Since the recession began, the cost of day care has soared while the U.S. median income collapsed, plummeting 7.3 percent. The average household makes $51,404 before taxes. A family with two children and two working parents could easily find over half of their income going to child care. For the average married mother of small children, it is often cheaper to stay home—even if she would prefer to be in the workforce. It is hard to “lean in” when you are priced out.
Regardless of their reasons, all mothers who stay home with children are penalized later by the perception that they “chose” to neglect their career. When they attempt to return to the workforce, their years at home are held against them, considered a “blank spot” on the résumé—a blank spot with a reason so obvious and laudable and often involuntary that it is sick we deride it as “choice.”
Careers Are Not Pursued by Choice
Corporate feminists like Sheryl Sandberg frame female success as a matter of attitude. But it is really a matter of money—or the lack thereof. For all but the fortunate few, American motherhood is making sure you have enough lifeboats for your sinking ship. American motherhood is a cost-cutting, debt-dodging scramble somehow interpreted as a series of purposeful moves. American mothers are not “leaning in.” American mothers are not “opting out.” American mothers are barely hanging on.
Careers in this economy are not about choices. They are about structural constraints masquerading as choice. Being a mother is a structural constraint regardless of your economic position. Mothers pay a higher price in a collapsed economy, but that does not mean they should not demand change—both in institutions and perceptions.
Erasing stigma—whether of hardworking, impoverished single mothers branded as “lazy,” or of wealthier mothers whose skills outside the home are downplayed and denied—does not cost a thing.
The irony of American motherhood is that the politicians and corporations who hold power do have a choice in how they treat mothers and their children. Yet they act as if they are held hostage to intractable policies and market forces, excusing the incompetence and corporate malfeasance that drain our households dry.
Mothers can emulate them and treat “choice” as an individual burden—or we can work together and push for accountability and reform. This option is not easy. But we are used to that.
—Originally published August 19, 2013
PART III
Race and Religion
The Wrong Kind of Caucasian
In 1901, a twenty-eight-year-old American named Leon Czolgosz assassinated President William McKinley. Czolgosz was born in America, but he was of Polish descent. After McKinley died, the American media blamed Polish immigrants. They were outsiders, foreigners, with a suspicious religion—Catholicism—and strange last names.
At a time when Eastern European immigrants were treated as inferior, Polish Americans feared they would be punished as a group for the terrible actions of an individual. “We feel the pain which this sad occurrence caused, not only in America, but throughout the whole world. All people are mourning, and it is caused by a maniac who is of our nationality,” a Polish-American newspaper wrote in an anguished editorial.
It is a sentiment reminiscent of what Muslims and Chechens are writing—or Instagramming—today, after the revelation that Dzokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings, are of Chechen descent. At this time, there is no evidence linking the Tsarnaev brothers to a broader movement in Chechnya, a war-torn federal republic in southern Russia. Neither of the brothers has ever lived there. The oldest, Tamerlan, was born in Russia and moved to the U.S. when he was sixteen. The youngest, Dzokhar, was born in Kyrgyzstan, moved to the U.S. when he was nine, and became a U.S. citizen in 2012.
Despite the Tsarnaevs’ American upbringing, the media have presented their lives through a Chechen lens. Political strife in the North Caucasus, ignored by the press for years, has become the default rationale for a domestic crime.
“Did Boston carnage have its roots in Stalin’s ruthless displacement of Muslims from Chechnya decades ago?” asked the New York Daily News, a question echoed by the National Post, the Washington Post, and other publications that refuse to see the Tsarnaevs as anything but walking symbols of age-old conflicts. Blame Stalin, the pundits cry, echoing the argument made every time something bad happens in the former Soviet Union. Blame Stalin, because we can pronounce that name. In one sense, this sentiment is not new. American Muslims have long had to deal with ignorance and prejudice in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. “Please don’t be Muslims or Arabs,” goes the refrain, as unnecessary demands for a public apology from Muslims emerge. This week made it clear that it is Muslims who are owed the apology. After wild speculation from CNN about a “dark-skinned suspect,” on Thursday the New York Post published a cover photo falsely suggesting a Moroccan-American high school track star, Salah Barhoun, was one of the bombers. “Jogging while Arab” has become the new “driving while black.”
Later that Thursday, the FBI released photos of two young men wearing baseball caps—men who so resembled all-American frat boys that people joked they would be the target of “racial bro-filing.” The men were Caucasian, so the speculation turned away from foreign terror and toward the excuses routinely made for white men who kill: mental illness, anti-government grudges, frustrations at home. The men were white and Caucasian—until the next day, when they became the wrong kind of Caucasian, and suddenly they were not so “white” after all.
Crucifying the Wrong Caucasian
Muslims face prejudice, but Muslims from the Caucasus face a particular kind of prejudice—the kind born of ignorance so great it perversely imbues everything with significance. “There is never interpretation, understanding and knowledge when there is no interest,” Edward Said wrote in Covering Islam, and until this week, there was so little interest in and knowledge of the Caucasus that the ambassador of the Czech Republic felt compelled to issue a press release stating that the Czech Republic is not the same as Chechnya.
Knowing nothing of the Tsarnaevs’ motives, and little about Chechens, the American media tore into Wikipedia and came back with stereotypes. The Tsarnaevs were stripped of their twenty-first-century American life and became symbols of a distant land, forever frozen in time. Journalist Eliza Shapiro proclaimed that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was “named after a brutal warlord,” despite the fact that Tamerlan, or Timur, is an ordinary first name in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Her claim is equivalent to saying a child named Nicholas must be named in honor of ruthless Russian tsar Nicholas I—an irony apparently lost on New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who made a similar denouncement on Twitter (to his credit, Kristof quickly retracted the comment).
Other journalists found literary allusions, or rather, illusions. “They were playing the nihilists Arkady and Bazarov in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons,” explained scholar Juan Cole, citing an 1862 Russian novel to explain the motives of a criminal whose Twitter account was full of American rap lyrics. One does not recall such use of literary devices to ascertain the motives of less exotic perpetrators, but who knows? Perhaps some ambitious analyst is plumbing the works of Faulkner to shed light on that Mississippi Elvis impersonator who tried to send ricin to President Obama.
Still others turned to social media as a gateway to the Chechen soul. Journalist Julia Ioffe—after explaining the Tsarnaevs through Tolstoy, Pushkin, and, of course, Stalin—cites the younger Tsarnaev’s use of the Russian website VKontakte as proof of his inability to assimilate, then ranks the significance of his personal photos.
“The most revealing image of Dzhokhar is not the one of him hugging an African-American friend at his high school graduation, but the one of him sitting at a kitchen table with his arm around a guy his age who appears to be of Central Asian descent,” she writes. “In front of them is a dish plov, a Central Asian dish of rice and meat, and a bottle of Ranch dressing.” Again, it is difficult to imagine a journalist writing with such breathtak
ing arrogance—why is the Central Asian friend more “revealing” than the African-American one? What, exactly, are they “revealing” about the inner life of someone from a more familiar place?
One way to test whether you are reading a reasonable analysis of the Tsarnaev case—and yes, they exist—is to replace the word “Chechen” with another ethnicity. “I could always spot the Chechens in Vienna,” writes journalist Oliver Bullough in The New York Times. “They were darker-haired than the Austrians; they dressed more snappily, like 1950s gangsters; they never had anything to do.” Now substitute the word “Jews” for “Chechens.” Minority-hunting in Vienna never ends well.
Demonizing an Ethnicity
It is easy to criticize the media, and after this disastrous week there is much to criticize. But the consequences of the casual racism launched at Chechens—and by association, all other Muslims from the former Soviet Union, who are rarely distinguished from one another by the public—are serious. By emphasizing the Tsarnaevs’ ethnicity over their individual choices, and portraying that ethnicity as barbaric and violent, the media create a false image of a people destined by their names and their “culture of terror” to kill. There are no people in Chechnya, only symbols. There are no Chechen Americans, only threats.
Ethnicity is often used to justify violent behavior. But no ethnicity is inherently violent. Even if the Tsarnaevs aligned themselves with violent Chechen movements—and as of now, there is no evidence they did—treating Chechen ethnicity as the cause of the Boston violence is irresponsible.
One hundred years ago, the violent act of one Polish American caused a country to treat all Polish Americans with suspicion. Now, the Poles have become “white”—which is to say they are largely safe from the accusations of treason and murderous intent that ethnic groups deemed nonwhite routinely face. When a Polish American commits a crime, his ethnicity does not go on trial with him.
But this change is not a triumph for America. It is a tragedy that it happened to Poles then, and a greater tragedy that we have not learned our lesson and it happens still—to Hispanics, to Arabs, to Chechens, to any immigrant who comes here seeking refuge and finds prejudice instead.
“I respect this country, I love this country,” the Tsarnaevs’ uncle, Ruslan Tsarni, said in an emotional condemnation of his nephews. “This country which gives chance to everyone else to be treated as a human being.”
Chechens and other Muslim immigrants from the former Soviet Union are human beings. They are not walking symbols of violent conflict. Do not look to a foreign country to explain a domestic crime. Look to the two men who did it—and judge them by what they have done, not from where their ancestors came.
—Originally published April 21, 2013
The Fallacy of the Phrase “the Muslim World”
On September 12, 2012, the day after the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic missions in Egypt and Libya, The New York Times set out to explain what it called the “anguished relationship between the United States and the Muslim world.” According to the Times, “the Muslim world” was prone to outbursts of violence, and the reaction to the fourteen-minute anti-Islam movie trailer Innocence of Muslims was both baffling and predictable. “Once again, Muslims were furious,” wrote reporter Robert F. Worth, “and many in the West found themselves asking why Islam seems to routinely answer such desecrations with violence.”
Other media outlets echoed the claim that “the Muslim world” was consumed by anger, and had long been so. The Associated Press offered a look back at “five other incidents that inspired rage in the Muslim world,” crediting over a billion people for the actions of a few thousand in their search for historical continuity. Others took a psychoanalytic approach. “Why is the Muslim world so easily offended?” asked Washington Post columnist Fouad Ajami. “Madness in the Muslim World: Help Me Understand,” pleaded a blogger for the Houston Chronicle.
It is time to retire the phrase “the Muslim world” from Western media. Using the phrase in the manner above disregards not only history and politics, but accurate reporting of contemporary events. The protests that took place around the world ranged in scale and intensity, in the participants’ willingness to use violence, and in their rationales. The majority of “the Muslim world” did not participate in these protests, nor did all of the Muslims who protested the video advocate the bloodshed that took place in Libya.
By reducing a complex set of causes and conflicts to the rage of an amorphous mass, the Western media reinforce the very stereotype of a united, violent “Muslim world” that both the makers of the anti-Islam video and the Islamist instigators of the violence perpetuate.
Misleading Generalizations
Essentialist views of Islam and Muslims are nothing new. In Western media, Islam is often presented as a contagion, with Muslims as the afflicted, helpless to their own hostile impulses. What is different about the current crisis is that it comes in the aftermath of the “Arab Spring”—another series of intricate events depicted as interconnected and inevitable. Democracy would “spread” from one Muslim country to another, analysts argued, regardless of the unique historical trajectories of individual states. Some analysts went so far as to suggest it would spread to Central Asia, a region of largely isolationist dictatorships uninfluenced by Middle Eastern politics. The current protests are being portrayed as an “Arab Winter”—a simplistic reversal of a simplistic perception of success, with Muslims, undifferentiated, receiving the blame.
There is, of course, cohesion among Muslims, in the sense that there is cohesion among followers of any faith. The notion of the umma is an essential part of Islamic doctrine. But the way the idea of “the Muslim world” is expressed within Islamic communities is different from the way it is expressed outside them. It is rare to hear the phrase “the Christian world” used in the English-language media, because doing so would generalize about the motives of over 2 billion people. No such respect applies to the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims. Googling the phrase “the Christian world” yields 5.8 million results, while the phrase “the Muslim world” gives over 87 million results, many of them wondering what is “wrong” with the queried target. When the phrase “the Muslim world” is invoked, it is usually to reduce, denigrate, or impugn.
The Western media’s broad-stroke regionalism means that conflicts within individual Muslim-majority states become marginalized. Syrians posting on Twitter wondered how the world could give so much attention to a conflict that killed seven people while dozens of Syrians are killed by state security forces every day—documenting, as one commenter noted, their own demise in videos that receive far less attention than the bigoted pseudo-cinema of one American. Similarly, the violence at the diplomatic missions in Cairo and Benghazi was initially conflated, with “Muslim rage” being presented as a root cause for two distinct conflicts. The tendency to see “the Muslim world” as a problem in general means that specific problems within Muslim countries go unseen.
Dispelling Stereotypes
Soon after the destruction of the U.S. embassy in Benghazi and the deaths of four Americans, a protest was held against the men who murdered them. Libyan citizens held English-language signs declaring “Benghazi is against terrorism” and “Sorry Americans this is not the behavior of our Islam and Profit [sic].” Photos of the protest, distributed by Libya Alhurra Livestream, went viral on Facebook and Twitter.
The Libyans protesting were aware that not only Libyans, but Muslims in general, would be blamed for the violence that took place, because the small group of Muslims who stormed the embassy would be seen as representative of all. They gave the rare apology that Western commentators often encourage Muslims to make on behalf of others who commit violence in the name of Islam. But while the sentiment of the protestors is appreciated by many Americans—and the photos likely assuaged some prejudices—such explanations should not be necessary. Ordinary people should not be assumed to share the beliefs of violent criminals who share their faith.
In
nocence of Muslims was made by Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, an Egyptian American who hates Muslims. It was found on YouTube and put on Egyptian television by news show host Sheikh Khaled Abdullah, a man trying to convince the world that Americans hate Muslims. This was a perfect storm of gross and deceitful parties depicting each other in the vilest terms, and then living up to each other’s worst expectations.
The answer to such invective is not to reinforce it through media portrayals of “Muslims” as a collective. The media should instead pay more attention to individual states, conflicts, and leaders, since dictatorship and factionalism have been as essential in shaping politics in Muslim-majority regions as has religion. The current crisis demonstrates how corrupt parties use religion as an incitement to violence and a means to political gain. The Western media should not play party to their prejudices.
—Originally published September 16, 2012
In the Trial of Trayvon, the U.S. Is Guilty
When I was a child I watched policemen beat a man nearly to death, and I watched my country acquit them. I was shocked that police would attack a man instead of defending him. I was shocked that someone would record the attack on video and that this video would mean nothing. I was shocked that people could watch things and not really see them. I was shocked because I was a child. I was shocked because I am white.
Twenty-one years after the Rodney King verdict, Americans have proven again that in a court of law, perception matters more than proof. Perception is rooted in power, a power bestowed upon birth, reified through experience, and verified through discrimination masked as fairness and fact.
The View from Flyover Country Page 7