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brooklynrefugee · 8 years

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Eman Abdelhadi

June 15th, 2016

When I heard about the Orlando massacre, my first thought was “I will not get to grieve this. I will not get to mourn these lives.” The next two days, I spent many hours on the phone with reporters resisting questions that assumed a binary opposition between my queerness and my Islam. But I had something to look forward to: a vigil outside Stonewall Inn, an iconic symbol in New York City of the gay rights movement, on Monday evening.

As I walked to the landmark, I let myself relax—thinking this would be my moment of catharsis. I hoped that I would get to shed welled-up tears and stand in solidarity with others who understood this massacre for what it was—a political moment. But a few hours into joining the 4000+ crowd, I realized my initial instincts were more correct – I would not get to grieve these lives.

Upon arriving, I found myself in a sea of well-dressed upper middle class gays—mostly cis men, the kind that litter Human Rights Campaign ads and scream things like “Love Wins.” I suddenly felt so visible in my Muslimness, so naked in my identifiable Arabness. I was conscious of my enormous Arabic tattoo, my eyes, my skin, my hair. Lingering gazes felt hostile, but I brushed them off as a symptom of my own paranoia.

A contingent of four people shared a cardboard sign that said “No to Homophobia, No to Islamophobia.” I was relieved to see them, even finding a familiar face below the sign. Soon, they tried starting a chant.

“We’re here. We’re queer. Don’t give in to racist fear.”

It did not catch on. I thought “well, it’s not a movement crowd.” It takes a certain training to pick up on a chant; it can feel awkward to rally-novices. Besides, this was a notably whiter, richer crowd than the rallies that had trained people like me—from anti-war to Free Palestine to Occupy to #BlackLivesMatter.

Then another chant broke out: “We’re here. We’re queer. Don’t fuck with us.” That one caught on. Apparently people could chant, just not about racism.

The anti-racist chanters did not give up, and tried to re-initiate their chant, without success. A woman from the group began addressing the crowd, giving an impromptu speech about the exploitation of queer deaths for political gain. I would later find out she was socialist lesbian feminist, Sherry Wolf, who is quite famous on the Left.

“You see how this is being used, people,” she said, admonishing politicians for advancing their aims using a queer community they otherwise do not support. Across the barricades, in the park on the corner of Christopher and 4th Street, a few Latinx (a degendered term for identifying folks from the Latino/a community) folks responded loudly with cheers and applause. But the crowd around her, around us, was silent. I heard a man whisper to his partner, “babe, she’s not the speaker.” His partner responded sarcastically, “well, she’s certainly speaking.”

By the time the formal proceedings began, I was among a handful of queer people of color and our allies. We shared our shock and dismay over the course of the evening. We marveled as the crowd cheered for Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill De Blasio when they stopped to sign the memorial outside Stonewall.

Cuomo took the stage, to much applause from the crowd around us. We chanted “Pass ENDA,” the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. Even the promise of employment non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation did not move the crowd. Instead, they responded enthusiastically to Cuomo’s promises to “do what we did after 9/11.” As the applause broke out, I flashed back to memories of the FBI raiding mosques, homes—including my own—and Muslim charity organizations. If the crowd remembered how the state had imprisoned thousands of Muslims after 9/11, it certainly did not show it or did not care. If anyone remembered that the global “War on Terror” had taken hundreds of thousands of lives, it certainly did not seem to bother them.

Politician after politician took the stage and talked, not about homophobia, but about gun control. In the same breath, they lauded the NYPD for “protecting New Yorkers.” Indeed, the police seemed at home in front of Stonewall, carrying the same assault rifles that had been used two days earlier to kill the people we had come to mourn. A group of NYPD counterterrorism officers with canines, stood in the middle of the street talking to each other in relaxed voices. They were one with the crowd.

In the crowd, all around us, were the flimsy politics of those who thought sexuality was just one hurdle in the fight against an otherwise-just society. The majority of Stonewall attendees were enamored with the rich, powerful people who had hijacked our grief, and would not hear of any disruptions. We tried, at various points, to heckle the men in suits and rally the folks around us to engage in actual chanting. My friend shouted “Fuck the NYPD” during De Blasio’s speech. She received contemptuous glares from the audience, with one man simply saying “No.” Another man, standing next to her, said “They’re the only people protecting us.” She responded, “Do you know where you are? You’re at Stonewall.” Another voice interjected, “That was a long time ago.”

At one point, the crowd finally grew tired of the parade of platitudes from politicians. Chants of “Say Their Names” and “No More Bullshit” interrupted a speech from a mayoral staffer enough times she was forced to move on.

A white, young man near us responded in anger to the crowd’s chants.

“Of course they’re going to read the fucking names. Let people finish.” he said. “You have to give respect to get respect.”

Apparently occupying a stage at a rally is enough to earn you respect.

“They don’t deserve my respect,” I responded.

“Then don’t expect theirs.” He said.

“I don’t want their respect. I want my rights.” I said.

Another voice in the crowd interrupted our conversation, “It’s not the time for that.”

When my friend pointed out that a white liberal was silencing us, our old respect-obsessed friend said, “that’s racist.”

Before it became mainstream, the fight for gay liberation was part of a broader movement for a better society. Stonewall itself was a riot against police brutality toward working class transwomen, lesbians, and gay men.* But, now, we are standing in front of a New Stonewall.

According to the logic of the New Stonewall, police oppression of queers is in the past. Our oppression is compartmentalized from our political goals. If we just ask nicely and give them the respect they apparently deserve, people in power will listen to us. Based on this thinking, the fight for job non-discrimination is separate from the fight against transphobia is separate from the fight against gentrification is separate from the fight against police brutality is separate from racism is separate from the deaths of forty-nine, mostly Latinx, folks at the hands of a raging, gun-obsessed homophobe.

But, this New Stonewall is not for people like me. I am not interested in a partial humanization doled out by elites. I do not care when Cuomo humanizes me as a queer person only to criminalize me as a Palestinian. I do not want the NYPD’s protection while I dance, only to get their harassment while I pray. I do not want De Blasio to embrace my choice to love, while his real estate friends push me out of my home.

My experiences of homophobia, Islamophobia, and the crushing weight of living under capitalism cannot be conveniently separated out into “different issues.” They are all one and part of my life.

My oppressions often take the same forms—an angry glance on the subway, a slur shouted out the window of a passing car, my own quickening heartbeat in the face of the police, a job inquiry gone unanswered. They also have one source, one in which my body, language, and sexuality are threatening to capitalism and its faithful guard dog, the state; and where our collective queer bodies and stories and lives are cut into parts and sold to win elections and wage profitable wars.

We need to reclaim the radical potential of gay liberation from the New Stonewall by connecting Islamo- and queerphobia to the systems that fuel them and other injustices. Until then, we have even more than forty-nine lives to grieve. We have the death of a movement to mourn.

*UPDATED 6/16/16: This post has been revised to note that police brutality against gay men also contributed to the Stonewall riot.

#stonewall inn #nypd #orlando #lgbt

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brooklynrefugee · 9 years

Text

See Jen. See Jen Run.

Dear Jen,

Yes, this is an open letter to you, Jen Polachek, writer of this ridiculous essay: It Happened To Me: There Are No Black People In My Yoga Classes And I’m Suddenly Feeling Uncomfortable With It. Which–upon reading–to anyone with any kind of sense will understand to really mean: There Was A Black Person In My Yoga Class And It Made Me Uncomfortable.

First off, Jen… of course you live in Brooklyn. Of course. You are exactly the kind of person I expect to exist amongst the new breed of culture termites that have invaded the beloved borough in the last couple of years. The same kind of spoiled, white, casually racist, intellectually snobby, subconsciously classist, struggle appropriating, horribly dressed assholes that have moved in from some preppy ivy league university to “struggle” to make ends meet while eating at only the trendiest restaurants, snapping pictures of your $30 burger with your $5000 camera while absolutely dreading the thought of not getting tickets to Coachella this year. Not to sound like an irritated native Brooklynite or anything. [Ahem].

Secondly, settle in Miss Polachek (or is it Miss Caron? They changed your name and removed your picture from the original article, but something tells me the first one was right.) I’m going to reply to your piece paragraph by paragraph because I want to reply to every dumb thing you said, and seeing as everything you said was beyond stupid, I’m going to need a minute.

January is always a funny month in yoga studios: they are inevitably flooded with last year’s repentant exercise sinners who have sworn to turn over a new leaf, a new year, and a new workout regime. A lot of January patrons are atypical to the studio’s regular crowd and, for the most part, stop attending classes before February rolls around.

Here, Jen, you solidify the fact that you are a regular at yoga studios. So much so that you can predict the flux of the attendees to said yoga studios and this gives us great insight into your keen observation skills.

A few weeks ago, as I settled into an exceptionally crowded midday class, a young, fairly heavy black woman put her mat down directly behind mine. It appeared she had never set foot in a yoga studio—she was glancing around anxiously, adjusting her clothes, looking wide-eyed and nervous. Within the first few minutes of gentle warm-up stretches, I saw the fear in her eyes snowball, turning into panic and then despair. Before we made it into our first downward dog, she had crouched down on her elbows and knees, head lowered close to the ground, trapped and vulnerable. She stayed there, staring, for the rest of the class.

From your adept description, the “fairly heavy black woman” was very self-conscious about this new experience. I’m sure the constant staring by you helped ease her nerves just a little bit. This woman, I’m sure, loved nothing more than being made hyper-aware of her race and weight by your compassionate glances. I’m sure if she knew for a fact that she really can’t walk into a room with someone focusing on her race and weight, all her self-consciousness would just evaporate. Makes sense, Jen.

Because I was directly in front of her, I had no choice but to look straight at her every time my head was upside down (roughly once a minute). I’ve seen people freeze or give up in yoga classes many times, and it’s a sad thing, but as a student there’s nothing you can do about it. At that moment, though, I found it impossible to stop thinking about this woman. Even when I wasn’t positioned to stare directly at her, I knew she was still staring directly at me. Over the course of the next hour, I watched as her despair turned into resentment and then contempt. I felt it all directed toward me and my body.

Jen, your observation skills are truly impressing, roughly once a minute, you say? And you were able to decipher this woman’s entire physical, emotional, and mental state and conclude that out of all the other skinny white women in the class, you had become the object of her contempt. All from glancing at her face that was directly behind you, that you could not actually see for more than once a minute, and only if the yoga position allowed it? Fuck off, Sherlock. We have Jen now.

I was completely unable to focus on my practice, instead feeling hyper-aware of my high-waisted bike shorts, my tastefully tacky sports bra, my well-versedness in these poses that I have been in hundreds of times. My skinny white girl body. Surely this woman was noticing all of these things and judging me for them, stereotyping me, resenting me—or so I imagined.

Jen. Jen, Jen, Jen. You are projecting all of your insecurities on this unsuspecting woman. The epic amount of narcissism in this one paragraph alone… Jen, sis, I can assure that whatever stereotype this woman has come up with for you (assuming she’s even spending her time, as you imagine, obsessively thinking about you) is most likely 100% accurate. You seem the type of person that would be extremely transparent in your neurosis.

I thought about how even though yoga comes from thousands of years of south Asian tradition, it’s been shamelessly co-opted by Western culture as a sport for skinny, rich white women. I thought about my beloved donation-based studio that I’ve visited for years, in which classes are very big and often very crowded and no one will try to put a scented eye pillow on your face during savasana. They preach the gospel of yogic egalitarianism, that their style of vinyasa is approachable for people of all ages, experience levels, socioeconomic statuses, genders, and races; that it is non-judgmental and receptive. As such, the studio is populated largely by students, artists, and broke hipsters; there is a much higher ratio of men to women than at many other studios, and you never see the freshly-highlighted, Evian-toting, Upper-West-Side yoga stereotype.

What?

I realized with horror that despite the all-inclusivity preached by the studio, despite the purported blindness to socioeconomic status, despite the sizeable population of regular Asian students, black students were few and far between. And in the large and constantly rotating roster of instructors, I could only ever remember two being black.

You only realize this now? After all these years, you’re only now realizing this? This woman behind you should be paid for her miraculous ability to make you realize shit, Jen.

I thought about how that must feel: to be a heavyset black woman entering for the first time a system that by all accounts seems unable to accommodate her body. What could I do to help her? If I were her, I thought, I would want as little attention to be drawn to my despair as possible—I would not want anyone to look at me or notice me. And so I tried to very deliberately avoid looking in her direction each time I was in downward dog, but I could feel her hostility just the same. Trying to ignore it only made it worse. I thought about what the instructor could or should have done to help her. Would a simple “Are you okay?” whisper have helped, or would it embarrass her? Should I tell her after class how awful I was at yoga for the first few months of my practicing and encourage her to stick with it, or would that come off as massively condescending? If I asked her to articulate her experience to me so I could just listen, would she be at all interested in telling me about it? Perhaps more importantly, what could the system do to make itself more accessible to a broader range of bodies? Is having more racially diverse instructors enough, or would it require a serious restructuring of studio’s ethos?

I can’t with you. Jen, are you saying that your previously touted observation skills were not even based on you looking at this woman? Since you “deliberately avoid[ed] looking in her direction each time [you] [were] in downward dog,” but in reality, you gathered all this information from her because you could “feel her hostility just the same?” Must be that Angry Black Woman™ thing people talk about. It’s actually a tangible thing special people like yourself can feel. Well, Jen, aside from now knowing about your Black Woman Sixth Sense™, I see that you really do care about the issues facing black women in yoga. After years and years and years of going, it took one black woman making you uncomfortable to really see that things needed to change.

I got home from that class and promptly broke down crying. Yoga, a beloved safe space that has helped me through many dark moments in over six years of practice, suddenly felt deeply suspect. Knowing fully well that one hour of perhaps self-importantly believing myself to be the deserving target of a racially charged anger is nothing, is largely my own psychological projection, is a drop in the bucket, is the tip of the iceberg in American race relations, I was shaken by it all the same.

I would be shaken too, Jen, if I realized I was a racist narcissist who spent an entire hour of yoga obsessing over the racially charged anger not being directed at me. That is what you realized, right?

The question is, of course, so much bigger than yoga—it’s a question of enormous systemic failure. But just the same, I want to know—how can we practice yoga in good conscience, when mere mindfulness is not enough? How do we create a space that is accessible not just to everybody, but to every body? And while I recognize that there is an element of spectatorship to my experience in this instance, it is precisely this feeling of not being able to engage, not knowing how to engage, that mitigates the hope for change.

Jen, it is exactly this type of casually racist “othering” that mitigates “the hope for change.” (Wait, mitigates? As in, your racist “othering” of this black woman that made her unapproachable to you dilutes the [aka your] hope for change?) Jen, I can’t.

Jen, it is exactly your breed of racist who think you’re not one of the “bad guys” because you don’t currently have a white hooded sheet hanging in your closet between that Native American costume your wore last Halloween and that vintage Chanel Blazer you miraculously found at a Salvation Army. It is exactly this kind of hyper-dissection of black people’s race and bodies in any given space where the majority is populated by the white race that “mitigate the hope for change.” The woman who sat behind you probably was self-conscious about being there. She was probably self-conscious about her weight, her race, and any other thing that didn’t meet the standard set in that room by you and your fellow yoga friends aka White America.

Jen, not only did you project all over this woman, you assumed that she was jealous of your “skinny white girl body.” Not only are you devaluing her body–and the bodies of many women–you are under the delusion that you are, in fact, the standard for all women. That all women desire a “skinny white girl body.” I can assure you, Jen, as a “heavyset black woman” myself, you are not the standard that all woman crave, especially black women. You may be the standard set forth by advertising agencies, television, movies, and magazine covers…. but you’re probably most likely to find the chubby white girl to the left being more envious of your “skinny white girl body” than the black woman behind you.

You were uncomfortable with her. You were self-conscious around her. You directed your thoughts at her. Why? Because she was black and she was big and she was in your space. That prickling of discomfort you felt? Wasn’t a sudden rush of realization that your surroundings, a space you’ve been associating with for over 6 years, weren’t as inclusive as your once thought. It was the racism that is inherent in White America that they fail to acknowledge. You didn’t feel uncomfortable because the woman felt uncomfortable. You felt uncomfortable because the space that was once your space was invaded by someone foreign to you and you twisted that discomfort, that casual racist inclination, into some bullshit faux-empathy, self-important essay about the lack of inclusiveness in your yoga studio. White privilege is being able to walk into a room and not have your race be a factor in what someone thinks about you. A black woman walked into a room and she was painted as hostile towards you in your own mind. Think about that, and fix that, before you think about what it will take to fix a yoga studio.

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