coldhearted scientist وداد

When I first arrived in Bahia I was picked up at the airport by a chauffeur driven Chevette and taken to the house, which turned out to have mango trees and a broad porch with large white columns. On the porch stage center was a matron Velasquez could have painted, holding a small dog, standing and gesticulating. To the side sat her disaffected daughter, wan in a wicker chair, looking off to the sea. Standing in a row closer to the house wall were three mulatas, each barefoot and with a rag on her head, two holding white children by the hand and one a white babe-in-arms.

Later that day the daughter took me shopping. We walked to the supermarket with a mulata one step behind. She stayed one step behind and we were expected to ignore her entirely. The daughter knew exactly where she was at all times, however, as you could tell when after paying, she deftly passed the grocery bags to the mulata without looking at her.

I went to a restaurant later on that day. I was instructed to take a manservant with me so I would not be a woman alone. All Brazilian dishes in restaurants are for two people, you cannot order for only one, but the manservant was not hungry or claimed not to be. A child sitting outside looking in said, send his part to me! Already getting used to things, I gestured to the waiter: serve him! The waiter looked annoyed but served the boy saying, don’t eat this too close to the restaurant, and be sure to bring back the bowl!

That was my first day. Afterwards I had many adventures, but that day was my introduction to slavocracy.

Visceral I

I am back to That Paper and it is still difficult, and this is still because I have these visceral reactions to some of the sources I have to read and discuss. The background to it is real life experiences of what we might call vulgar cultural relativism. These sentences are a caricature but they give an idea:

“Since yours is the country of Yankee Imperialism, so you could not understand that our culture is different from yours, and that our Negroes/Arabs/Turks are culturally different from ourselves. It is out of imperialism that you have a negative opinion of our behavior toward our workers.”

“You have citizens there engaged in the same abuses in which I am engaging now – so you should say something to them, and not to me, because I am sure you have said nothing to them and have in fact only just been made aware of their existence by me.”

“If you were more enlightened you would be more tolerant of us, and less critical of the hierarchies we maintain. You only IMAGINE that these hierarchies resemble the reprehensible ones enforced in and by your own country because you, like all of your countrymen, universalize your experience and project it everywhere else. What you are seeing with your very eyes is not what you see.”

I have heard these statements directly and in person from entities emanating from fiefs including but not limited to: Alabama, 1967; Zimbabwe, 1981; Bahia, 1985; South Africa, 1986. I have heard them on television and in print from entities emanating from other locations as well, including various countries in Europe, from the seventies to the present day.

Notice that rhetorically it is an abusive strategy. It says: what you just saw happen, did not happen. You only imagined it happened because you are intellectually and politically impaired and you cannot see this because of what your ancestry is. I know better than you what you think and what you see. And it is mystifying and it is a defense mechanism.

These discourses are not softer and more nuanced just because they are being pronounced by someone from a poor country. They are ridiculous when that person is also rich.

HYPOCRITE ÉCRIVAIN, MON SEMBLABLE, MON FRÈRE.

Visceral II

I am in the business, it seems, of dissuading people from things they should not do and I feel Visceral about it. Visceral, visceral, because they want me to invest my time in their certain demise. I am always surprised when people are surprised to hear me say GET REAL. I feel visceral.

*

In the office, though, on another topic, I heard a conversation worthy of the annals of Paulo Freire:

Professor and Expert: We cannot teach these classes as though the students could be as good at this as we were at their stage, because these are lumpen-students we were some of the few good students there are.

Student: I disagree. I was one of those students and I believe knowledge is for everyone. I believe the reason you, and also I were not lumpen-students is that we had been shown effective ways of studying. I believe that this knowledge should be shared.

I agree with Student, and no I am sure Gayatri Spivak would, too. Just being aware of Student’s perspective I feel less Visceral.

Axé.