Suspicious Packages: Liberals, Libertarians and the TSA -or- "Don't Touch My Junk"

Friday Charles Krauthammer wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post titled "Don't Touch My Junk."

Um, okay.

Krauthammer was responding to the recent uproar over the new, aggressive Transportation Security Administration procedures, which include a full-body scan that renders an image of the traveler's naked body or, alternately, a thorough full-body pat down. Very thorough. As in a stranger's hands on your genitals-and-not-in-a-good-way thorough. Perhaps predictably people have begun to freak out over this. Including John Tyner, a San Diego man who refused the scan or the pat down announcing that he would call the police if they "touched [his] junk." All of which he captured on his iphone and posted to You Tube. Krauthammer writes,

...everyone knows that the entire apparatus of the security line is a national homage to political correctness. Nowhere do more people meekly acquiesce to more useless inconvenience and needless indignity for less purpose. Wizened seniors strain to untie their shoes; beltless salesmen struggle comically to hold up their pants; 3-year-olds scream while being searched insanely for explosives - when everyone, everyone, knows that none of these people is a threat to anyone... But we must not bring that up. We pretend that we go through this nonsense as a small price paid to ensure the safety of air travel. Rubbish. This has nothing to do with safety - 95 percent of these inspections, searches, shoe removals and pat-downs are ridiculously unnecessary. The only reason we continue to do this is that people are too cowed to even question the absurd taboo against profiling - when the profile of the airline attacker is narrow, concrete, uniquely definable and universally known. So instead of seeking out terrorists, we seek out tubes of gel in stroller pouches.

This is a dozen kinds of racist and wrong, but entirely within Krauthammer's character and the spirit of his appalling discourse. So, in a sad way, unsurprising. Nevertheless, The American Prospect's Adam Serwer responded to Krauthammer in his own Washington Post op ed titled "Touch His Junk" writing,

Racial profiling is no more statistically accurate than those random searches conservatives always complain about. Thousands of Muslims travel on airplanes every day, and an infinitesimal number actually turn out to be dangerous. But the argument here is pretty clear -- the problem isn't that the violation of privacy isn't worth an unknown gain in security. It's that the TSA should be frisking "Nigerian nutjobs" instead of grandma. Conservatives like Krauthammer aren't angry that the TSA is infringing on individual liberty, just that it's infringing on their individual liberty.

Of course Serwer is right, but something about his response bothered me and I couldn't quite articulate it until I read Avon Snarksdale's supplement to his argument, titled "This Type of Ish Happens Every Day", at Post Bourgie (and subsequently quoted at length by Serwer at The American Prospect). Snarksdale writes,

It should be pointed out that for plenty of people of color in the nation’s inner cities, these kind of uncomfortable, vaguely legal searches — with the stated intent of finding people carrying guns and drugs — are essentially de rigueur... In one four-block section of Brownsville, Brooklyn, the NYPD made 52,000 stops over a four-year period, which averaged out to about one stop for every resident in the area each year. And it’s no more efficient than the profiling Adam decries: for all that scrutiny and all those stops over four years, the police in Brownsville recovered just 25 guns, and less than 1 percent of all those people who were stopped — and questioned and patted down and humiliated as they went about their lives — were ever arrested. (All of the personal info taken during the stops, however, was entered into a citywide database.)

I cosign the spirit of Snarksdale's critique and I completely agree with his analysis of street stops. But his essay (and Serwer’s before it) stops well short of addressing a) the unprecedented legal shift away from civil rights initiated by the Bush Administration and perpetuated under Obama and b) that Arabs and Muslims–regardless of their race–are the disproportionate target of this new legislation. In other words, it is now perfectly legal in the United States for me to be removed from my apartment for writing this blog post and imprisoned indefinitely with no legal right to counsel. And further, for me to be tortured physically, psychologically and sexually at the discretion of my captors, who would suffer no consequences for those acts even if they came to light. That is NOT an “every day” scenario. That is a new, radical abrogation of civil rights and Arabs and Muslims are its unambiguous focus.

Charles Krauthammer is arguing against the TSA’s invasive security theatre in favor of profiling Arabs and Muslims, an increasingly mainstream position. That the main refutation of this argument at Post Bourgie and at The American Prospect is “but it doesn’t work” does not fill me with confidence. So… what if it worked? Would it be okay then? Every couple of years or so when some conservative nutbag advocates fencing off ghettos or forcing women who receive welfare benefits to submit to state-enforced birth control we don’t click our tongues and say “but it wouldn’t work.” We say, “Fuck you for suggesting that we legally dismantle civil rights for your racist political agenda.” So would it kill these guys to take such an unambiguous, ethical stand against targeting Arabs and Muslims? The fact that in the space of two short posts we got from Charles Krauthammer calling for the profiling of Arabs and Muslims in a mainstream newspaper to a complete reframing of his arguments in terms of a Black-White racial dynamic profoundly disturbs me. How is it that Serwer and Snarksdale--putative Liberals-- managed to do what Krauthammer couldn't and made Arabs and Muslims disappear completely?

Snarksdale is quite right that the law is selectively applied to Black people–and that this is exponentially worse for poor Black people. And he is completely right that institutional racism goes down to the bone in US society. And a critique of the responses of old white guys like the pilot who was so shaken by his groping pat down that he refused to fly afterward using a racial lens is valuable and completely valid… But the selective application of civil rights (as in “random” police stops in Brownsville) is *not* the same as legally removing them entirely.

Which is a thing that has happened. Bush did that and Obama has done nothing to undo it.

So let’s be clear. Enduring a humiliating pat down is not the same thing as getting sodomized by a fluorescent light tube (which is another thing that has happened to Arabs and Muslims imprisoned in the “war on terror”). Do violations like that also happen to Black men in police custody? We know that they do. But we also know that when they happen they are completely illegal. Not so for Arabs and Muslims at Bagram, Gitmo, or any of the numerous Black Sites around the globe. When US soldiers screamed at the Arabs and Muslims who were collected almost entirely at random for imprisonment and torture at Guantanamo Bay “You are property of the US Military!” as they sodomized them, it was completely legal. That is a paradigm shift. Period.

Now is it a slippery slope from one to the other? You bet. But that isn’t really what Snarksdale is arguing (If he were believe me, I’d be thrilled) Instead he is saying it “happens every day” to Black folks and so, in some sense, it is not a big deal that it is happening to folks like me. This is a grotesque sentiment that I have unfortunately heard over and over from Black Liberals. (Who have also made the same point about Latinos in the ongoing immigration debate, to similar effect.) But here’s the thing guys: Our experiences are different, mine are not a weak metaphor for yours.

Don't get me wrong, I love Post Bourgie. That I felt free to post a frank response to Snarksdale's essay is a testament to my respect for the intelligence of that community. So if I sound angry it’s only because I AM angry. Posts like Snarksdale's that argue But This Has Always Happened To Black People Anyway are fundamentally dishonest if they do not acknowledge the material circumstances of life for Arabs and Muslims under the USA Patriot Act. There is a fantastic, intersectional analysis of US racism and orientalism/Islamophobia waiting to be written. But that analysis cannot be made if we begin from assumptions like those upon which his essay is based.

Between you, me and the CIA operatives monitoring my internet activity, a better analogy than institutional racism to the USA Patriot Act and its ultimate effects would be Germany’s Enabling Act of 1933, which legally expanded the reach and powers of the government to selectively apply constitutional rights and protections… And we all (I hope) know how that ended up. Still, if Liberal bloggers wrote about Arabs and Muslims by relating our situation to what Black folks endure under institutionalized racism I think that would be great. But if they only want to use us to make a point about their experiences– delegitimizing ours in the process–then I wish they'd do us a favor and please don’t.

Dealing with the Krauthammers of the world, who are not in short supply, is exhausting enough. But, as an Arab, the lack of will to speak out for me among the US Left is at least as frightening as the open hatred among the Right. As far as flying is concerned I have already made the decision to go for the pat down over the scan. They want to feel for a suspicious package? Okay then. We'll see who blinks first.

Pop Mythology, Buying and Selling: A Report from the First Asian American Comic Con

On my way out the door to attend the first-ever Asian American Comic Con in New York City last week I turned on the TV to keep my (awesome, but needy) dog company and suddenly my apartment was filled with the Owen Wilson/Jackie Chan vehicle Shanghai Noon. I averted my eyes (I can't look at Owen Wilson’s face... I am sure he is a nice person who loves his mom but his nose, with its various planes and levels, is like an SAT math question). I changed the channel but not before Wilson could point that dodecahedron at the camera and say “She’s not the killer. She’s just a very, very, very, hot confused Chinese girl.” I looked at the dog and said, “Boy, these personal ads just write themselves, don’t they?” The dog gave me nothing, so I settled on a soothing infomercial about mineral-based makeup and left for the Con. But the random intrusion of that orientalist/sexist joke was a weird preface to the rest of the afternoon.

The Asian American Comic Con was presented by Secret Identities Media (the folks who gave us Secret Identities: the Asian American Superhero Anthology), The Asian American Writers workshop, Greg Pak’s Asianamericancomics.com and the Museum of Chinese in America, in whose beautiful new building the event was held. While it was modest compared to the San Diego Comic Con International, which has become the mother ship of pop culture, the first year of the AACC was impressive in its scope. The Con was designed along three separate workshop tracks: “Reading Comics”, “Making Comics”, and the “Spotlight Track”, which featured comic book industry professionals like Pak, Khoi Phan, Larry Hama and others. Organizing the event this way acknowledges that comic books have become a force in setting trends for mainstream pop culture and in a more academic sense, as models for looking at stuff like ethnic representations in popular media. According to the program, “ You might want to think of the ‘con’ as representing not ‘convention’, but ‘conference’—or even ‘conversation.’” Hmm. Interesting.

Before exploring the panels I went to the “Artists’ Alley” which featured tables with well-known comics professionals sitting elbow-to-elbow with lesser-known self-publishing indie creators. While the program provided a blank page to collect autographs (film actor and Secret Identities managing editor Parry Shen walked right past me) I was drawn to the indie creators. One of the more interesting of these was Alitha E. Martinez, whose portfolio pages showed some of the most dynamic comic art I have seen in a long, long time. Martinez, who has penciled such mainstream titles as Iron Man, Black Panther and Fantastic Four, among others, is not a newbie but is moving into the creator-owned realm with her Manga-inspired property Yume and Ever. And therein lies the rub: among Martinez's fantastic pages were postcards emblazoned with images of her Japanese, female lead Yume, kimono hanging open, breasts front and center, sucking on a lollipop Lolita-style. Absent the context of the story I am not willing to condemn it (although that is what a postcard is, a representative image, right?) but this made me pause... and not just for the obvious reasons. This image raises all sorts of questions for me about the relationship between orientalism, sex and gender, the fetishization of Asian women vs. the potentially empowering re-framing of stereotypes... and the use of use of these images by other PoC. When answering questions about her experience at AACC on her blog Martinez writes that she was "well received" but "some of the attendees said a few insensitive things... about my looks and heritage and what I 'consider' myself. I let it roll off of my back, the art is the thing. What I am or from whense (sic) my people hail has nothing to do with my work. It's just very sad that such ignorance still exists." I only spoke with Martinez briefly--to compliment her excellent artwork-- and I didn't ask her about her postcard specifically, although it really struck me. I'd be interested to hear more about what she intends with this character, so I may follow up with her.

At the apex of "Artist's Alley" was a table set up by the group racebending.com, which was formed by Jordan White specifically to organize the boycott against the movie version of Avatar: The Last Airbender. While White talked with a reporter from MTV I was brought up to speed by an awesome Avatar fangirl, who turned out to be Nora (i.e."nojojojo"), of the great blog The Angry Black Woman. The controversy around the casting of white actors in roles that were conceived as Asian and Inuit has been covered elsewhere, so I won't repeat the details here except for three points that crystallized for me during my conversation with Nora (thanks Nora).

1) The offense stems not only from the white washed casting, but from the purposeful re- imagining of an entire SF/Fantasy universe that was based on a panoply of Asian and Inuit cultures into a European one. For PoC fans of SF/Fantasy, who often have to endure racist and ethnocentric content embedded in their fiction ::cough:: Lord of the Rings Trilogy ::cough:: Avatar was a rare opportunity to see a PoC fantasy universe realized.

2) The controversy around the movie version of Avatar is proving to be a catalyst for activism beyond the fan community. Nora told me about a colleague of hers who is not an Avatar fan, who got involved with racebending.com because the movie represents a direct assault on representations of PoC in the mainstream media.

3) To paraphrase Jordan White, "we don't just want the movie to fail, we want it to fail because fans rejected the casting." Amen.

Wandering into the rest of the Con events I was lucky to catch pioneering Asian American SF/Fantasy author William F. Wu speak. Jeff Yang, Co-Chair of the AACC and Editor in Chief of Secret Identities, interviewed Wu about his Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominated work, including the short story "Wong's Lost and Found Emporium", which was made into an episode of the Twilight Zone in the 80's. Wu, who was born in Missouri and raised in Kansas, described himself as a "displaced Midwestern boy." Easygoing and a natural storyteller, he discussed not only the content of Asian American representations in SF/Fantasy genres, but their lack overall. Yang summarized this situation by saying "Robot Americans are far better represented than Asian Americans (in genre fiction, despite the fact that) demographically, the future looks pretty damn Asian". Wu expanded on this point by saying that when Asian American men do appear they are usually either "tamed" (i.e. the submissive sidekick) or the villain , while Asian American women are often the "exotic" love interest of the white hero.

In advance of his AACC appearance Wu donated his vast collection of comic book art and comic books, all of which feature Asian and Asian American characters to the Fales Collection at New York University. Despite the fact that many of the portrayals are inaccurate and/or offensive Wu said he was compelled to seek them out, a habit learned during his racially isolated Midwestern childhood. And it is this ambivalent relationship with--too often--problematic portrayals that characterizes the interactions many PoC have with media: You are forced to choose between not seeing yourself represented at all, or only as a creature of the white imagination, with its fears and fantasies about you. Wu made the point that often the way Asians are represented in pulp media offers a more immediate reflection of political reality. For example, in the Buck Rogers newspaper strip of the 1940s, Buck's adversaries, who had been cat-like Aliens, became "Japanese" literally the day after Pearl Harbor. (Go back and read that again and then take a minute: The. Day. After.) Wu discussed some of the other characters who appear in his collection, which range from the ridiculous (Egg Fu, an old Wonder Woman villain/Giant Talking Egg whose evil deeds were facilitated by his prehensile Fu Manchu moustache) to the sublime (Batman Villainess/Love Interest Talia al-Ghul, daughter of the Arab Supervillain Ra's al-Ghul--whose name means "Demon's Head"-- and a mixed Chinese, European and Arab mother, which makes her a kind of orientalist combo-platter.) Torn between killing Batman and helping him escape her evil father and given to catsuits and mixed martial arts, Talia al-Ghul is the culmination of an orientalist ideal... in other words, "not a killer, just a very, very, very, hot confused (part) Chinese girl."

I ended the day at a panel called "Nerd Pop", which kicked off when Ken Chen, the Executive Director of the Asian American Writers Workshop proclaimed to the laughing crowd, "You are here because you are a part of our clan... not Asian Americans, but nerds." The rest of the panel included Ben Nugent, author of American Nerd, Derek Kirk Kim, comics creator who announced, "I'm a total jock, so I don't know what I'm doing here", and moderator Hua Hsu, an English professor at Vassar, exemplifying the high/low mix the AACC was going for. The resulting discussion veered from jokey to serious and raised questions about the connections between nerd-dom and ethnic identity. Nugent asserted that a "nerd" identity was like a racial one, in that it can't be simply changed by changing clothes, which made me arch an eyebrow. I am usually not happy with direct correspondences between race and less visible identities that cross cultures, like "nerd." But Hsu took this point in a different direction, saying that "nerd" becomes more potent when mixed with ethnicity. He argued that the term is used to de-politcize and segregate Asian Americans in a way that isn't often called out as racism. But at the same time, the panel embraced "nerd" as a descriptor and celebrated the "nerd-ification" of US culture, pointing out ruefully that, at least in New York, hipsters now dress like the 80s nerds they used to be... Except that looking like a nerd is not the same thing as being one, and "hipster", like "nerd" could as easily be applied to a PoC as a white person, which is the problem with creating these equivalences. Still, it was a fascinating and often funny discussion that raised questions for me, but didn't provide easy answers, a description I could apply to the entire Con.

It will be interesting to see the direction the AACC takes in coming years, especially in terms of the complex issues around representation, but this was a great beginning.

UPDATE: This review has been cross-posted at Racialicious

Against A Safe Space

Editrix Latoya Peterson informs me that my essay Look Twice received 22, 000 views on Racialicious in March, making it the most viewed essay on the site. I was happy with how it was received but there was a sub theme that popped up in the comment thread around my use of the word “Bitch” in the post that inspired further discussion on the site... including a reassessment of the commenting policy. Ooops. In Look Twice I wrote,

He jerks his hand away and begins to step back. But I am not making it easy for him. I am ready to go and I tell him so. He is more and more wary and tries to get away from me. “Yeah, when you tell this story don’t forget to add the part where you walked away, bitch!” I shouted after him as he high tailed it up the subway steps.

Yeah, I know. Stupid. I’m not telling it because I am proud of myself.

I thought it was obvious from the essay that I wasn’t using the word “bitch” uncritically, and for most readers, it was. But some could not get past the word itself and that made it impossible for them to interact with the rest of the piece. This small but vocal minority raised this issue aggressively enough that Latoya dedicated an Open Thread (On language and terms) as a follow up. In her preface to the Open Thread Latoya wrote,

1. Where in this is the author’s right to relate a story as they see fit?

2. At what point do the words used in the source piece encourage/discourage certain types of dialogue in the comments section? (For example, I’ve deleted scores of misogynistic comments [from men and women] on the Ciara piece and on the Esther Ku piece - though neither of those posts contained the type of gendered language that normally prompts an outcry.)

3. Is it possible for a place designed to encourage conversation to also be a safe space?

I didn’t post on the Open Thread myself, even though my essay was the catalyst for the discussion and many posters talked about me directly. I thought I’d answered the questions about why I included the word “bitch” well enough during the original thread dedicated to my essay, which can be accessed here. So I didn’t feel any need to explain, elaborate or apologize. I also thought that if I entered the conversation the thread would have become too much about me, and not enough about Latoya’s questions. Mostly people made reasonable assessments, about balancing civility with expression and a free exchange of ideas. But a poster called Bekka wrote,

There are a very, VERY few occasions in which the word bitch doesn’t invoke all the worst stereotypes of women - shallow, petty, and, fundamentally, so far inferior to men that any association with the even the word is tainting. It’s the entire concept of the female as dirty, disgusting, cowardly, mean. There’s a very real problem with that. There’s a problem with the fact that there are huge numbers of men who casually use ‘bitches’ as a stand in for ‘women.’ It parallels, in form, the use of the k word for Jews, the s word for Hispanics, the n word for blacks. It is a denigration of the entire group, and to direct it at someone who is clearly not part of that group (i.e. calling a man ‘bitch’) is meant to insult because the mere association with the group is insulting. Period.

“Bitch” is a rude word but I can’t agree with relating it (in cause or effect) to a racial slur. Creating false correspondences between race, gender and sexual identity etc. does not make things more clear, it obscures the things that make each of these things special in their own right: Everything is not the same. My generation was the one that set about reclaiming slurs from their original discriminatory contexts as a way to bleed them of their power to hurt. “Bitch”, “slut”, “queer”, “fag”, “dyke”, and “nigger” all got a postmodern makeover. I have mixed feelings myself about the ultimate results of this project but nevertheless, it occurred. The fairly playful way that the word “bitch” is used in everyday discourse reveals the disparity between racial slurs and this word—or at least the wider range of its use. For example the existence of a bestselling cookbook written by women, for women, titled Skinny Bitch is only one contemporary illustration.

So I suppose I also have a different, and frankly less dire, idea of what “bitch” means.

But I never thought that “bitch” meant inferior to men, in any case. If anything, it describes a woman who is too loud, vengeful, aggressive, in other words, too much like a man. Used this way, “bitch” is a corrective that says, more or less “Act like a lady.” That is, if you say it to a woman. When a man says it to another man, as I did in my essay, it has the opposite meaning. It is meant to emasculate. To say, “You are acting like a girl.” The assumption of course that being “like a girl” is a bad thing, which is what makes it sexist, about this Bekka and I agree. Even though it was uncomfortable to be the focus I am glad that the subsequent discussion really explored the idea of acceptable public speech vs. free expression.

But.

I do have a strong reaction to the notion that there is such a thing as a “safe space”, which is the impetus for this follow-up.

A story:

After 9/11 I was invited to join a nascent non-profit whose mission involved bringing artists and therapists together to strategize responses to the tragedy with children. I showed up to the first group meeting and discovered that, other than the Executive Director, who had been a dancer, I was the only artist there. I sat at the edge of a large conference table and looked across at a sea of New York area therapy professionals: white women wearing ethnic jewelry who were riding out the terrible disruption to the city caused by the destruction of the twin towers in their summer homes in the Hamptons/Shelter Island/Upstate. And I thought, "Uh-oh."

The meeting began and after introductions we spent maybe 40 minutes discussing the necessity of creating a "safe space" for the work we planned to do. It went on and on as each of the therapists in the room qualified what the others had said in an effort to create an environment of perfect safety in which no one would feel threatened in any way. But of course, since standards of personal safety vary the therapists began to argue so one of them suggested that before moving forward we spend time making our meeting room itself into a “safe space.” That is, a space where differences of opinion might be aired without anyone feeling unheard. There was wide agreement among the assembled therapists that this was necessary and the entire process started again from scratch.

Two minutes into this re-do I raised my hand.

A dozen pairs of eyes turned to face me and I said, “I am an artist, so I don’t believe in creating a safe space.”

There was collective gasp and much shifting of ethnic jewelry.

“If anything, I think my job is to make the space less safe. As an adult I make my own safety and my assumption is that other adults do the same. I don’t need or want anyone to take responsibility to that for me. In fact, when someone presumes to do so it makes me really angry.”

A dozen eyebrows shot up and there was some murmuring. The awkwardness (finally) gave way to a conversation.

So, in light of that experience I can answer Latoya’s question, “Is it possible for a place designed to encourage conversation to also be a safe space?”

No. No it is not.

But that is only bad news if you expect that your community will completely insulate you at all times from anything that might upset you. If you are there to be part of a conversation then you might welcome a free exchange of ideas, which by definition includes dissent. It should not surprise you at this point that I want this blog to be the second one, not the first.

I understand what is meant by the term "safe space" but I hate that expression. It is used so often in lefty circles to passive aggressively control discourse that just seeing it printed on a page makes me angry. This is why I have not bothered to come up with a commenting policy for this blog. If you submit a comment I don’t like because it doesn’t move the conversation forward then I’ll just delete it. Above and beyond that I am happy to quote my friend Andrea who blogs as The Cruel Secretary, “Act like you got some home training.”