Ep 10. Bellydancing: A Microcosm of Colonialism, with Brittney Laleh Banaei

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This summer, racial tensions in the US have come to a head – again – in a way that many people are grappling with racism in new ways. 

It has rippled out around the world … people looking at what’s happening in the US and seeing it mirrored in their own countries, and asking questions about the extent of racist ideas … because it’s not just a US problem, obviously. 

In my context I’m thinking about how international schools are built on and around the idea that Western ideas and standards are what we aspire to and that people not from the West should also aspire to. And being white is unfortunately all wrapped up in those standards and values. 

This really does permeate an awful lot of the international school experience even while I celebrate the international student body and the international experience my kids are having. 

I love that. AND I’m confronting some of the things I had previously pushed down … uncomfortable thoughts that lurked around the edges of my mind but since I didn’t feel like I could really do anything to address problematic aspects of my chosen lifestyle, I pushed that down so we could just enjoy the good parts.

Well today we’re going to dip a toe in. There’s soooo much to unpack, we’ll have to take it bite by bite. So today’s just a bite.

I’ve brought on my friend Brittney Banaei, an Iranian American, who is deeply immersed in the world of dance and is studying international law. I met Brittney many years ago when I was learning belly dance. Some people were there for exercise, some loved the music, some were drawn to cabaret style belly dance, and Brittney brought a particular interest in traditional cultural dances, which had a totally different feel.

She ended up studying dance in depth, and I followed along with interest when she spent a year in Israel-Palestine as part of her studies. That happened while I was living in Oman, so we were having some sort of parallel experiences, discovering things about this part of the world at the same time.

Recently Britney shared her thoughts bringing together what she was studying in international law classes and what she was observing in the dance community. It’s relevant to the conversation I want to bring up.

A little bit of what she had said earlier, I’ll paraphrase for you:

Our dance form is a microcosm for the current social upheaval we’re experiencing: a rotten root that cannot be cured until it is acknowledged. Our dance form was built on inherently problematic, fetishized, racist paradigms — overt or internalized. We continue to find ways to say we’re exempt from the Western colonization that permeates the entire world, and deny that we’ve benefited from it. We feel we can historically bypass, step over, and then speak FOR menath people [that’s Middle Eastern, North African, Turkish and Hellenistic]. We speak FOR menath people through our own eurocentric lens. We have profited and benefitted from the marginalization and willful misunderstanding of MENATH dance, people, and culture. Until we’re ready to acknowledge that, we need to stop being surprised when problematic things happen in our community. 

So … that’s what we’re going to dive into further today!

Kim: [00:00:00] So welcome, Britney.

Brittney: [00:00:03] Thank you Kim.

Kim: [00:00:05] Can you give us a broad summary of your training and your interests?

Brittney: [00:00:12] Absolutely. So I started belly dancing, what we would call belly dancing or Raqs Sharqi when I was 14, which is around the time I met Kim, and continued with that mode of study with several teachers over the years, and had studios and just dabbled in that career a little while. And then that eventually led me to enter a bachelor’s degree program in dance. And my minor was in Middle Eastern studies, which is essentially like a comparative history and politics degree. 

I thought, oh, Middle East, we’re going to study the culture and the model of it. And it ended up being this pretty rigorous historical and political lens through which we were looking at the Middle East. In there, I also lived in Israel Palestine for a year and studied dance there, which is where I kind of fell in love with this deepening political interest in the Middle East. And I think there’s no better place to go if you want to really get entrenched in the complex history and complex politics of the region. 

Now I’m in my master’s degree at CU Boulder with emphasis on dance master of Fine Arts. And then I have secondary emphases in somatics (mind, body practice) and then international law. I’m not a law student yet, but I am taking international law classes and will take some international relations classes next semester. So that’s kind of this vein, this itch I’ve been scratching for a little while, and that’s where I am now.

Kim: [00:01:41] Great. Now, we talked the other day and a lot of it was a little bit over my head, but it was it was wonderful. So can we start … can you kind of 

Outline for us: What is Orientalism?

Brittney: [00:01:57] Yeah. Edward Said, who is a Palestinian and wrote the book Orientalism. And it is essentially a political theory that brings to light the Western centric view on the Middle East and how, from the beginning of our historical relations, we’ve had this warped view of the culture… Of Middle Eastern culture. 

If you Google Orientalism or Orientalist art or Orientalist painting, you’ll see that actually that has nothing to do with Edward Said. 

There is a whole movement, whole movement in art and study – ethnographic and anthropological study on the Middle East and it’s called Orientalism. And what you’re seeing when you see Orientalist depictions are all of these hyper sexualized, hyper emotionalized (not sure that’s a word) depictions of Middle Eastern people. And so what Edward Said does is say, Hey. You have a warped view of our culture and almost paternalistic view of our culture.

The West compares itself to the east as a way of asserting hegemonic power. So you have the emotional and amoral Middle East compared to the rational, scientific, moral West. Right. So we’re always othering. That’s what Said’s theory is. That the West is always othering the east. 

When we talk about that in dance, we usually stop there. OK, we’re othering, we’re appropriating. But then Said goes on to say — I feel like this isn’t talked about enough — that Said goes on to say that: That othering impacts policy, impacts international interactions, that view of the East colors everything we do in terms of government negotiation. So it continuously subjugates the Middle East to the west.

Kim: [00:03:53] This othering, does it happen on all sides? Because that’s part of the way we understand ourselves and make sense out of the world around us, we kind of put words around it. 

Does it happen the other way around? Or not, because of the political, economic, geographic power that the West holds?

Brittney: [00:04:17] Yeah, I’m sure it happens the other way around as far as cultural othering. But as far as political power is concerned, it can’t happen the other way around. You’re looking at huge economic and political and military world superpowers…. The question is always, where’s the power? When you’re talking about appropriation or othering in the way that affects our policy and our international interactions with other countries: Always ask yourself where the power dynamic is. 

There might be a resource power dynamic in the Middle East as far as oil, but I don’t think that’s anywhere near a level playing field because of colonialist history. When you’re looking at the colonialist history of the Middle East and how Britain and then eventually the United States, France colonized (and they used a different name, it wasn’t always colonization; Later, after World War I, they were calling it colonization). When you look at these long term colonizing mentalities, you’re looking at a way that colonization has impacted these countries and creates an internal power dynamic. So countries then othering themselves by using Western values as their benchmark for morality or effectiveness or whatever.

Kim: [00:05:50] That’s pretty deep.

Brittney: [00:05:51] So I got really off topic, but I think we were talking about a power dynamic, can that happen the other way around? And I would say yes, but I really just ask yourself where the power is. Why.

Kim: [00:06:00] Mmmm-hmmm.

Brittney: [00:06:02] Power, that hegemonic power, does not have upward mobility, it only has downward mobility.

What’s hegemonic?

Brittney: [00:06:10] Hegemonic is the use of structures and cultural mechanisms and social mechanisms of a dominant group over a smaller, a non dominant group — not necessarily smaller, but a non dominant group. 

For example, colonization in North Africa, being forced to speak French, dress French, that would be hegemony. So there’s the French coming in and colonizing, dominating and forcing the non dominant culture to conform to their ways. But through, for means of control.

Kim: [00:06:45] Ok. And then you had a really huge example, but it was a basic example, about 

How the country boundaries were assigned after World War One

Brittney: [00:06:56] Yeah, the breakup of the Ottoman Empire. 

Yeah, so Britain and France partitioned most of the Middle East in a pretty… I would, I want to say… arbitrary way. Because to the people in those places, it probably seemed very arbitrary. We were one country and we had separate tribes or separate ethnic groups, but it’s all the same area. Boundaries didn’t exist. For the people living there it would be pretty arbitrary. 

When you look at it from the outside, you’re like, oh, this was all about trade and resources and who was going to be able to exert power and various strategies in these areas.

Brittney: [00:07:30] The example I use is Israel Palestine and how this, because of its geographic location, was really strategic for trade and military. 

In the Israel Palestine case, in World War I, Britain was asking for allies in the area. So Britain asked King Faisal for assistance, Arab assistance, in World War I, and in exchange they would be in control of what they were calling Palestine at the time. So they would have an independent Arab state there. That was a promise made. 

At the same time, Britain asks the Zionist movement for assistance and backing as well. Political backing. Britain promised their support to the Zionist movement and in exchange would give them an independent state in what we now call Israel Palestine. 

So they’ve now promised land to two different people, but behind closed doors. So when it comes time to partition of the land, they have to make a choice. And they choose the Zionist movement. And that is… I’ll stop it there.

[00:08:41] But that is the land that we now call Israel Palestine. We always associate that with World War II. Israel was created in response to World War II, but it was actually created in response to growing tensions for the Jewish people in World War I. And it was created by Britain. 

But when we hear about Israel Palestine, we hear about tensions. We hear about Arab aggression. We hear about all of these, I think, these situations that we don’t fully understand. But if you look all the way back, it’s not like the Jewish people weren’t there, but there was also Arabs there. So there’s this whole demographic of people who are now essentially, from their mind, being colonized. 

And a lot of things happened along the way.

[00:09:27] So what we would call, I guess, the native population there, right, because there is no empty space. There is no place where people do not live. There is no place that is just open for us to occupy and take over. I think that’s very problematic rhetoric that we hear a lot of: Oh we discovered, we returned to, we…. And there is this erasure of native populations. 

It’s factual, but it feels controversial to say that there was a native population in what we call Israel Palestine when the Jewish people came out of the Zionist movement and fled during World War II. So it’s this really impossible situation, right? You want people to have a place to go. We have to acknowledge the native population in these areas.

Brittney: [00:10:12] The Passfield White Papers, there’s like these people sent from Britain: What is going on in Israel Palestine? It wasn’t called Israel at the time. 

What is going on in this place? Because people are suddenly…. Arabs are attacking Jews. Jews are attacking Arabs. What is happening there? They send these people out to analyze the situation, essentially. They say if they had anything in common…! The Passfield White Papers say these are two fundamentally incompatible groups of people.

Brittney: [00:10:45] But then how do we get into this dynamic of one is good and one is bad? That’s my question. I’m not denying that there are two groups of people there. I’m not saying that one group should be expunged and the other stays. I don’t have the answer to the Israel Palestine question. 

But my counter question to that is: Why, if this is the history, why is one group considered evil and one group considered morally higher than the other or non evil? And my answer is Orientalism. My answer is the way that we view Arab people and Middle Eastern people, through our culture. 

Wow. That was really long. I’m sorry.

Kim: [00:11:26] You also described that 

There were a lot of really problematic things around how what we call bellydance was introduced to the Western world. Can you tell us more about how that happened? Because I found that quite fascinating, and disturbing too.

Brittney: [00:11:43] Yeah. I first want to start by saying that Heather Ward, Heather D. Ward was doing a lot of research on Egyptian politics. Her book is called Egyptian Belly Dance in Transition: The Raqs Sharqi Revolution, 1890-1930  So she talks a lot about costuming in this development. And I think the rhetoric that we use a lot in what we call the bellydance community is that, oh, we invented the costuming that Egyptian folks used in their dance. It was like a mirror of Hollywood. Which is now being critiqued as an inherently racialized practice in and of itself to say that, “oh, we influenced so much them, that it really influenced their dance style and their clothing style. And in Heather Ward’s book, she addresses that and kind of tracks the development of costuming. And I focus on costuming because that is such a huge part, really an identifier of the dance.

Kim: [00:12:40] Mmmm-hmm.

Brittney: [00:12:40] So there’s this folklore in the bellydance community that there was a woman named Little Egypt at the Chicago World’s Fair. And Little Egypt was so entrancing that we then, … now we have bellydance, basically. Like, that’s where it was first introduced and that’s how we saw it.

Brittney: [00:13:02] The first World’s Fair was more of an invitation, so Egypt had a booth there, Turkey had a booth there. Egypt’s booth, even though it was sponsored by Egypt, it was very ancient Egyptianized. In the first World’s Fair we had actual representatives coming and having control over the booth. 

The second World’s Fair in Chicago was driven a lot by this utilitarianism of wanting to have this homogenized American identity, right. So we have… This is the time when we really see Italian immigrants, Irish immigrants. You see this coalescing of the white identity happening in America because it’s really economically driven. We don’t want workers unions and uprisings happening in places like Chicago where these large immigrant communities were doing a lot of manufacturing industrial work and are unionizing at the time. So there’s this big push to have this white American identity for everybody under the umbrella. So that’s really what’s happening during the Chicago World’s Fair. There’s this political-economic thrust behind it. 

In the Chicago World’s Fair you start literally in White Town. So the entrance was White Town. It’s like this magical white town that you walk through and then you start seeing other countries and other cultures. And I think the idea is like this kind of: you digress from white town, into like scary, you know, other places.

Kim: [00:14:30] So fascinating.

Brittney: [00:14:32] Yeah, it’s crazy. And the Chicago World’s Fair differs from the first World’s Fair in that mainly the countries were not bringing in emissaries anymore or representatives. They were paying – and then folks were being paid – producers. Entertainment producers were being paid to develop these exhibits. You weren’t seeing as many authentic things coming from countries of origin, but more of this sensationalized westernized view of different cultures. 

So it’s different than the First World’s Fair in that way. You have American actresses hired to play people of culture or people of origin. And that’s where we really start to see these problematic views. I mean, it was there, it was present throughout. But we really start to see these problematic views of the Middle East happening in the Chicago World’s Fair.

Brittney: [00:15:22] And so that’s this contested idea that little Egypt invented bellydance and that’s where we got all of our ideas about bellydancing. If that is the case, and a lot of people debate that that is not the case, we shouldn’t be romanticizing it. We should be analyzing the place it came from, the context from which it sprung. Which is this attempt to control, economically and culturally, to homogenize the American people. And we do that through othering. We do that by walking through white town and saying this is you, and then you get out of white town and saying this is them. Whose side do want to be on, right? So you have this presentation of culture as oddity. And that is problematic.

Kim: [00:16:06] So there were these American entertainment producers who were hired to create a show, to create a spectacle, and the degree of input from the country of origin was not as great as we would think that it should be.

Brittney: [00:16:22] Correct, yeah. Compared to modern standards, certainly. But then also compared to even the first World’s Fair we had, the degree was less. Which is really interesting and I think the thrust was different. You have the first World Fair that’s like, Hey, London has had a World’s Fair. Let’s play on the world stage. We’re building this superpower identity. And then fast forward to the second World’s Faire, where we’re like, oh, we need an identity, we need something that’s going to coagulate us. Because otherwise we’re going to have uprisings, and otherwise we’re going to lose a lot of money, and otherwise, and otherwise. So it’s not quite the same global citizen mindset as it was … Not that the first World’s Fair was perfect.

Kim: [00:17:03] Sure.

You said even the newspaper reporting about the event was striking.

Brittney: [00:17:10] Yeah, so you have this historic representation, historical representation of Arabs in the media. I am sharing with your listeners this film called Planet of the Arabs  which is just a string of Western portrayals of Arab people throughout history, throughout our media history. So this is an even further back Planet of the Arab reference. 

This Chicago newspaper reports on the World’s Fair and talks about this interaction between a black individual and I think the representative from the Turkish side of the World’s Fair. So you have this interaction between essentially a Middle Eastern human and a black human that’s being portrayed in this newspaper. And you kind of see the stage set through the comments in this newspaper about how we’re going to view Middle Eastern people going forward into the future. Which is the black human observing the Arab human, or Middle Eastern human, with like curiosity and his own exoticism. His own wonder and mystified-ness about the situation. 

And the newspaper report…. I’m going to see if I can find the quote.

“An Arabian beauty known as Little Egypt, one commentator noted, no ordinary Western woman looked on these performances with anything but horror. And at the time, it was a matter of serious debate in the councils of exposition, whether the customs of the dancers from Cairo should be faithfully reproduced or the morals of the public faithfully protected.”

Kim: [00:18:45] Oh yeah.

Brittney: [00:18:45] Yeah.

You were talking about how it was really drawing the distinction between the white people, who were so civilized, and then … the rest. Laying out the hierarchy of white vs. black vs. Arab.

Brittney: [00:19:00] Right. There was this distinction, and that’s really bringing us back around to Orientalism. Uncivilized others. And how people were drawing this supremacy from observing and laying on, overlaying, Western values onto these people, to Middle Eastern people and, of course, black people. 

This newspaper article really just draws that distinction. Observing a black human taking in the view of a Middle Eastern human. Being mystifyed by it. 

Essentially the article goes on to say the Arab is neither black or white. So at least we know the black human role in our society and they are in essence, more American. Even though the racial tension was and is so problematic, we have this identifying, “Oh, this is more American.” This is more compartmentalized than this other person, who is not quite superior and is not quite inferior, and therefore is more inferior in a lot of ways. We can’t figure it out. We just can’t figure them out so we’re just going to ignore them. 

There’s this obsession with classification and codification. And when the West is witnessing something that they can’t classify in black and white terms. We are obsessed with race and how to classify race, but not how to classify culture. So you really see that coming out in this quote from Eric Davis.

How is the dance community confronting Orientalism today?

Brittney: [00:20:41] Well, there’s a huge reckoning happening right now and on the heels of the antiracist movement, which is wonderful. We’re thinking about things in a way that we haven’t thought about them in recent history. Really observing: Are we appropriating? Am I wearing Arab face? It started with this conversation about: Are we centering Black voices? Certainly not! And then there was this whole unraveling of, oh, shoot, we’re not centering black voices. We’re certainly not centering Middle Eastern voices and North African voices. And it’s this whole reckoning that is happening right now. 

It’s tough but I think people are rising to the challenge. So there’s that piece where people are really thinking about how do we continue to engage and defend our dance when it does have such a problematic root. And my writing is about acknowledging that problematic root and acknowledging that white hegemony has existed forever and goes way beyond the dance community. And we’re just picking up the thread in the 19th century basically. So that’s my standpoint. 

Then there’s a lot of conversation about fusion, for example, and taking pieces of other cultures and and then making a third thing, which is syncretism, which is actually a thing that happens in dance. 

But my stance is that until we can acknowledge what we have done as a culture – and going back to the article, that beginning of the erasure of the Middle Eastern identity in the United States – we have a hard time in the U.S. acknowledging our role to play in that cultural hegemony.

Brittney: [00:22:24] So that is a hard… I think the dance community is struggling with that. Because it’s hard to…. 

It’s hard to take your hobby and acknowledge that it’s political. It’s hard to take your hobby and acknowledge that it’s problematic. And maybe you don’t want to think about it that hard. The spoiler alert is that none of us ever wanted to think about it this hard, and that is the problem. That’s the problem. None of us wanted to think about racism this hard. None of us wanted to think about the impact of politics this much. 

I see people posting all the time now like I’m normally not a political person; I’m going to [] politics. 

But the truth is we are engaged in cultural hegemony and appropriation and colonization. And in order to change that, we have to be doing concrete actions. We can’t turn our face away from it. 

This is not about the dance community, as specific as you asked. But this… For me, in my, in my assessment, this is the root. 

Because you have this other piece of the dance community saying: Look, I just want to dance and have fun, and why do you have to make un-fun for me? I guess I should just quit dance. I guess I just can’t do anything. And that’s the extreme example. Right. But there is that. 

And then there’s a whole swath of people that don’t even know this is happening. They’re just going about their lives. And I think that that’s where I get at the microcosm. If you’re not affected, then you’re probably not paying attention. If you are affected, you’re furious. And if you are a compassionate being focused on change, affecting change, then you are trying to be a good ally and probably fumbling with that right now. That’s the three pieces that I’m seeing the dance community in at this time, and we’re nowhere close to being done.

Brittney: [00:24:10] And Ibraham Kendi would say that we are never done being anti-racist. You can study with the culture, you can embody the culture, you can speak the language even. But you’re never done doing your anti-racist or anti-colonial work. And I think that’s probably a recognition that the dance community is going to have to come to eventually is that there is no there is no way to police one another because we continuously need to be doing our own anti-racism and anti-colonialist work if we’re going to remain in this dance.

That feels big and heavy, and kind of exciting, all at the same time. 

Brittney: [00:24:49] Sure, I think it is really exciting and I think it’s a great example of art being a vehicle for at least conversations about change, because you can’t have the conversation about appropriation without acknowledging colonialism. And you can’t turn a blind eye to those conversations without acknowledging that that’s what you’re doing. 

So you find this common piece of dance where many different people are having to get on board with this conversation if they want to continue. Or some people might quit. Be like, I don’t want to do this anymore, it’s too hard. But some of us can’t quit; you can’t quit your culture. And then some of us don’t want to. We want to stay and do the hard work. So I see all of that happening. I see all of that and more happening in the dance community.

Kim: [00:25:41] Yeah, yeah. So for those of us who aren’t dancers and aren’t living in the US and are trying to make sense out of all these conversations and how they apply in our local context and our international context: What are some of the ways that you have observed…. Because you also lived outside the US for a while and and cross cultures in your personal life as well… 

What are some of the ways that you observe these things showing up in everyday life for people who are living outside their own culture (or expats)? 

…the “typical” expat. Now the word expat actually has a whole lot of baggage surrounding it. But we’ll just go with kind of the typical … somebody who’s coming into another country on a, relatively speaking, high paying job on a short term basis.

Brittney: [00:26:37] Sure. So this… Even the thought that we have organizations that send people into places to do activity is in essence this colonialist mindset. So. 

I feel Like missionaries were the original NGOs in a way because they’re sending [] to Westernize and Christianize nations that don’t really need them to do that. Not saying that they’re not wonderful work being done. NGOs do wonderful work, helpful work. But the idea.

Kim: [00:27:11] Yeah, a lot of them have taken education and medical care into countries that didn’t have those things and have really elevated the standard of living, but all wrapped up in that education is westernized ideas and standards.

Brittney: [00:27:28] Yeah, and this is I think where we find this othering of the self. Because you have American schools, for example, in some countries. And if your family is wealthy, you’re going to the American school (if you’re within the culture, right). And then expats, they send their kids to the American school. So there’s this idea already, even though we’re bringing education and health care and things like that into…. 

And I feel like health care might be a separate conversation, I feel like education in a way addresses more of this colonial root. Where I feel like when I’m thinking about medical care -a nd you can probably give us more insight on this – I’m thinking about this emergency intervention idea.

Kim: [00:28:07] A lot of organizations have gone and set up hospitals, but then they have to train up staff to staff the hospitals. And so what they’re bringing in is westernized medicine. In a lot of cases, Western medicine is a radically different approach than the medical care and medical model of the local culture. You might feel like it’s a better use of bringing Western ideas in, but there’s still a conflict.

Brittney: [00:28:33] Yeah, and I think we do it with education, we do it with medical assistance, and we do it with military assistance as well. 

Again, it goes back to my idea of: Where is the power? When you go into a place you’re helping, but you still have to analyze the power dynamic. Who has more money? Who has more political sway? Who speaks the language that dominates the entire world? 

So when we go to an American school, we have to probably speak English. So it goes back to this idea of hegemony, even with the best of intentions. And positive impacts. Right. We have these measurable positive impacts. 

But going back to your example of the medical system, do we just throw out the culture? You get into this idea of code switching for people. You have to be this westernized idea in the school and then you go home and you live your culture. 

So to what extent are the NGOs and these organizations upholding the sovereignty of the people in the area through their services? And I would say in most cases we’re not going in and saying, hey, we’re going to support the local culture and we’re going to provide this tool.

Brittney: [00:29:43] And it might just be a transgression of omission, right? We go in. We’re white. We have money. We have hegemonic power. And we’re giving this gift to these people, and not considering… just omitting right. Omitting that idea that that they have their own culture. 

It’s not on purpose, but just maybe isn’t there at all. But through the power of colonial domination, it just happens. It’s a function that just happens and rolls forward automatically. So it’s not that anybody in an NGO is going to purposely dominate another culture. 

But when you walk in with your skin tone and your background, and the place you came from has more money than the place you’re in. You’re automatically setting up a paradigm where there is the other. Where there is the winner and a loser, a political paradigm. That’s how I see that showing up in the Middle East … and everywhere.

[00:30:41] We have this idea of cultural tourism but we do that without identifying our inherent power because of these structures that have been in place historically. If it goes unacknowledged, we still purport that domination, whether we want to or not.

Say more about cultural tourism.

Brittney: [00:31:01] Cultural tourism is gross to me. I don’t want to put a judgment value on it. I’m not saying tourism is gross. I’m just saying you have the right to go in… 

Let’s talk about hijab actually. If you’re ging to Saudi Arabia, or anywhere, or even if you’re in the United States. I just read a really good interview written by a Muslim woman or a group of Muslim women that were like, “Hey, please stop wearing hijab, white women in solidarity.” Because you’re putting forward actually this agenda that’s happening in Islam that forces those of us who don’t want to wear hijab to to wear hijab. You’re like glorifying this one. And that’s really complex, right?

Kim: [00:31:43] Yes, very.

Brittney: [00:31:44] We want women who wear hijab to feel comfortable. So I see the thrust of that, see the importance of that, but the effect is something we don’t even consider. So we’re doing our cultural tourism. We’re in solidarity. We’re patting ourselves on the back. But we don’t… We have that luxury to just take it off and move on and say we did a good thing. We don’t have to think about all of the cultural nuances that people have to deal with in the wake… Not in the wake of that. But in the wake of the notion of what we’re talking about. 

Not that women wearing hijab in solidarity creates more violence. Or does it? Right? Or does it? Because of this colonialist paradigm, this powerful paradigm that we have. Well, America said you should do it. Britain said you should do it. So you should do it. Right? In the Islamic context. So that’s one example.

Kim: [00:32:38] Can you give an example, other examples?

Brittney: [00:32:41] So when I was in Israel Palestine, we lived in dormitories. We had a bus that took us to and from the school, like a private bus. When I first got there, I was talking about going on a run. I was asking the organizer about going on a run. And he said, oh, OK, you can run pretty much anywhere, but don’t go this way because you’re going to cause an international incident if you run this direction.

Kim: [00:33:02] Oh dear.

Brittney: [00:33:03] This is a human like me who has a father who’s Middle Eastern and has probably a little more world view than the average American (or so I thought before going to Israel Palestine). And I had no idea that there was an Arab population in Israel Palestine. 

I thought because of the way the news is reported here, that Palestinians were these people who run out of the woods and like, throw rocks and then run back in. Right? 

So if I wanted to, I could have had the option to stay in those dormitories and take that private bus back and forth, and never interact with the culture of Palestinians. I would have plenty of opportunity to indulge in the culture of Israelis, but not Palestinians. So that neighborhood that our organizer was talking about was in a Palestinian neighborhood right next to the school. With really good falafel and really kind people. 

And so I moved out. I moved out of the dormitories while I was there. It was a big deal. And I moved into an apartment, not in the Palestinian neighborhood. It was actually an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood, which I did not know until I was there. So I was just like me in my tank top every day, and probably really offending people inadvertently. 

And I took the bus. I took the real live bus to and from school. And I feel like in that way I was able to do daily life, like live daily life in this place without doing what I would call cultural tourism. Which is to ride this private bus back and forth every day, never eat at the cool falafel stand in the Arab neighborhood, Palestinian neighborhood, and just do what I wanted to do, when I wanted to do it, without having to have any, without having people stare at me on the bus and lecture me on the bus for wearing a tank top and for dressing inappropriately. I could be who I wanted to be, and never challenge my cultural viewpoints, and then just kind of “dip a toe in” whenever I wanted to, without having to have any repercussions.

Kim: [00:34:59] Ok, so when you say cultural tourism, you’re talking about just being an observer from a very comfortable point of view and just dipping into the places you want to experience, but still doing it from a very protected place.

Brittney: [00:35:15] Right. You enjoy the culture, but you don’t have any of the complete discomfort that comes with it.

Kim: [00:35:22] Ok. All right, so what were you saying about cultural tourism?

Brittney: [00:35:29] Well, just going back to my Israel Palestine example. That foray into the Arab neighborhood led me to have Arab friends, which led me to go to the West Bank while I was there — several times. I had a really good friend who lived in Ramallah. 

And to see you could go your entire time visiting Israel and never see the West Bank. Or never see an Arab neighborhood. It’s set up in such a way that you don’t have to see any of that. And if I had just taken the private bus back and forth and just gone to the trendy downtown area with the nice restaurants every weekend, I would never have to go through the checkpoint in Ramallah and see how Palestinian people were treated. I would never see any of that. 

It never would have challenged my view. I never would have learned that thing. I never would have learned that lifestyle and experienced it. Because going back and forth over checkpoints is super uncomfortable. You have to walk through. You have to be frisked. You have to show your passport. You have to be questioned. And the Israeli soldiers were really nice to me at my lightrail stop every day were really rude and mean and nasty to me when I’m going through. You know, it’s just this difference of like, OK, now you’re going into the West Bank, now you’re in enemy territory, essentially. And it’s not fun. It’s not fun to walk through the checkpoint. It’s scary and upsetting. And I just never would have seen that if I had just stuck to the things where my attention was being drawn.

Yes, I relate to that living in the expat bubble, which is very easy to do in a lot of places. 

It’s really easy to just only communicate with people who are easy and comfortable to communicate with, because it’s hard work to get out and operate in a language that you’re constantly fumbling with, to be constantly confronted with cultural differences that you’re not quite sure how to navigate that feel very uncomfortable. 

For example, bargaining is really hard for me as an American. I have to put my game face on and psych myself up to do some bargaining. So many examples! Or to have strangers come up and swoop my young child out of my arms and carry her off and touch her and talk to her in ways that make her really super uncomfortable. 

To be out and about and have to deal with that constantly is really exhausting. And so it’s very easy to just stay in your expat bubble.

Brittney: [00:38:00] Yeah, and there are so many different things that are uncomfortable for us, like this personal space issue. That’s a big one. 

I love bargaining. My German friend, Emma, “When you bargain with people, I hate it. It’s not that much money. Why are you doing it?” I was because I wanted: 1. I was learning Arabic. It made me uncomfortable, but it was a way for me to culturally exchange in a way that wasn’t just like this transactional… It was an actual cultural interaction where I was taking something that they do and trying to do it and being willing to do it badly. 

That’s the other thing, talking about discomfort. If you’re not willing to speak the language poorly, if you’re not willing to make faux pas, if you’re not willing to just be super uncomfortable in the culture, then I think that you’re still in your bubble. And of course, boundaries. And of course, safety. All of those things. 

But there are values we hold that aren’t “the” values. They’re not the high and mighty, almighty values. So when… I think that’s a really good thing to examine, when those little alarm bells go off, like, “I don’t really want to bargain.” Is that because I believe in a fair price and I believe in this capitalist ideal of how we how we operate this transactional thing with money and goods and services? That’s a very westernized view. 

When you get in and you bargain with somebody, you’re recognizing the humanity. There’s a human being selling you their stuff, the craft or the business that they have behind it. And it’s fun! It’s also really fun!

So do you have any suggestions on what people can do, practical steps that we can take to acknowledge this mindset and then get away from it a bit?

Brittney: [00:39:53] Yeah, so I think step one would just be to identify what is coming up for you when you feel judgmental or uncomfortable. What is it? Is it really something you think is wrong? Is it really one of these universal wrongs? Somebody being murdered. Or is it a cultural wiring that you have? Are you experiencing cultural wiring that you’ve never observed before? 

Why don’t I want to eat a lamb’s head? Is it because I’m a vegetarian and that’s my morality? Or is it because it looks gross to me and I’ve just never seen that before and my culture tells me that that’s wrong: you’re not going to eat an eyeball. 

So that’s number one, just evaluate what’s coming up for you. 

Number two would be to: Walk on the street. Take the buses. Shop for yourself. Do those things. And get into it. If you are in an expat bubble, for example, like I was in my little dormitory… Scratch until you’re out of that! 

And it might take a minute because you’re disoriented in your place, and you’re like, “oh, this is what the place looks like.” Well no! The place doesn’t actually look like that. You’ve got to go further and further and further. Find friends, speak to people. Obviously keep yourself safe and don’t get taken advantage of, but go beyond the bubble. 

I feel like you’ll know it when you see it. You’ll know the place when you see it. You’ll really feel that shift. This is so meta. But you’ll really feel that shift when you’re in with the people. And you’ll see it and you’ll feel it. I think I was experiencing so much cognitive dissonance when I was in Israel Palestine because I was always like, I’m not in the real thing. And I need to be in the real thing. 

So that’d be number two. Be kind and realize that the people that you’re living amongst are human beings, and their culture and their practices are actually older than your culture and your practices.

Kim: [00:41:48] Oh, so much, yeah.

Brittney: [00:41:51] The government runs differently. Like if you’re talking about the Middle East and Islamic countries, the government is built off of the Qran. It’s not built off of democracy and this Westernized view of how government works. You know, there’s just a different pace and there’s a different impetus in government. 

So when you’re criticizing government, are you criticizing from your Christian value system or are you annoyed that you had to wait in line for 10 hours? What are you really annoyed with? What are you really critiquing? 

So just recognizing that those people are human beings. And they have a structure of government, structure of living, structure of culture that is different from your own. That doesn’t mean wrong. 

And we say that ad nauseum. That’s the way you identify how to be a global citizen: Respect diversity. 

But can you do it without saying like, oh, they pray five times a day and that’s what “they” do. Can you reframe it to “they pray five times a day, and this is why they do it.” Learn why they do. Why do Muslims pray five times a day? Do you know why, the story behind it? Without just being like, oh, it’s prayer. The adhan goes off or whatever, it’s prayer time, and I just have nothing to do for ten minutes because it’s prayer time. 

Just identifying humanity in people, and that you’re not above them just beause you don’t do the same things.

What were you saying about making the system look like you versus becoming like the system? What does that mean?

Brittney: [00:43:23] Right. So that’s from Martti Koskenniemi’s work, and particularly this lecture that I set you: International Law and the Far Right.  And Martti Koskenniemi is awesome, and he’s the man. 

But at the end of this lecture, he’s critiquing the relationship of affluence and human rights. That we have developed this relationship between what we’re talking about, between governmental organizations and NGOs and diplomats that we have. 

We live in these bubbles. We have this, we have hegemonic presence, but we get to pat ourselves on the back because we’ve built a house wherever. So human rights has kind of lost its way, in the sense that it’s related to affluence and it’s come to a comfortable state. 

He’s saying that we need international lawyers and lawyers who are in powerful places, that are in the rooms that are making the decisions. So outside of maybe a humanitarian cause that maybe doesn’t have as much political or international power, and getting into the spaces … invading essentially, the spaces where where big decisions and policies are being made. 

And that’s where he’s talking about making the system look like you versus you looking like the system. So he’s saying: 

When you enter these spaces, when you enter your classroom when you’re teaching English, when you’re entering your expat bubbles, doing whatever job you’re going to be doing, you have a choice. You can make this very powerful system look more like you. Or you can begin to look more like the system. 

So you can get into your job and you can relax and you can live that expat paradigm for as long as you want. That bubble paradigm. And actually, again, going back to my conversation about the dance community, you don’t even have to… Nobody’s going to ask you to evaluate that. You don’t have to. Because you are coming from a place more powerful than the place you are in.

Kim: [00:45:15] Mmmm-hmm.

Brittney: [00:45:17] So you start to look like the system. “This is the correct curriculum. This is the correct practices. We don’t do indigenous medical practices. We use Western medical system.” And in that sense, applying those doctrines dogmatically makes you look like the system. 

But if you add in some questioning, if you add in some compassion. If you add in actual outreach to people in the place that you are. Not outreach in a white savior sense, but outreach like I was saying the bus, walking on the street, doing your shopping, doing the bargaining. Then you have the opportunity to make that system look like you. 

To make that system look more like a system that identifies the sovereignty and independence of individuals within their culture. The value, acknowledging the validity, the inherent validity of a cultural value system. 

And not from an apologist perspective, right. There’s things that we want to change in the world. There’s universal values that we…. We don’t want genocide to happen. I don’t care if that’s a cultural practice of yours. That’s something we need to stand up against. 

But if a woman wants to wear hijab, that’s not your place to tell her she doesn’t have to. Right. That’s a deeply ingrained cultural practice and that, as long as she has choice, that woman can make the choice to wear it, make the choice not to. And really getting behind that, like, why is she wearing hijab? What are the cultural and religious practices that led her to that decision? 

And in those ways, you can make the system look more like you. You can bring that cultural literacy into your classroom, into your workplaces, and always center the voices of the people you’re trying to help. I think that’s the main point.

Which is really hard to do as a foreigner, because sometimes it’s really hard to learn about… 

There are certain things that are easy to see and easy to find out. And then so much of it is…, well, you have to go digging.

Brittney: [00:47:25] And you have to tour guides, right? You have to have tour guides. You have to have people who are your friends. 

Somebody I was close with, people I’m close to still, that I could ask hard questions to, and I could ask how you feel about this? What is this really? Right. And sometimes they were embarrassed to answer it. Sometimes they were like, oh, I don’t really want to give you the right answer. Right. 

But having those personal and close connections with people, I think I would so prioritize that when you get into that space. Don’t just find other expat friends. I’m not saying find somebody who speaks Arabic and force them to communicate with you. But there are people in Arabic speaking countries that speak English. And make a friend. Make a friend outside of your bubble and get that tour guide for you. And obviously be a good friend in return. Don’t just get yourself a tour guide, that’s not what I’m suggesting. 

But I found that was the best way that I got to really know a culture and really know a place. They were able to coach me through what hard boundaries should be. Right. And nuances. That’s the other thing, is that cultures have nuances. 

There are Christian Palestinians and there are Muslim Palestinians. Not just like this homogenised identity. And there’s different ways of communicating with different parts of the country.

Brittney: [00:48:43] And just like we don’t want to be judged as Americans by every single thing our government does, every single thing large parts of the population do. You can imagine that there’s people in other places that don’t want that also. 

I’m making the assumption that you have enough compassion to realize that. So live up to that assumption.

 We’re thinkers, and so I think that initial wall of difference can make us panic, and who knows how long that lasts, right. That could last the entire time you’re there. I am suggesting that if you can take that down a few notches and breathe through it and really find a, really identify what you’re up against, then you get to see all the beautiful nuances. 

But first, you’re just like, holy cow. Whaaa… What? I don’t want to eat the lamb’s head! I don’t want to do that, it’s gross! And that’s OK. I think that’s really human for you to be like, Whaaat? 

But there’s also other things that are coloring us that have to do with Orientalism, that have to do with xenophobia, et cetera. So I think we need to unpack those things. 

I’m not suggesting you have to eat a lamb’s head. It’s pretty good, though.

Kim: [00:50:00] I haven’t gotten there yet.

Kim: [00:50:03] Thank you so very much for talking with me. I really appreciate it. It’s been a lot of fun.

Brittney: [00:50:10] Yeah. Thank you so much. It’s been amazing.

Now I want to quickly add another point Brittney made when we talked in an earlier conversation, that didn’t make it in when we recorded. 

One step we can take even before moving to a new country is to research how our country of origin’s politics have impacted the country we’re going into. 

Who were the native people? How were they colonized? What roles have my government and other governments played in shaping the policies and practices and worldview in this country?

This just helps us to lay the groundwork to view this new place with more depth, more compassion, more understanding of the complexities we’re stepping into.

I wanted to highlight that point because it’s something we can do as a family or involve our children in this research and learning. And let that lead to conversation and new questions.