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Following on from last week’s guest post by Aren Aizura, I am posting Sara Ahmed’s incisive comment on the censorship of ‘Gay Imperialism’

by Sara Ahmed

Sara Ahmed

Peter Tatchell invites us to find evidence of ‘my Islamaphobia, racism or support for imperialist wars or the “war on terror”‘ in the articles that can be downloaded from his website. I would like to say that a brief glance at some of these articles shows some very serious problems in terms of the employment of racialised vocabularies for example in: Their Multiculturalism and Ours; Why has the left gone soft on human rights?; The New Dark Ages (you don’t need to read Frantz Fanon to discuss the problem with the use of the very term ‘the new dark ages’ though Fanon, as always would help) and Islamic Fundamentalism in Britain. I don’t have the time in this brief informal response for the call to respond to go through all of the problems with these pieces, for example, with how some of the critiques of ‘universal human rights’ discourse which have been an important part of LGBT, feminist, socialist as well as anti-racist histories are represented as ‘going soft’. I do intend to offer a systematic critique of some of the terms of the arguments used in due course, which I will publish where they can downloaded, in the interests of sustaining and enabling a debate. But I do want to question here how Mr Tatchell is responding to the critique, and even to the critique of the response to the critique (offered by very thoughtful and careful pieces of writing such as the one offered by Aren Aizura). Critiques of racism are reduced and misheard as personal attacks, which is what blocks a hearing of the critique. In the end, the situation becomes re-coded as a question of individual reputation and good will: we lose the chance to attend to the politics of the original critique. Read the rest of this entry »

by Aren Aizura

I am reprinting the excellent response to the censorship of Out of Place, a book edited by Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake on the interconnections between queerness and raciality.  As you will read, the book contains an article, ‘Gay Imperialism’, which critiques what Jasbir Puar for example has termed ‘homonationalism’ and the participation by some gay rights and feminist activists in the perpetuation of Islamophobia through the ‘war on terror’ logic.

The book will not be republished due to an attack by the gay rights activist, Peter Tatchell, who has claimed that he is defamed by the article. The article and the book are an excellent critique of the ways in which discourses of liberation have been subverted in the service of power.

Please read this critique and spread it widely. An interesting comment on his piece and on Peter Tatchell’s stance by Sara Ahmed, author of much interesting work on racism, Islamophobia and ‘diversity’ can be read here.

Read on for Aizura’s article… Read the rest of this entry »

Nick Griffin was right about one thing: Churchill would have felt at home in the BNP.

The appearance of Nick Griffin, leader of the British Nartional Party, on BBC Question Time on October 22, 2009 has led to massive debate across the UK. Those in favour of freedom of speech advocated for Griffin to be allowed on the programme in the interests of exposing him. Those opposing said that there should be no platform for fascists and that Griffin and the BNP would only benefit from the publicity, no matter what was actually debated. I agree with the latter position and have always done so. Rare words of sense were written by Gary Younge in the Guardian reminding us that the other panelists, in particular Jack Straw, as the representative of New Labour is as guilty (if not more so) of encouraging racism in Britain as Griffin, especially considering Straw’s incendiary 2007 remarks on the niqab and the direct link between this and rising Islamophobia.

The panelists on Question Time were literally falling over themselves to show themselves to be tolerant and non-racist in the face of Griffin’s blatant racism. However, the mechanisms they chose to do this by resorted to the tried and tested recourse to patriotism (critiqued by Paul Gilroy in There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack with regards the Anti-Nazi Leagues in 1987). Read the rest of this entry »

Naomi Klein has written a damning account of Obama’s complicity in killing off the movement for reparations for slavery. By announcing that the US would not be represented at the UN’s anti-racism conference, ‘Durban II’, ostensibly because it is anti-Israel, he has effectively declared to black people that he will not stand up for them.

As Klein notes in conclusion, the right in the US has already decided that Obama is a ‘reverse racist’ that wants to use public finance to redirect funds directly to minorities and away from whites. Nothing could be further from the truth, but,

No matter how race-neutral Obama tries to be, his actions will be viewed by a large part of the country through the lens of its racial obsessions. So, since even his most modest, Band-Aid measures are going to be greeted as if he is waging a full-on race war, Obama has little to lose by using this brief political window actually to heal a few of the country’s racial wounds.

Read the whole article here

My bookshelves

I am currently in the proces of uploading my publications using Issuu. If you visit this page,you can view, download or print the journal article or book chapter you would like. This is a slow process, so bear with me while I get them all online. For your information, there is also a full list of publicationsfor download. Comments welcome.

Due to a number of deferrals, the MPhil in Ethnic and Racial Studies at Trinity College, Dublin is still accepting applications for 2009-10. Please consult their website

Read the rest of this entry »

An interesting aid for teaching the problems of racelesness, post-racialism and colour-blindness to students. I will be using this in my first lecture for undergraduates who will doubtless be asking whether racism isn’t a thing of the past with the election of Obama. Although this is clearly a bigger issue in the US, the Obama election has had an enormous effect on the consideration of racism in the West more generally. Although we obviously cannout simply adapt US realities to different national contexts, the issue of post-race is as alive and well in Europe as it is in North America, the difference is only that it is not discussed in those terms because race in the post-war era was not considered central to what it means to be European.

Two stories out of Italy where mounting racism has become a signature of the right-wing coalition of Silvio Berlusconi, the right-wing separatist Lega nord, and the neo-fascist Alleanza Nazionale. Following the persecution of the Roma and the daily indignities suffered by immigrants held in detention centres or exploited by the black economy, come the efforts to ‘de-foreignise’ Italy’s public places. Read the rest of this entry »

Shah Rukh Khan, the cheesiest but most loved Bollywood actor was detained at Newark Airport because of his name on August 15th: Indian Independence Day. Ironically, he was in the US to promote his new movie, My Name is Khan, which is about racial profiling!

Wajahat Ali points out,

the extent to which racial profiling and exaggerated security screening take place in the US for its darker and more “ethnic” citizens with “Muslim” surnames. US officials repeatedly deny these examinations are based on race or religion despite the overwhelming statistics that suggest otherwise.

Read the rest of his article here.

Sometimes it’s funny how you come across something that tallies completely with what you are thinking/writing at the moment. This video speak to the paper I am writing now on ‘Post-race, post-politics: the paradoxical rise of culture after multiculturalism’. Excerpts to come and comments welcome on the writing in progress. For now. enjoy the video… More at http://twitter.com/jsmooth995