#racism
idk about other hijabis/niqabis, but personally, here’s some things I recommend you dont’ compare me to:
- Professor Quirrell from Harold Potter or w/e
- A dementor or w/e from Harold Potter
- A sith lord
- A ghost/demon
- A criminal/bandit/assassin
- A plague doctorI know a lot of people do that in a “friendly” way, and see looking scary/ominous/evil as a cool aesthetic, but like. You know. Sometimes I don’t want to be told I look like fictional villains or evil people or monsters, sometimes I’m just trying to like, exist. You can always just say “you look cool”. There’s like, a line for me, when being called and “complimented” with certain things feels much more like a weird form of othering. Like I don’t want to be seen as some mysterious mystical exotic ethereal figure when I’m buying antacids at walgreens. Sometimes I just want to be a person.
Like, even if people try to compliment me as like more positive things like “you look like a wizard” “you look like a faerie” “you look like a ninja” like. you know. I would prefer to just look like a human. I’m a person.
It’s this weird romanticized othering. To constantly have people compliment me wearing niqab like I’m in some fantasy cosplay. Like, the woman who thought I was part of a Halloween display and the people who tell me I look like a cool mysterious mystical wizard are hardly different to me. Ya sabes? Because they’re both treating me like I’m in costume or likening me to some fictional/historical and/or non-human entity.
If you want to compliment a hijabi or a niqabi, just. Be normal with it? Whether it be complimenting the scarf, or saying that you love the color of their jilbab, or that you love their outfit. It’s not complicated. And yes, some people might like compliments about being mysterious and spooky or fantastical, but don’t do that to a stranger.
I know lots of white people who aren’t Muslim think it’s cool and aesthetic to like, be like a fairy or wizard or seem mystical and otherworldly. But like, im just too familiar with how people dehumanize and other different cultures and people of color. I don’t want people to think I’m Mystical and Exotic and Ethereal, nor do I want people to view me as Mysterious and Dark and Scary. I want to be seen as human. I’m tired of only ever being fetishized or othered or demonized.
Last week I had a serious conversation about racism with my mother and younger brother (20 y/o). I told them that racists aren’t just people who are part of the KKK, white supremacists, nazi’s. People who make racists jokes, who call black people the n-word ‘as a joke’ are ALSO racist.
I told them that this is also the case with rape culture. It starts with sexist jokes towards women AND men, rape jokes, saying things like 'boys will be boys’, victim blaming, and the pyramid ends with actual rapists and murderers. Even if you 'just’ make rape jokes, YOU are part of the problem.
I looked at my brother and he had a face like “Omg, seriously….” He wanted to say something but he couldn’t because my arguments were just too good tbh and well he doesn’t understand those topics enough.
I told him “Luuk, you are a racist”. He said “I am not a racist!!!!!”. Yes, yes you are. You have gross racist memes on your phone. A meme that said “90s kids will remember this” with three picture of things from the 1990s and a picture of a chained black man from the 1890s. That makes you racist, even if it’s 'just’ a joke.
He calls people the n-word (both the English and the Dutch version), black neck, and cotton picker. That makes you a fucking racist.
I told him all of that and he left, like a coward. He knew that he couldn’t win the argument so he just left. I sincerely hope that he learned something from our conversation.
I am so glad that Tumblr and a lot of other websites educated me on racism, sexism, feminism, homophobia, transphobia. It opened my eyes and don’t say certain things anymore because I don’t want to be a racist or a sexist. I have said racist things, a lot of racist things, and it’s NOT okay. I learned from it and hate the fact that I used to be like that.
Please, please, educate yourself and open your eyes.
the belief that you dont have to do any research to write fantasy is why we keep seeing media with stupid elf racism and orc racism tbh
actually you know what…im gonna yell about this because like! im tired of seeing narratives specific to marginalized groups be applied to white gentile characters! im tired of seeing white people stumble about trying to write about the mechanisms and insidiousness of racism while their entire understanding of it is “people are mean sometimes :(” IN ADDITION to the fact that without research (or without thorough and thoughtful research) you get people creating caricatures of marginalized communities because they dont bother to take the time to understand WHY its harmful. its just like, oh slap a turban on the scary desert people that’ll be fine for publishing. these fuckers are so stupid and i hate that this shit is so POPULAR oh my god like shut the fuck up! stop showing me elf racism!
I posted this on Facebookin response to virtually everyone I know sharing the story about a Hungarian camerawoman, Petra Laszlo, kicking Syrian refugees. I should probably post it here too:
I’m seriously glad that so many of my friends are mad about this. You should also be mad that despite what the Canadian government claims, this is exactly the sort of abysmal treatment Roma people receive in Hungary every day. I know this is long as hell, but a lot of Canadians don’t seem to know about it, so please read it regardless.
We have our own refugee crisis in Canada.
We lifted visa requirements on new EU countries in 2008, so in 2009, Roma from Hungary started flocking to Canada. Not wanting to interrupt European trade negotiations by reintroducing visas, the Canadian government immediately started looking for ways to get rid of them. The first way was by designating Hungary as a ‘safe country’, despite the fact that as the refugees were arriving, 6 Roma were killed and 55 were injured in calculated attacks on their communities. The president of Hungary didn’t offer condolences. He said nothing.
The Jobbik party has been gaining membership and is currently the 3rd largest political party in the country. The founder/leader, Gabor Vona, also founded the Hungarian Guard, a paramilitary group created to, “Stop gypsy crime,” (which is also an integral part of Jobbik’s platform). They were forced to disband after repeatedly staging rallies in front of Roma homes in military uniform. A new version has popped up, they’ve started to work with other hate groups, and now in addition to just threatening Roma people, they’ve been creating military training camps. Gabor Vona wore the Hungarian Guard uniform his first day in Parliment.
In 2011, 2000 members of the Civil Guard, a paramilitary group that began when they decided the Hungarian Guard wasn’t radical enough, descended on a town and spent 2 months terrorizing its 450 Roma inhabitants. They brought dogs, lit torches, and whips. The mayor, a member of Jobbik, said they were doing nothing illegal. They went into schools and threatened students. The teachers threatened to invite them back in. Gabor Vona stated that he wanted to deploy similar groups nationwide. The residents had to be evacuated by the Red Cross. The government told the media that nothing was wrong, and that the Red Cross was bringing them on a planned Easter vacation.
In response to Jobbik’s popularity, Fidesz, the current ruling party, has started to go even further right of their initial platform. To put 'further right’ into context, here’s a fun quote from Zsolt Bayer, one of the founders in the party:
“Whoever runs over a Gypsy child is acting correctly if he gives no thought to stopping and steps hard on the accelerator.”
More from him on how Roma shouldn’t be allowed to exist is available here.
In case you were wondering about the official party response, Fedisz said that they wouldn’t make a statement since he wasn’t speaking on behalf of the party at the time, but that anyone who spoke out against his article was “siding with the murderer” (a Roma man).
So what effects do these politics have on the general Roma population?
Roma women are forcibly sterilized. Children are being put into segregated, inferior school systems (and when those aren’t available, immediately sent to special education regardless of their abilities). They make up 3% of the population and 80% of the human trafficking victims. They’re subject to horrific living conditions, are denied adequate access to healthcare (their life expectancy is 10 years lower than other Hungarians, infant mortality rate is much higher, women are 3 times more likely to die of cancer), and are considered unhireable. Hate crimes are frequent, rarely reported, and when they are, they very rarely result in jail time.
So what did Canada do?
We labelled them “bogus-refugees” and made it more difficult to apply, and faster for us to get rid of them. We also took away the standard healthcare and work visas afforded to other refugees. And we were fucking proud of it. Our immigration minister went to Hungary to tell them in person. Canada made pamphlets telling the Roma we could kick them out faster. Then we made a fucking billboard. The mayor of the town where they posted the billboard was very upset. Why? Because he didn’t want the Roma to come back.
They still came to Canada, despite our compelling billboard campaign. For this new/fast/confusing refugee process created specifically for them, they were assigned the shittiest imaginable lawyers. A stand-out in this field, Viktor Hohots represented over 5000 Roma refugees. He won about 1% of his cases. He fully admitted that he didn’t show up to court, didn’t submit or translate documents as evidence, and mixed up clients stories. Literally thousands of people were deported because of him. His punishment? A 5 month suspension.
But, at least a suspension is something. The RCC has been filing similar complaints about other lawyers for years with no response.
On the rare occasion that the plight of Roma refugees is brought up in the Canadian media, it’s always mentioned that a large percent of the refugees withdraw their applications, which is used to fuel the “bogus-refugee” trope. No one ever examines why they just leave. It turns out, it’s because we pay them to. The Canadian government has been telling Roma that they’ll be deported anyway, so they might as well take plane tickets and a few thousand dollars, and not have to deal with the repercussions. It’s not even a bribe, it’s an ultimatum. We’ve given out over 7 million dollars in this scheme.
But some Roma say no and take their chances. And then they’re deported en masse. Kids who worked hard to integrate are being pulled out of bed in the middle of the night, terrified, and sent back somewhere profoundly unsafe.
There’s recently (in the past few weeks) been mention in the Canadian media that the percentage of acceptance rates for Roma refugees this year are much higher. That’s because there are much fewer applications. Because Canada now has people on the ground in Hungary, screening them before they have the chance to get on a plane.
In closing, fuck Hungary, and also fuck Canada.
I know this is post is several years long, but here’s some further reading for anyone who’s interested:
No Refuge: Hungarian Romani Refugee Claimants in Canada(Osgoode Hall Law Journal)
Accelerating Patterns of Anti-Roma Violence in Hungary (The FXB Center for Health and Human Rights- Harvard)
Project: Gyongyospata (Pulitzer Center-Jeneen Interlandi)
This isn’t specific to Hungary, but is about anti-Roma sentiment throughout Europe:
Roma people in Europe in the 21st century: violence, exclusion,
insecurity (The European Association for the Defence of Human Rights)
