Betel addressed the elephant in the room, and we all got scared – to put it nicely. In reality we got pissed and we got defensive and we got self-righteous: “How dare she?.. But why did she?.. No, I didn’t!..”
Actually I can speak freer than most others – since I too am “the other”. I too get raised eyebrows when people realize I am not “one of their own”; when I say where I come from. I too can hear the inner voice going, “Turkish?! Yet she speaks so many languages! And she is here, among us! And she flyes business! She travels the world and walks the Camino! Could she really be a good yogini? How could she be such a free soul?! She is a Muslim Turkish woman running a few organizations and producing olive oil and writing books and doing yet more valuable things…” I too can hear the inner voice going, “But how could she?! It should have been me! I am whiter!”
***
Betel was a young woman, Mexican, artist, in our Unsettled group of 20-25 people in Peru. She was upset because someone in the group laughed at the English pronounciation of a local guide and this apparently touched a few too many nerves; hence she lashed out at the group, saying in effect that the motto “Embrace the unknown” was a joke.
Well, I tend to second her on this… But we don’t want you to hang yourselves. We don’t need you to pamper us. And we are not asking for your pity. We just need the crime to be owned! Because there is a crime… And the victims have one thing in common: They are brown, black, yellow, muslim, buddhist, they come from countries whose names you can’t pronounce… And, as such, their countries, their races, their kins could have been -would have been- so much better off today, were it not for the very white and entitled nations of the world pursuing their interests in foreign soils.
Why do you flinch when your seatmate on a plane is a bit dark? Could it be because she is a little pissed at you ‘cause your government has been wrecking havoc in her homeland for decades? Do you know the number of people killed in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria since the 1990’s? The number of children? How about the number of people killed in the World Trade Center?? Do you have any idea how many times the former is of the latter? And I don’t even remember the atrocities committed in Latin America -I was too young- only that the USA was under every dictator and every dead body in every country south of the border. And now, those countries are either in political or economic chaos and their citizens are “causing trouble in the States” – no, really? So sad!..
I can quote e. e. cummings to you. I can interpret Shakespeare plays when most of your students can’t even spell “Shakespeare”. I can -much to the surprise of a fellow Unsettler!- read and comprehend Ayn Rand, unlike the average American. I have read the Kor’an and the Bible and the Bhagavad Gita. I can cook Chinese, Mexican, Italian, Turkish or Arabic food. Yet I am and will always be “the other”.
Which is fine! I am and will always be fine with being the other. As long as you accept that you are not innocent, that you are not color-blind, that you have not done all in your power to regard me without prejudice, to see me as I am: just another human being…
***
Dear American friends! Do you know how ridiculous your Spanish accent sounds? Do you realize how foolish it is of you to travel around the globe expecting every single human to understand your every word? Do you see your hidden tiny bits of racism and discrimination and prejudice against every other race, do you realize you do not extend the courtesy of even trying to show them the grace of political correctness you show “your own, white non-heterosexuals”? It is correct that one better think thoroughly before claiming to “embrace the unknown”, ‘cause it looks suspiciously like you are actually just taking the parts of the unknown that are strikingly similar to your own and just embracing yourself…
The one huge thing I was surprised about -to put it nicely- in my one month with the Unsettled crew in Peru was how indifferent we were to the unknown. Not researching Peruvian culture. Not reflecting on the local life. Not asking a sh*t about each other’s very different lives. There have been many a time when I tried to strike up a conversation about my country, my culture, my customs, my food, or my people – and the conversation just died after one sentence of mine. Same thing happened to conversations about Mexico, India, Ukraine, or Hungary. Well actually, I don’t have to put it so nicely: I was shocked. The only ones who showed a deeper interest in anything different at any time were -you guessed it- “the others”!
You cannot fathom reading a book in another language, let alone reading a 1200 philosophical book, yet you have the audacity to think less of one who does than your own kind! You have no idea what it’s like to form a single sentence in another language, let alone being able to do it in a few other languages, yet somehow you find it acceptable to treat someone else’s accent as amusing! At this stage I am trying really hard to get the word ‘entitlement’ out of my head… No, I do not condemn you and I do not condone you; in fact I really do not have the slightest thought about you (as our character says in The Fountainhead, “But I don’t think of you!”) I just want you to wake up and smell the coffee: Face your hypocricy! Own your “culpas”!
And yes, I want to demonstrate -once more!- how ridiculous it is to judge by these titles and classes. And how you fellow Americans (and most other wasps) still do. Despite altering children’s fairy tales and toilet doors and personal pronouns and Barbie and Ken’s skin colors and what not, you have racial judgment embedded in you. We know it, you know it. The least you can do is not take us for fools and ignore it – own it and work on it.
***
We are so lucky. When Patrick told us, the whole group of Peru Unsettled, that we could speak up on whatever subject we wanted to share, a few days before Machu Picchu, I wanted to share this (yet didn’t because I was just too tired of being regarded as alien and didn’t want to add to it): We are oh so lucky. We get to travel around the globe, we get to learn about different cultures, we have the chance to see and experience wonderfully distinct things, we get to know very, very different people… We are blessed. And what is the point of all this: To liven up our lives? To collect colorful memories? To experience personal excitement and satisfaction? If that is your whole point of view, alas…
If you do not get to see, being as you are smart, thinking, earning, energetic persons with perspective and insight, that the whole problem in the world today stems from people thinking “the other” is the enemy, if you do not realize that peace will only begin when human beings get to know one another, as friends, as allies, as fellow humans, if you do not take it upon yourselves to spread the word that “the other” is not evil, just another form of human being, then… Then yeah, I guess it is true that you are just another stooge of the large, powerful, self-serving hand that struggles hard each day to “divide and conquer”, to turn every non-white living being into terrorists, and to make entitled haters of all the white ones.
Make your choice. As you do every day, in every way.
(Şubat 2018)