re-phrase it as: the AngloZionists in their hatred for anything Russian, including Soviet Russian, identified a rather small and previously obscure branch of Islam in Saudi Arabia which they decided to unleash against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan.  From the first day, these Takfiris were federated by the USA and financed by the House of Saud.  The latter, in its fear of being overthrown by the Takfiris, decided to appease them by internationally supporting their terrorism (that is all Takfiris have to offer, their leaders are not respected scholars, to put it mildly).  Since that time, the Takfiris have been the “boots on the ground” used by the West against all its enemies: Serbia, Russia first, but then also secular (Syria) or anti-Takfiri Muslim states (Iran).

So it is not “Islam” which generates terrorism: it is western (AngloZionist) imperialism.

The US and Israel are, by a wide margin, the biggest sponsors of terrorism (just as the West was always by far the biggest source of imperialism in history) and while they want to blame “Islam” for most terrorist attacks, the truth is that behind every such “Muslim” attack we find a western “deep state” agents acting, from the GIA in Algeria, to al-Qaeda in Iraq to al-Nusra in Syria to, most crucially, 9/11 in New York.  These were all events created and executed by semi-literate Takfiri patsies who were run by agents of the western deep states.

As far as I know, all modern terrorist groups are, in reality, “operated by remote control” by state actors who alone can provide the training, know-how, finances, logistical support, etc needed by the terrorists.

And here is an interesting fact: the two countries which have done the most to crush Takfiri terrorism are Russia and Iran.  But the collective West is still categorically refusing to work with these countries to crush the terrorism these western states claim to be fighting.

So, do you really believe that the West is fighting terrorism?

If yes, I got a few bridges to sell all over the planet.

Conclusion: cui bono? the so-called “liberals”

There are many more demonstratively false assumptions which are made by the AngloZionist propaganda machine.  I have only listed a few.  Now we can look to the apparent paradox in which we see the western “liberals” both denouncing Islamophobia and, at the same time, repeating all the worst cliches about Islam.  In this category, Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton are the most egregious examples of this hypocrisy because while pretending to be friends of Muslims, they got more Muslims killed than anybody else.  For western liberals, Islam is a perfect pretext to, on one hand, cater to minorities (ethnic or religious) while pretending to be extremely tolerant of others.  Western liberals use Islam in the West, as a way to force the locals to give up their traditions and values.  You could say that western liberals “love” Islam just like they “love” LGBTQIAPK+ “pride” parades: simply and only as a tool to crush the (still resisting) majority of the people in the West who have not been terminally brainwashed by the AngloZionist legacy corporate propaganda machine.

Conclusion: cui bono? the so-called “conservatives”

Western conservatism is dead.  It died killed by two main causes: the abject failure of National-Socialism (which was an Anglo plan to defeat the USSR) and by its total lack of steadfastness of the western conservatives who abandoned pretty much any and all principles they were supposed to stand for.  Before the 1990s, the conservative movements of the West were close to fizzling out into nothingness, but then the Neocons (for their own, separate, reasons) began pushing the “Islamic threat” canard and most conservatives jumped on it in the hope of using it to regain some relevance.  Some of these conservatives even jumped on the “Christian revival in Russia” theory (which is not quite a canard, but which is also nothing like what the Alt-Righters imagine it to be) to try to revive their own, long dead, version of “Christianity”.  These are desperate attempts to find a source of power and relevance outside a conservative movement which is basically dead.  Sadly, what took the place of the real conservative movement in the West is the abomination known as “National Zionism” (which I discussed here) and whose ideological cornerstone is a rabid, hysterical, Islamophobia.

Conclusion: cui bono? the US deep state

That one is easy and obvious: the US deep state needs the “Islamic threat” canard for two reasons: to unleash against its enemies and to terrify the people of the USA so that they accept the wholesale destruction of previously sacred civil rights.  This is so obvious that there is nothing to add here.  I will only add that I am convinced that the US deep state is also supporting both the Alt-Right phenomenon and the various “stings” against so-called “domestic terrorists” (only only Muslims, by the way).  What the Neocons and their deep-state need above all is chaos and crises which they used to shape the US political landscape.

Finally, the real conclusion: rate the source!  always rate the source…

Whom did we identify as the prime sources of Islamophobia?  The liberals who want to seize power on behalf of a coalition of minorities, conservatives who have long ditched truly conservative values and deep state agents who want to terrify US Americans and kill the enemies of the AngloZionist Empire.

I submit to you that these folks are most definitely not your friends.  In fact, they are your real enemy and, unlike various terrorists abroad who are thousands of miles away from the USA, these real enemies are not only here, they are already in power and rule over you!  And they are using Islam just like a matador uses a red cape: to distract you from the real threat: National Zionism.  This is true in the US as it is true in the EU.

Most westerners are now conditioned to react with fear and horror when they hear “Allahu Akbar”.  This is very predictable since most of what is shown in the western media is Takfiris screaming “Allahu Akbar” before cutting the throats of their victims (or rejoicing at the suffering/death of “infidels”).

Yet in the Donbass, the local Orthodox Christians knew that wherever that slogan (which simply means “God is greater” or “God is the greatest”) was heard the Ukronazis are on the run.  And now we see Russia sending mostly Muslim units to Syria to protect not only Muslims, but everybody who needs protection.

Having a sizable Muslim minority in Russia, far from being any kind of threat, as turned to be a huge advantage for Russia in her competition against the AngloZionist Empire.

Chechens in Novorussia

There are, by the way, also Chechens fighting on the other side in this conflict: the very same Takfiris who were crushed and expelled from Chechnia by the joint efforts of the Chechen people and the Russian armed forces.  So, again, we have Muslims on both sides, the Takfiris now happily united with the Nazis and the traditionalist Muslims of Kadyrov protecting the people of Novorussia.

That is one, amongst many more, nuances which the Islamophobic propaganda always carefully chooses to ignore.

Should you?

The Saker

[the-record-columns]

Oct. 4, 2017: Columns

Come to the fair...

 By KEN WELBORN

Record Publisher

Once again we are blessed here in Wilkes to have a busy week of entertainment for the entire family.

The Wilkes Agricultural Fair, which is sponsored by the Rotary Club of North Wilkesboro, is going on all this week at the Rotary Fairgrounds off West D  Street in North Wilkesboro. There are more than 25 rides on the midway along with plenty of good food and fun games. It truly is a family event with an amazing array of 4-H exhibits, a wide variety of entertainment, and even a hay bale decorating contest. Really, you have no idea how cool a big round hay bale can look! Also, children can enter the N. C. Department of Agriculture Scavenger Hunt to win a bicycle or a smart tablet computer.

The fair opens each weekday at 5 pm and Saturday at 1 pm. An added attraction n Saturday is the last Lawn Mower Race of the season. Gates open at 2pm, practice begins at 4:30 pm, and racing begins at 6 pm. An admission to the fairgrounds includes admission to the Lawn Mower Race as well.

If you are reading this piece on Wednesday morning, it is about the time that the Rotarians are enjoying their highlight of the fair. Because it is on Wednesday each year that the gates are opened at 10:00 am for what has become the most anticipated event of the year—for both Rotarians and their very special guests--the Exceptional Children and Adults from throughout the county. The parking area of the fairgrounds is literally covered with buses and vans, and the squeals and laughter can be heard across the midway.

The carnival's operator, Bill and Donna Inners of Inners Shows, open up their rides to these very special folks, and the other vendors and acts do the same. These include the E-Z Ride Petting Zoo, NoJoe's Clown Circus, and the ever popular music of Buffalo Barfield and his wife, the lovely Bumadean. To top it all off, there will probably be some of the N. E. W. Extreme Wrestling stars roaming the fairgrounds in full costume, posing for pictures and doing their part to make this very special event even more fun.

While all the Rotary guests and their caregivers are being entertained on the midway, a group of Rotarians, aided by our friends at the Brushy Mountain Smokehouse and Creamery in North Wilkesboro, will be preparing to serve lunch to nearly 600 people. This is no small undertaking, but is cheerfully accomplished by a small army of members, spouses, and other volunteers who always show up to work for this special project. Believe it or not, 600 people will be served hamburgers and hotdogs, with all the trimmings, along with a cookie and a cold drink in 45 minutes or less.

Just to watch the interactions between these children and adults and their caregivers is a blessing in an of itself. It is not uncommon to see tears in the eyes of the people serving the food as they watch the line move along in front of them as everyone prepares to enjoy their lunch and enjoy even more entertainment.

The dedicated people who take care of this myriad variety of special needs children and adults tell us that they look forward to their day at the fair almost like another Christmas.

I know the Rotarians do.

One year it rained every day except for the five hours of the Wednesday Exceptional Children time. Over and over I heard it said,, if that had to be the only clear weather for the week, that was fine with them. One of our past presidents, Tim York, put it best when he said, “Wednesday's special day for the children at the fair is the only Rotary project we never have to send around a sign up sheet for--they just come.”

They get to ride, they get to laugh, they get to see their friends, and they get to enjoy a great picnic lunch; all the while surrounded by people who love and care about them. Clearly, on this day these special children and adults are the rule, not the exception.

And, Rotarians are all the better for it.

Trust

By LAURA WELBORN

Sometimes it seems that life is just about surviving, but after listening to Rev. Anne Dieterle this Sunday I was reminded of the words my mother used to say: “We can’t do everything but we can do something.”

Anne talked about going beyond survival and adding beauty  and joy through play and creativity.  If God is in our lives and we really believe that then we must live like we trust we will not just survive but thrive.  I find myself living like a functional atheist- I want to trust and to believe yet I work like I don’t believe things will be ok.  What we do every day defines us so we need to be intentional in our actions and act like we mean it…

1.       It is about showing up every day with the intention to be your best self, and to do the best you know how, without expecting life to go a certain way.  Focus on what matters—what moves you forward today—and let go of what does not.

 2.      Most of us don’t want to be uncomfortable, so we run from the possibility of discomfort constantly.  The obvious problem with this is that, by running from discomfort, we only do activities and opportunities within our comfort zones.  And since our comfort zones are relativity small, we miss out on most of life’s greatest experiences. We keep doing what we’ve always done, and thus we keep getting the results we’ve always gotten.  Instead go to environments that expand your mind.  Spend time with people who inspire you to stretch yourself.  Take time to do the fun things be creative and play more.

 3.      Remind yourself to take a deep breath when things don’t go your way.  Your results in the long run—good or bad—are always the byproduct of many small decisions, outcomes, and events over time.  The truth is we all fail sometimes.  The greater truth is that no single failure ever defines us.  Learn from your mistakes.  Grow wiser.  Press on.  Character and wisdom are sculpted gradually.  They come with loss, lessons, and triumphs.  They come after doubts, second guesses, and unknowns. 

 4.      Calmness is a human superpower.  The ability to not overreact or take things personally keeps your mind clear, your heart at peace, and yourself moving forward.  Take constructive criticism seriously, but not personally.  Listen to others, and then operate with your own intuition and wisdom as your guide.

 5.      Do your best to focus inward whenever you need a moment to refocus. Time spent focusing inward doesn’t just help you—your mind is powerful and your thoughts create ripples in other people’s lives.  When you bring clarity into your life, you bring the best of yourself into everything you do—you tend to treat yourself and others better, communicate more constructively, do things for the right reasons, and ultimately improve the world you’re living in.  This is why praying, or just meditating on positive mantras, on a daily basis can actually make a real-world difference in your life. 

 Start taking the next small, insignificant step (one at a time, every day) and you might be surprised where you end up. (inserts from Marc and Angel Hack life blog)

 Laura Welborn, Mediator, LCAS.  Contact laurawelborn1@gmail.com

State’s Secrets and the Swamp that Needs Draining  

By EARL COX

Special to The Record

President Donald Trump blocked a recent State Department effort to force Israel to return $75 million in military aid, the department’s most recent attempt to erode the U.S.-Israel military alliance. State’s demand was shocking, but it shouldn’t be surprising.

Rex Tillerson's State Department has been embroiled in a power struggle with the White House, thwarting its efforts to remove Obama holdovers - and Trump nominees from filling open staff positions.

But long before Obama appointees clogged Trump's efforts to drain the swamp, previous administrations dealt with State Department undertow. Generally conflicts between DOS and the White House, Congress and the courts, are turf wars over who controls foreign policy. This dynamic has plagued several administrations - and impacted U.S. relations with Israel.

 Anti-Semitism has lurked in State’s corridors for decades, and under the guise of diplomacy, has used subversive or covert tactics to manipulate foreign policy. Despite pressure from his State Department, Herbert Hoover defended the concept of a Jewish state; and under Franklin D. Roosevelt, DOS-mandated immigration policy “severely limited” German Jewish immigration during the Holocaust, and visas for Jewish refugees in Vichy France, according to Rafael Medoff, founding director of the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. Harry S. Truman stood against his State Department by supporting Israel’s establishment in 1948—while behind his back an undersecretary threatened to “foment anti-Semitism that could destroy the fledgling Jewish government’s support base in the U.S.” unless Zionist leaders caved to his demands, Medoff said.

The State Department is still working to undermine and intimidate Israel. Recently, it hosted the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, an umbrella of American Muslim groups such as the anti-Israel, pro-BDS, American Muslims for Palestine. The meeting’s announcement on AMP’s website expressed “concern” about “Israel's denial of religious rights for Muslims and Christians.” Israel is the sole country in the Middle East that protects the rights of all religions—Muslims, Christians, Jews and Druze. USCMO secretary general Oussama Jammal remarked the group was encouraged by “the constructive dialogue at the State Department.”

 The Center for Security Policy warned in 2015 that USCMO leads the Islamic Movement in the United States “in pursuit of Civilization Jihad.” Jammal, who has a track record of seeking out strategic relationships with the U.S. government on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood, is connected to Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation, a Marxist-Leninist organization “dedicated to revolution in America,” CSP said.  Another nip at Israel’s heels is the just-released State Department 2016 Country Reports on Terrorism. The report blames Israel for Palestinian terrorism against Israelis, citing the Palestinians’ “lack of hope” in the peace process. Tillerson’s report whitewashes Palestinian Authority leaders’ incitement of violence and financial support for terrorists. It also defines PA calls for terrorism and violence against Israelis as "rare,” and says the PA leadership “does not generally tolerate it.”

  In response, Rep. Peter Roskam, co-chair of the House Republican Israel Caucus, sent a letter to Tillerson noting “harmful mischaracterizations” in the report that impair the peace process. “To effectively combat terrorism,” he wrote, the United States must “accurately characterize its root cause—the PA leadership … and clarify … Palestinian support for terrorism as the leading impediment to Israeli-Palestinian peace."

 In a strike against the heart of its own republic, a senior State Department contracting officer tried to silence two security contractors disturbed by deteriorating security at the U.S. Embassy in Libya prior to the tragic 2012 attack, a recent Fox News report revealed. The officer also asked the contractors to publically agree with State that “guards should not be armed at U.S. embassies” and “they weren't required in Benghazi.” Those responsible for the lapses and cover-up in Libya are still in place, the contractors said.

 The State Department has more than 300 embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions around the world. In a healthy democracy that’s not under siege, this would be an indicator of positive national influence thrin a government divided against itself, it’s dangerous—not only for the U.S.-Israel alliance, but also for the future of American foreign policy

This mammoth organization endangers the democratic process by collaborating with a Deep State—reminiscent of dictatorships with democratic facades. By breaching public trust with secrecy, veiled threats and disregard of human life—including its own—it demonstrates moral compromise and disregard for the democratic process. Unless the Trump Administration can rein it this rogue department, it endangers America and puts our allies at risk. Trump must unclog and drain the swamp before another debacle—or tragedy—occurs.

[thesaltydigest]

Review: “Rivers of London” & “Moon Over Soho”, or: so you’re a London nerd?

Can you tell these books are about London, written by a London nerd, with a London nerd protagonist? 

Title: Rivers Of London & Moon Over Soho (Peter Grant/Rivers of London series, book 1&2) Author: Ben Aaronovitch Review by: Captain Clo Verdict: enjoyable, slightly bland, with a side serving of salt. 

I’m reviewing these two together because I’ve read them one after the other, and I think they’re overall pretty similar. I was interested in this series because the protagonist is a biracial Londoner, and the books themselves are urban fantasy. (By the way: I understand why they do it, I understand it’s standard marketing procedure, but if I see a book advertised as any variation of “Harry Potter but edgier” one more time…) 

(If you can’t read it: the small blurb on the covers says “what would happen if Harry Potter grew up and joined the Fuzz”.)

If you:

are looking for a diverse cast of characters

are a London nerd

these books are for you.

The protagonist, Peter Grant, is not only a biracial police officer, he’s a sassy biracial police officer with a wicked sense of humour, a take-no-shit attitude but also a pretty warm way of approaching the whole problem with “I’m ambiguously brown but also an officer of the law”. Also, he will describe every single London landmark in painstaking detail, complete with its social and architectural history. I, not being a London enthusiast, found it annoying, but I can see why other readers might find it appealing. The books are pretty straightforward detective stories; Rivers Of London follows the trail of bodies left by a misterious entity that possesses people and ultimately kills them; Moon Over Soho is about jazz vampires (no, I’m not kidding. In this universe, a “vampire” is a creature that absorbs life energy from someone else; it can be your life essence, but sometimes it’s musical talent. They’re still going to kill you very, very dead). Plus, you guessed it, magic. Peter becomes the apprentice of a sort-of secret branch of the London Police – the one that deals with magical crimes – and thus meets Nightingale, the last living wizard of the UK. I just have to quote his introduction:

«He was about one-eighty in height – that’s six foot in old money – and dressed in a beautifully tailored suit that emphasised the width of his shoulders and a trim waist. I thought early forties with long, finely boned features and brown hair cut into an old-fashioned side parting. It was hard to tell in the sodium light but I thought his eyes were grey. He carried a silver-topped cane and I knew without looking that his shoes were handmade. All he needed was a slightly ethnic younger boyfriend and I’d have had to call the cliché police.»

Told you he’s sassy. (Suggestion: the reading experience can be henhanced by imagining Nightingale as Victor Nikiforov.) Peter and Nightingale’s relationship will warm your heart. Nightingale is older than he looks, and sometimes he’s adorably lost when dealing with technology older than the sixties; he also carries a sombre sadness with him that Peter’s presence starts to soothe. It’s obvious that Nightingale hasn’t dealt with people in a long time, and he warms to Peter right away. Peter himself has endless questions and always new theories to test; Nightingale indulges this with relish and uses it to channel Peter’s scatterbrain attitude (“What an interesting question that is, it’s related to things we’re supposed to cover later in your studies, I’ll tell you only after you finish this deadly boring exercise you don’t want to do”). At a certain point, Peter takes issue with the label “black magician”, because of course it means someone who uses magic for evil, and of course Peter himself IS a black wizard who definitely doesn’t do that. Nightingale takes his objections seriously, although he doesn’t seem completely convinced when Peter suggests the term “ethically challenged magicians” for such practitioners… The cast of characters is not only diverse, but presents such characters as essentially Londoners in new and refreshing ways. The coroner, Doctor Walid, for example, is introduced like this:

«I was introduced to Abdul Haqq Walid, a spry, gingery man in his fifties who spoke with a soft Highland accent. […]‘Salem,’ I said. ’Al salam alaikum,’ said Dr Walid, shaking my hand.»

I know I’m setting the bar incredibly low by saying that this is an example of diversity taken in stride instead of an awkward oh-my-god-a-MUSLIM, but such are the times in which we live. Dr Walid is described in a way that recognizes his religion as something different than the default-assumed Christian Anglican, but by stressing his regional accent, the narrative doesn’t make him a foreigner, but recognizes him as Scottish. In these two books, recurring diverse characters comprise Peter and his mother (a Fula from Sierra Leone), a black girl/spirit of the river, her Nigerian mother/goddess of the river (it makes sense in context… somewhat), Dr Walid himself, a lesbian police officer, and a muslim ninja girl*. No seriously, it’s great:

«One of them was a young Somali woman in a leather biker jacket and an expensive black silk hijab. She caught me looking and smiled. 'Muslim ninja,’ she whispered.»

*yes I know a ninja girl is called a kunoichi. I’ve watched Naruto too. That said, I couldn’t help but getting annoyed by the portrayal of black women in these two books. Especially in the first book, Peter deals with four regular black female characters: his mother, the goddess of the Thames, and two of her daughters. It’s unclear to me whether this is just Peter’s opinion – something that will be later proven wrong – but for being a biracial character, he certainly uses the concept of “things all black women do” a lot. It’s like the author (who is, by the way, not black) takes the stereotype and, after acknowledging it, just turns it around and makes it another sterotype. Take this excerpt from the first book, for example:

«People are conditioned by the media to think that black women are all shouting and head-shaking and girlfriending and 'oh no, you didn’t’, and if they’re not sassy then they’re dignified and downtrodden and soldiering on and 'I don’t understand why folks just can’t get along’. But if you see a black woman go quiet the way Tyburn did, the eyes bright, the lips straight and the face still as a death mask, you have made an enemy for life […]».

So, in one paragraph, Peter debunks the 'sassy black woman’ stereotype, only to give us… another sterotype? I mean, I guess there aren’t countless different ways to deal with rage, but certainly all kind of women can show that quiet reaction to fury. And certainly, black women don’t have only three standardized reactions to rage? What really made me mad was this sentence, though:

«This I know for a fact: the reason African women have children is so that there’s someone else to do the housework.»

Oh really, Peter. Oh really. I want to give Peter the benefit of the doubt – and by extension, to Aaronovitch – but it’s hard when Peter’s own mother is a cluster of stereotypes who doesn’t get to tell her own story: she cleans offices for a living, and steals supplies from them; she’s the borderline abusive mother who stole toys from Peter when he was a kid to send them to his cousins in Sierra Leone. I guess the only stereotype she eludes is that she mothered only Peter. The problem, of course, is that Aaronovitch might have been trying to give Peter a flaw by writing this; but there’s no one in the narrative to prove Peter wrong (in these two books, at least). Same old problem, I know.

And then there’s the sex. This I really disliked, and that’s the reason for the side serving of salt. Mind you, I don’t mean there’s a lot of it; in fact, there are no sex scenes in Rivers of London. But in Moon Over Soho Peter meets the lover of a magical murder victim, and of course they end up in bed together in a heartbeat. Of course the sex is great and lenghty and there are multiple bouts in the same night. Of course Peter never thinks twice about going to bed with a witness (you get no points if you figure out what’s her role in the story). I can’t figure out if I, as a reader, am supposed to understand he’s under some magical compulsion, or if Peter is just that stupid (and lacking in the ethical department!). The easiness with which Peter just goes with it is appalling. I am by no means a prude (full disclosure: I write smut), so the problem cannot be the sex itself, I hope – the problem is that in these kind of novels, the heterosexual male protagonist becomes a stand-in for his heterosexual male writer’s fantasy of power. Which, of course, involves having sex with as many beautiful femmes fatales as possible – a staple of the murder mystery novel. And it’s so unrealistic. It’s like these characters don’t have tastes, or compatibility, or simply other things to do; sex is offered? Sex is served! No questions asked! And of course the sex is always great, and with a supremely beautiful woman. Are there really people out there who are always up for it? Well, maybe, I guess. Is it acceptable that every single het male detective in these stories is like that? No, dammit. It completely ruins my reading experience. One moment I’m enjoying Peter’s banter with Nightingale, and the next one I’m rolling my eyes so far back my ancestors are feeling it. “But Clo, you’re reading what basically amounts to an police novel, what did you expect?”, you might ask me. To which my answer would be, “Honestly, I don’t know what to tell you”.

PS: Also, and this is just something that makes me doubt my own ability to read, I am almost sure the race of Peter’s father was never explicitly described. His mother’s ethnicity is made explicit, but I re-read (well… skimmed) both books to find out his father’s, and found nothing. I couldn’t figure out if he’s white. Peter describes himself as ambiguously brown, so I assume his father is white, but he could also be another ambiguously brown man. The only other clue I could find was that Peter’s mother cooks very spicy food, but only her and Peter can eat it; his father gets a different plate. Is that a hint that he’s not African? But he could still be from somewhere else in Africa where they eat less spicy food, or he could be a Londoner, hell, he could just dislike pepper. I realize this is very minor, but still. Isn’t the purpose of a diverse cast to break the assumption that every character is white unless explicitly described as not? Did I miss something?  

[2blackgrits-blog]

For Grits Who "Got Indian in Their Family" (Or Something Like That)

If you ask me where I’m from, I’ll tell you South Carolina. If you ask me where my family is from, I’ll name some towns in Alabama, counties in Carolina. Beyond that, my knowledge of my ancestry is pretty rudimentary, and honestly based on assumptions that center on one thing that’s common for GRITS—I am descended from enslaved peoples.

This is something I used to be pretty ashamed of. I have no recollections of being embarrassed to be black, but I do recall not wanting to be the type of black I am, something I referred to as a child as being “Just Black.” Now, I prefer the term Black American, which refers to the ethnic identity of people who have descended from the enslaved Africans who were brought to this country. We’ve been called many things over the years—negroes, colored, and now usually “African-American.” I have never identified with this phrase, even though as a child I was desperate to feel African, connected to the people I read about in folk stories and young adult novels (Shout out to my mom for always surrounding me with black literature though). Africans were strong and beautiful, they had specific cultures and languages and heritages that I felt I lacked as a girl whose parents first languages were English, whose grandparents were born sharecroppers and farmers. There was nothing special about being “just black,” and I felt ashamed—I wanted to know what I “was.”

I wanted to know where in Africa my ancestors were from. I had this sort of far fetched idea that if I knew, I would start to learn the language and the customs of these places and one day perhaps return there, if only to visit, and be welcomed home in the way that people are in those stories your hotep uncle shares on Facebook. I became enamored with the idea of getting my DNA tests done through one of the many services that are now available so I could begin my transition to the motherland.

Now we been had told you that you should be listening to Another Round with Heben and Tracy, but if you haven’t yet, a great place to dip your toe in is Episode 88: I Got Indian in My Family, which follows Tracy as she gets her ancestry tested from a few different companies, and it opens with this really interesting conversation she and Crissle West have about a fear that I understand, as irrational as it may be. They both discussed that, before they got their ancestry results back, they were afraid that they would find out they were majority something other than black, or not connected to anywhere in Africa. This seems like a silly irrational fear, but it stems from something that Crissle explains well—a fear that having a family that has been in America for so many generations has “warped her genetically,” and drained her blackness from her in some way. This may seem unscientific, but America has affected black people so many ways—economically, psychologically, physically—that I wondered if it could have affected my genetics. I shared their fear that maybe it had done something to the part of me that I found so beautiful in other black people, had stolen something else from me on the way.

There are other fears that black Americans often have when we start researching our ancestry—concerns about uncovering family secrets or discrepancies from the folklore that we’ve been told about ourselves. Especially in the South, these stories influence how we think about ourselves. Since I was a child, I have been told that my mother’s family was black and Choctaw, and that my father’s family was black and white. Because of the complex violence and abuse perpetrated against our people throughout  history, I believe these tales of mixed ancestry to a certain extent, but I suspect that a DNA test might reveal that we are significantly less Native than some of my family members believe. Still, as a child this idea of a distant mixed heritage appealed to me. Maybe this was a result of being surrounded by the pretty mixed girls or the “1/4 Irish, 1/16th Cherokee, 2/3rd French” girls at school. Maybe this was because the majority of the black people on TV were light skinned with curls and freckles. Maybe this was because I didn’t understand the value of my own culture.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when I started to become proud of my specific black American heritage (it probably wasn’t long before this blog started), but something that helped reaffirm the value of having enslaved ancestors was episode 13 of the podcast Identity Politics, titled “Where I’m From.” Identity Politics focuses on the intersections of black womanhood and Muslim identity, and this episode took some time out to discuss the ways that being a black American effected those experiences. I took particular encouragement from hearing their guests, Bashirah and Kameelah, discuss coming to terms with the value of both their black American heritage and their more distant African ancestry. This really emphasized one of my concerns about the whole DNA testing craze (besides the question of what these companies are doing with your DNA after they test it, I’m just saying). I worried that learning about my distant history would make me devalue the heritage I do know about. There is no knowledge of a distant ancestor that will change the story of how my family came to this country, and there is no reason for me to be ashamed of that history. My ancestors’ ability to survive is something that comforts me when I’m discouraged, and their culture is just as vast and deep and any other. It took me a while to realize that the way my family makes oxtails and okra doesn’t make us a better type of black than any other black people. Though we all still have room to grow on the tensions between Africans and Black Americans, I’ve begun to find value in the customs that I had that differentiated me from other types of black people. Dishes like Hoppin’ John and holidays like Juneteenth are specific to my experience and a sign of my cultural heritage.

I may never get my DNA ancestry report, but there are still things I know about my heritage. Just as slavery shaped the South economically, culinarily, culturally, it shaped the people who were born and brought here, lived and died here, the people who passed on their stories as enslavers and the enslaved. There is nothing shameful about the beautiful of reclaiming the land my ancestors once toiled over. There is nothing simple about being “just black.”

[the-salty-digest]

Review: “Rivers of London” & “Moon Over Soho”, or: so you’re a London nerd?

Can you tell these books are about London, written by a London nerd, with a London nerd protagonist?

Title: Rivers Of London & Moon Over Soho (Peter Grant/Rivers of London series, book 1&2) Author: Ben Aaronovitch Review by: Captain Clo Verdict: enjoyable, slightly bland, with a side serving of salt.

I'm reviewing these two together because I've read them one after the other, and I think they're overall pretty similar. I was interested in this series because the protagonist is a biracial Londoner, and the books themselves are urban fantasy. (By the way: I understand why they do it, I understand it's standard marketing procedure, but if I see a book advertised as any variation of "Harry Potter but edgier" one more time...)

(If you can’t read it: the small blurb on the covers says “what would happen if Harry Potter grew up and joined the Fuzz”.)

If you:

are looking for a diverse cast of characters

are a London nerd

these books are for you.

The protagonist, Peter Grant, is not only a biracial police officer, he's a sassy biracial police officer with a wicked sense of humour, a take-no-shit attitude but also a pretty warm way of approaching the whole problem with "I'm ambiguously brown but also an officer of the law". Also, he will describe every single London landmark in painstaking detail, complete with its social and architectural history. I, not being a London enthusiast, found it annoying, but I can see why other readers might find it appealing. The books are pretty straightforward detective stories; Rivers Of London follows the trail of bodies left by a misterious entity that possesses people and ultimately kills them; Moon Over Soho is about jazz vampires (no, I'm not kidding. In this universe, a "vampire" is a creature that absorbs life energy from someone else; it can be your life essence, but sometimes it's musical talent. They're still going to kill you very, very dead). Plus, you guessed it, magic. Peter becomes the apprentice of a sort-of secret branch of the London Police – the one that deals with magical crimes – and thus meets Nightingale, the last living wizard of the UK. I just have to quote his introduction:

«He was about one-eighty in height – that's six foot in old money – and dressed in a beautifully tailored suit that emphasised the width of his shoulders and a trim waist. I thought early forties with long, finely boned features and brown hair cut into an old-fashioned side parting. It was hard to tell in the sodium light but I thought his eyes were grey. He carried a silver-topped cane and I knew without looking that his shoes were handmade. All he needed was a slightly ethnic younger boyfriend and I'd have had to call the cliché police.»

Told you he's sassy. (Suggestion: the reading experience can be henhanced by imagining Nightingale as Victor Nikiforov.) Peter and Nightingale's relationship will warm your heart. Nightingale is older than he looks, and sometimes he's adorably lost when dealing with technology older than the sixties; he also carries a sombre sadness with him that Peter's presence starts to soothe. It's obvious that Nightingale hasn't dealt with people in a long time, and he warms to Peter right away. Peter himself has endless questions and always new theories to test; Nightingale indulges this with relish and uses it to channel Peter's scatterbrain attitude ("What an interesting question that is, it's related to things we're supposed to cover later in your studies, I'll tell you only after you finish this deadly boring exercise you don't want to do"). At a certain point, Peter takes issue with the label “black magician”, because of course it means someone who uses magic for evil, and of course Peter himself IS a black wizard who definitely doesn’t do that. Nightingale takes his objections seriously, although he doesn’t seem completely convinced when Peter suggests the term “ethically challenged magicians” for such practitioners... The cast of characters is not only diverse, but presents such characters as essentially Londoners in new and refreshing ways. The coroner, Doctor Walid, for example, is introduced like this:

«I was introduced to Abdul Haqq Walid, a spry, gingery man in his fifties who spoke with a soft Highland accent. [...]'Salem,' I said. 'Al salam alaikum,' said Dr Walid, shaking my hand.»

I know I'm setting the bar incredibly low by saying that this is an example of diversity taken in stride instead of an awkward oh-my-god-a-MUSLIM, but such are the times in which we live. Dr Walid is described in a way that recognizes his religion as something different than the default-assumed Christian Anglican, but by stressing his regional accent, the narrative doesn't make him a foreigner, but recognizes him as Scottish. In these two books, recurring diverse characters comprise Peter and his mother (a Fula from Sierra Leone), a black girl/spirit of the river, her Nigerian mother/goddess of the river (it makes sense in context... somewhat), Dr Walid himself, a lesbian police officer, and a muslim ninja girl*. No seriously, it's great:

«One of them was a young Somali woman in a leather biker jacket and an expensive black silk hijab. She caught me looking and smiled. 'Muslim ninja,' she whispered.»

*yes I know a ninja girl is called a kunoichi. I've watched Naruto too. That said, I couldn't help but getting annoyed by the portrayal of black women in these two books. Especially in the first book, Peter deals with four regular black female characters: his mother, the goddess of the Thames, and two of her daughters. It's unclear to me whether this is just Peter's opinion – something that will be later proven wrong – but for being a biracial character, he certainly uses the concept of "things all black women do" a lot. It's like the author (who is, by the way, not black) takes the stereotype and, after acknowledging it, just turns it around and makes it another sterotype. Take this excerpt from the first book, for example:

«People are conditioned by the media to think that black women are all shouting and head-shaking and girlfriending and 'oh no, you didn't', and if they're not sassy then they're dignified and downtrodden and soldiering on and 'I don't understand why folks just can't get along'. But if you see a black woman go quiet the way Tyburn did, the eyes bright, the lips straight and the face still as a death mask, you have made an enemy for life [...]».

So, in one paragraph, Peter debunks the 'sassy black woman' stereotype, only to give us... another sterotype? I mean, I guess there aren't countless different ways to deal with rage, but certainly all kind of women can show that quiet reaction to fury. And certainly, black women don't have only three standardized reactions to rage? What really made me mad was this sentence, though:

«This I know for a fact: the reason African women have children is so that there's someone else to do the housework.»

Oh really, Peter. Oh really. I want to give Peter the benefit of the doubt – and by extension, to Aaronovitch – but it's hard when Peter's own mother is a cluster of stereotypes who doesn't get to tell her own story: she cleans offices for a living, and steals supplies from them; she's the borderline abusive mother who stole toys from Peter when he was a kid to send them to his cousins in Sierra Leone. I guess the only stereotype she eludes is that she mothered only Peter. The problem, of course, is that Aaronovitch might have been trying to give Peter a flaw by writing this; but there's no one in the narrative to prove Peter wrong (in these two books, at least). Same old problem, I know.

And then there's the sex. This I really disliked, and that's the reason for the side serving of salt. Mind you, I don't mean there's a lot of it; in fact, there are no sex scenes in Rivers of London. But in Moon Over Soho Peter meets the lover of a magical murder victim, and of course they end up in bed together in a heartbeat. Of course the sex is great and lenghty and there are multiple bouts in the same night. Of course Peter never thinks twice about going to bed with a witness (you get no points if you figure out what's her role in the story). I can't figure out if I, as a reader, am supposed to understand he's under some magical compulsion, or if Peter is just that stupid (and lacking in the ethical department!). The easiness with which Peter just goes with it is appalling. I am by no means a prude (full disclosure: I write smut), so the problem cannot be the sex itself, I hope – the problem is that in these kind of novels, the heterosexual male protagonist becomes a stand-in for his heterosexual male writer's fantasy of power. Which, of course, involves having sex with as many beautiful femmes fatales as possible – a staple of the murder mystery novel. And it's so unrealistic. It's like these characters don't have tastes, or compatibility, or simply other things to do; sex is offered? Sex is served! No questions asked! And of course the sex is always great, and with a supremely beautiful woman. Are there really people out there who are always up for it? Well, maybe, I guess. Is it acceptable that every single het male detective in these stories is like that? No, dammit. It completely ruins my reading experience. One moment I'm enjoying Peter's banter with Nightingale, and the next one I'm rolling my eyes so far back my ancestors are feeling it. "But Clo, you're reading what basically amounts to an police novel, what did you expect?", you might ask me. To which my answer would be, "Honestly, I don't know what to tell you".

PS: Also, and this is just something that makes me doubt my own ability to read, I am almost sure the race of Peter's father was never explicitly described. His mother's ethnicity is made explicit, but I re-read (well... skimmed) both books to find out his father's, and found nothing. I couldn't figure out if he's white. Peter describes himself as ambiguously brown, so I assume his father is white, but he could also be another ambiguously brown man. The only other clue I could find was that Peter's mother cooks very spicy food, but only her and Peter can eat it; his father gets a different plate. Is that a hint that he's not African? But he could still be from somewhere else in Africa where they eat less spicy food, or he could be a Londoner, hell, he could just dislike pepper. I realize this is very minor, but still. Isn't the purpose of a diverse cast to break the assumption that every character is white unless explicitly described as not? Did I miss something?  

[are-scared-of-revolution]

Five Ways to Disrupt White Supremacy in the Mainstream Art World

Seph Rodney | November 19, 2015

Racist imagery in tchotchke form (photo by Eddy Milfort/Flickr)

Recently I was invited to take part in an event and conversation on the work of the conceptual poet Vanessa Place organized by the National Coalition Against Censorship. I sought information on her from a friend who is also a poet, Farid Matuk, whose contribution is printed below, and ended up agreeing with him that her work in general and particularly the tweets appropriating Gone with the Wind failed to meaningfully challenge white supremacy, while it nevertheless gestured toward doing so in attempting to interpose itself in an ongoing wider debate around systemic racism.

Our discussion led to deeper consideration of what might be done to challenge what is widely recognized as an institutionally facilitated, historically formed, systemic power relationship that defends and maintains the wealth and privilege of people of the European continent (understood to be white) while exploiting, demeaning or ignoring people of color. As I am using it here, the term “white supremacy” indicates systematized efforts to preserve the dominant group position of those identified as white over those designated as non-white, through philosophical, economic, scientific, religious and political structures.

In order to more thoroughly confront this circumstance, Hyperallergic invited me to seek out the opinions of colleagues and professionals in the field whose intelligence and insight are formidable, to forthrightly answer the query: “What would you do to disrupt white supremacy in the current system of art production?” They all developed expressive, eloquent and unrestrained responses to this question that have been edited only for length. It may be pertinent to state that they are hail from different subject positions vis-à-vis sexuality, race, national origin, and gender.

Farid Matuk

Farid Matuk is the author of This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine) and My Daughter La Chola (Ahsahta).

In their introduction to The Racial Imaginary Claudia Rankine and Beth Loffreda note that white folks called out for making racist work worry over their right to imagine people of color or to ignore people of color. Wisely, Rankine and Loffreda urge we shift the conversation away from rights over to desire, inviting everyone to explore why our work seeks or veers from this or that (imagined) body.

But maybe that’s what you say when you’re facing white people. Maybe that’s what you say when you’re facing white students like the ones I teach. Maybe that’s what you say when you love the people you’re facing. What if white folks don’t have the right? What if they just stay with the difficulty of that proposition? What if their task is to earn it, re-order their valuation of the world for it, which is to say re-order the world?

There’s a strain of conceptual poetics that hinges on the proposition that media, social or otherwise, seeks to reproduce itself without concern for the content it spits. Standing in that structural void, certain white conceptual poets prove their point by beating the black body at the walls of the gallery or lecture hall saying, See, no content resists the black body’s flight through this empty air, and btw, what do you call a Muslim who owns a camel and a goat? Such work, we are told, renders white supremacy — and the ugly embrace of neoliberalism and multiculturalism in which it hides — visible. There are worlds beyond that embrace, but if such radicals can’t see them, they might work, instead, to render whiteness itself not visible but evitable.

Dr. Herukhuti

Dr. Herukhuti, is a playwright, essayist, poet, and Chief Erotics Officer of Center for Culture, Sexuality and Spirituality. His new play “My Brother’s a Keeper” will begin a national tour in 2016

(photo by Efrain Gonzalez, and courtesy the author)

I would make art that doesn’t rely upon imperialism, white supremacy, capitalism or heteropatriarchy to exist, be received and have impact. I would make art that doesn’t have them as an intended audience or reviewer. I would make art that articulates the realities of living in an unjust society as well as envisions liberatory futures. I would do so in ways that are rooted in maroon tradition, pan-African revolutionary praxis, radical queer politics, Funk aesthetics, and the complexities of Black beauty. I would make art that creates alternative systems of art production that draw upon the resources, magic, and mother’s milk of indigenous communities. I would seek out, identify, and embrace the people, groups, and spirits past, present, and future capable of nurturing such an approach to disruptive, oppositional, and liberatory world shaking and making.

And I know I would do these things because they are what I am doing. But I’m doing so for reasons other than to disrupt white supremacy in the current system of art production. I do these things because I want to be free. I do these things because I am committed to supporting the ongoing effort for the creation of a more socially just and ecologically well world. I do these things because I desire, deep in the marrow of my bones, what if feels like to love, live, and make art in a world without these soul-crunchers.

Dr. Nizan Shaked

Dr. Nizan Shaked is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Art History, Museum and Curatorial Studies at California State University Long Beach and author of the forthcoming The Synthetic Proposition: Conceptualism and the Political Referent in Contemporary Art.

(photo by Nicholas Gaby)

The Black Panther Party leader Huey P. Newton theorized racism as a tool to instill and sustain class oppression and exploitation, a mechanism to ensure the existence of available cheap labor. It follows that in order to eliminate racism everywhere, and that includes the realm of art and aesthetics, we should battle capitalism. However, and this is the however that matters, the argument that political intervention should start with the broadest social underpinning, i.e. class, will eventually resolve all secondary issues (race, gender sexuality, etc.), has done the Left a great disservice. Instead of embracing the abolitionist tendencies of the 1960s social movements, the Left in general, and the art-world Left in particular, busied itself with criticizing identity politics.

Meanwhile, in the court of wealth (in the 1980s), a new set of financial tools allowed the market to grow into the monster it is today, influencing new generations of museum patronage that is imposing its taste on us all. What can we do? Set aside the semantics and correctly identify the battle. Demand that all institutions receiving public funds make their decision-making processes transparent. Museums should be consulting artist boards that reflect the demographics of the social fabric. Members should be individuals respected in the field, not just famous artists. Programming should reflect a wide array of tastes, approaches, and methodologies, and be publically debated in town-hall meetings. Finally, accessions should be made by tiered systems of peer-review and expert opinion, not by the whims of a financial ruling class.

Travis Webb

Travis Webb is a PhD candidate in Religion at Claremont Graduate University in California, and editor of The Abeng, the scholarly journal for the Institute of Signifying Scriptures.

“White supremacy” in the art world suggests the supremacy of white people. And it seems to me you are asking, how we disrupt the hegemony of these white people. If that’s what you’re asking, then fund the work of non-white artists and suppress their white counterparts, censor white productions, belittle the achievements of white people while celebrating non-white people. We know these tactics work because historically white people have used them very effectively to steal rock n’ roll, dehumanize native “crafts,” and elevate European “art” music above other “colored” musics. The tactics of the bully are well established.

No, ultimately whiteness is not coterminous with the hegemony of white people.I’m not suggesting the supremacy of white people isn’t a historical reality. I’m saying that whiteness — shorthand for an otherworldly contempt for the body — is a habit, a mode, a glamour to conceal these messy, universally non-white bodies. None of us are white. Not one. Whiteness is our mythology, our fixation, the totem around which our politics of identity spin. That totem as police murders black people. That totem as neighborhood watchman stalks skittles-wielding teenagers and scrubs them from the world. If you want to disrupt whiteness in the world of art, I’d open up all the bathroom stalls at the Met, and the Guggenheim, and every other mausoleum built to house man’s magnificence and make everyone piss and shit in the open, in full view of one another. Whiteness would leave that place and never come back.

Oasa DuVerney

Oasa DuVerney is an artist, mother, and native New Yorker.

(photo courtesy the author)

1.

First of all, fuck the art world. It is the most boring self-congratulatory capitalist farce/lifestyle brand there is on the market.

2.

Start telling the truth. White supremacy in art hides behind a protective blanket of self serving theories that work to silence truthsayers, and dismisses anything that calls them out directly as didactic, offensive, “not really art,” and problematic, or just community art.

We often believe that to collapse this establishment we have to work within the parameters they give us so as not to be dismissed. Dismiss these parameters.

There is no point in supporting a system intent on crushing you. Don’t give white supremacy and patriarchy the luxury of believing that there is nothing wrong with it. Everything that is wrong started with it.

3.

Rather than making work about redefining your identity within the confines of the racist tropes you’ve been handed and required to perform; why not redefine whiteness? In particular male whiteness. James Baldwin said: “I have been described by you for hundreds of years. And now, I can describe you. That’s part of the panic.”

Create panic.

By making them think you don’t give a fuck by not giving a fuck. And of course

keep your day job and your head up.

4.

Be a gangsta. Not the kind that abuses the system to give corporate welfare to their billionaire friends. When the time comes help organize your block to rent strike for affordable housing and be an artist that dismantles capitalism.

Gangsta.