I been slackin in my mackin cause the pimp has died. I have not been pimpin but been being pimped by my school. I have had super schoolwork this semester… which means that the shit i like to do, like blog, falls a bit to the wayside. But, I still produce some nice ideas in the classroom too.. here is a taste
In his article, “Thinking through Internment: 12/7 and 9/11”, Jerry Kang highlights an important comparison between the treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII with regards to Internment and the potential racialized treatment of Arab Americans in the post-9/11 era. But, in making his argument, he uses the language and the racist ideals that created the injustices of Internment, to then disprove of the profiling of Arab Americans. This is overtly counterintuitive. Kang asks if “After 9-11 and our retalitation, should we authorize racial profiling of Arab Americans and those who look like them?” p45 Embedded in the language of this question lies the jargon of the hierarchical racialized binary that allowed for the discrimination of the Japanese and now Arabs. Should “we”. We references the majority, those in power, those in charge, those who belong in America, true Americans, Whites. It comes back to the way in which Matthew Frye Jacobsen describes “the nation’s first naturalization law in 1790 (limiting naturalized citizenship to ‘free white persons’) {highlighting} the republican convergence of race and ‘fitness for self-government’”p7 They can be marginalized and discriminated because they never belonged here in the first place; they are not fit for self-government and living in “our” democracy. The “we” versus “them” binary, and the exercise of power of the dominant group has always been more important then the reality of what the threat to America is. Kang posits that not many of the Arab Americans being profiled are actually terrorist. But this misses the point entirely. The point is two-fold. First, it is a reaction, created so the populous feels like American is doing something to fight on home turf. Secondly, the point is to highlight, once again, as we have so many times before, with Chinese Exclusion, with Internment, with Jim Crow, with the Johnson-Reed Act, the undesirables in American society, those “unfit to hold a position in government.” Later in his argument, Kang states that the cost of racially profiling are “minor inconveniences for those profiled.” p47 Here, again, he misses on the meat of his proverbial burger. To start, it is, to put it simply, to chalk the damage done by racism to “minor inconvience”. Racism destroys the spirit, demoralizes, objectifies and kills the soul; not to mention the physical manifestations of racism that actually hurt people corporally. Kang fails in his definition of the costs. His costs are the said costs, propagandized by the government for the enjoyment of the naïve and the privileged. In actuality, the costs are the freedom of all Americans, not just the racialized. once the freedom of some Americans is put into question. The cost is the denigration of the ideals and values that this country was supposed to be built on. The ultimate cost is what makes Americans Americans in the first place. Kang’s cost-gain analysis is further weakened by the overtly racist statements inherent in his phrasing. He states: “for instance, the fact that 100 percent of the terrorists are Arab-looking men does not mean that 100 percent of Arab-looking men are terrorists… So, even if the Arab looking man seated to your left is 100 times more likely to be a terrorist than the Aryan-looking man seated to your right (relative), 100 times a number essentially zero is still near zero (absolute).” p47 It is ridiculous to make general statements about all terrorists being Arab-looking without qualification. The successes of Kang argument, past its subject matter, lie within his final paragraphs. He notes that “if state actors racially profile and private actors racially harass, [Americans] might be forcing another group of Americans into the same impossible situation {as the Japanese before them, as a group given the reasons to hate America, by America}. Tomorrow’s burdens will be justified by the resentment caused by today’s burdens.” p49 The problem with fighting terrorism with terrorism is multifaceted. On one hand, fighting a war against an ideal and not a specific group of people is a messy business, set up for failure. On the other, if a person is willing to die in order to kill you, then threatening them with death is useless. By fighting terrorists with American’s own version of terror, America is proving the stereotype that made the terrorists hate them in the first place. The only way to dissuade these terrorists is by giving them an alternate view of America. Kang concludes with the idea that “liberty does not flourish in fear.” p49 I would take that idea a step further and say that liberty, as well as the rights of man and rest of the constitution has been thrown out the window consistently throughout American history as the fears of the “we” have fluctuated over time. But of course, the writers of the constitution had slaves themselves, so how much validity can we give the constitution in practice, when it has never been fully upheld.
PS: i do not approve of pimping, not do i consider myself a pimp actually.
sincerely yours, A Pimp Named SlickBack
