Long before (and by “long” I mean, a month before the “kuffiyeh kraze” first graced this lovely blog) I vitriolically slammed New York Hipsters for ignorantly wrapping the ever so dead kuffiyeh around their “red” necks on KABOBfest, I did just that on my myspace blog. Check it out:
Thursday, October 05, 2006
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STOP CO-OPTING MY CULTURE!!! to serve your desires of journalistic career advancement or to add an avant-garde twist to your sense of fashion (if I see another white chick outfitted in an ode to 80s garb-crushed black flat boots with black tights and an oversized amorphous sweater rocking a Palestinian kuffiyah as a scraf-I’m going to “ka-sar” some “ras”!!!!) One of the most insulting things happened to me today in my Anthropology Principles class. Scene: An overly-crowded classroom of underwhelmed anthro grad students waiting for their caffeine jolt to kick watch the clock tick and tock in the absence of substantive material to write. There’s an obvious disconnect between the people’s interest and the topic at hand. As such, I’m taking every opportunity to catch up on my email replies and research on Malcolm. However, something did momentarily tear me away from myspace profile browsing practices. In a discussion concerning the difference between interpretation and language, an older Mary Quck Gates-type (okay, only two people at most reading this blog will understand this reference, but the correlation is so pricelessly accurate it’s worth sacrificing some level of lucidity) chimed in with a “relevant” example to the discussion at hand. More than my obvious need to expel the nefarious energy brewing inside of me, I wanted to know what people thought of perhaps my overly-culturally sensitive take on this. To be honest, my sensitivity levels have lately been off the richter scale-I mean I did almost cry in class on Monday at the realization of the futility in our discussion (and perhaps of my choice of academic study) and I have been girlishly touched by my father string of text message updates. On a side not, if I hear someone preface any discussion of power with, “Well, taking the Foucauldian notion of discipline into account…” I will mos definitely tear out my hair and resume my rampage of “ka-sar”-ing “ras”-es Fin
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aggravated 
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- Airport InRANTation
- A Culture of Calling Things “A Culture of ________”
- May’s Shameless Attempts to Keep “Culture” Alive in the Gulf: The Series
- Stop the Madrassa Coalition: “Arrest all Muslims”
A woman learns arabic (which is no easy language to tackle) and you get irritated because she said a phrase in a tone that, to you, was evidence of her “white bred and cultural elitist” status? Maybe she was excited to show off what she perceived to be her Arabic knowledge, as it is a challenging language to learn cold turkey. Also, the majority of college students talk about issues with a false sense of authority and understanding (even members of this blog) so I’m not sure how exactly she could have said this phrase to make it rise to the level where she is categorized as white bred and a cultural elitist.
If I had a dollar for every time I heard a gringo say a improperly pronounced or worded spanish phrase , bad accent and all, I’d be rich. I admit that it’s annoying, even more so because they think they know what they’re doing, but it’s hardly the markings of cultural elitism.
Not everything is an issue. Not everything is a co-opting of culture. Sometimes a student with a poor grasp of arabic and an inflated sense of importance is just that. And nothing more.
Posted by Anonymous | October 20, 2007, 6:24 amI see your points and thank you for challenging my categorization of the situation. I would however have to disagree, given this woman’s track record of presumptive, self-important, obnoxious behavior and statements in class. This unnamed woman also felt authorized in saying that “Haitians are known as the black people who can’t get their shit together” because she told our class, “I dated someone from the Ivory Coast.” All this in a discussion of the anthropological take on the Haitian Revolution. She even accused the professor of being condescending towards her because she disagreed with her viewpoints.
Btw, it was not only the butchering of the phrase, that irked me, but irrelevant placement of it in our discussion. Perhaps I did a bad job explaining the source of my irritation. She says an irrelevant phrase in Arabic, butchers the pronounciation and translation (this is what makes Arabic such a difficult language, the cultural context of words and their changing meanings in sentences are hard to grasp if one hasn’t lived in an Arabic-speaking country or grown up hearing the language), and assumes that I have no knowledge of the language even though I had constantly make my linguistic identity be known in class discussions-that to me was a package of irriation no over-the-coutner ointment could ameliorate.
Posted by Maytha | October 20, 2007, 7:32 amgo maytha!
sick of these white women, Ive had similar situations. i remember one of them tried to “speak on behalf of the Palestinians” whilst in class. but dont you just love them when they want to save us Arab women?
Posted by rawan | October 20, 2007, 8:26 amOh please… Do you people realize there are actual problems in the world? Hungry children, anyone? Some white girl mispronouncing an Arabic phrase and some Arab girl pretending to get all bent out of shape about it is the reason why men use “PMS” as a verb.
And by the way, you can never eat ethnic food again that is not Arab (as if “Arab” is monolithic). You wouldn’t want to “coopt” someone else’s culture, now, would you? Get over yourself. This is America and people are going to wear, eat and say whatever the hell they feel like it, so get yourself a French (made in China) handbag, a nice pair of Italian designer (made in Kazakhstan) heels and a shirt that says “rape me” in Japanese (for that “look at me, I’m special” look), and get with the program!
Posted by Kabob Al-Makshouf | October 21, 2007, 12:40 am…Kimora Lee Simmon’s male assistant was wearing a red and white checkered one on her retarded reality show, tonight.
Posted by Falastin | October 21, 2007, 10:12 pmWhat was the phrase she used and how did she translate it?
I am a white guy married to an Arab. I speak more than a bit of Arabic, gained through travels in the Middle East, university classes and years of my wife’s family many of whom do not speak a word of English……oh and many years laughing at Tash ma Tash.
I find this goes both ways. I have had to put up with the idiots who make comments, in Arabic, and assume that anyone white might not be able to understand. Like the mental midget who tried to flirt with my wife in Arabic, then decided after the fact to ask in Arabic if I spoke Arabic.
Imagine the surprise in his eyes when I asnwered for my wife and said “Na’am”.
More likely than not this person was just trying to show off and make the others think that she knew some hard to learn language. Why else throw out some useless irrelevent phrase?
You would have knocked her off her highhorse if you had politely pointed out that her pronounciation of Arabic would not be able to be understood by any Arab, and then proceded to correct her phrase, maybe tossing in some different ways of saying said phrase in different Arabic dialects.
She was trying to look smart. You should have showed all observers just how smart, or not smart, she really was.
Posted by أبو سنان | October 22, 2007, 9:15 amSo the answer is to unzip and bring out a tape measurer? (mine is bigger!) Again, remember the HUNGRY CHILDREN, people! HUNGRY CHIL… oh screw it.
Posted by Kabob Al-Makshouf | October 22, 2007, 6:58 pm