Foto: © Anke Illing
Montag, 24. September 2007
Anti-racist racism
urmila, 13:37h
"Attempting, as an American, to write about the Pakistani experience in Great Britain was an enormous undertaking that I couldn't have begun - left alone completed - without the assistance of the following individuals" writes author Elizabeth George in her acknowledgements to her thriller "Deception on his mind". Among the following individuals there is one Muslim last name combined with a Western first name.
Maybe it wasn't quite enough to ask so few people, who know something about the 'Pakistani' experience in Britain. Not only would George then maybe have chosen names, which really sounded Pakistani and not just somehow Muslim (thanks to Kyla for confirming my impression that the chosen names really did not sound 'Pakistani' at all), she would hopefully also have not reproduced all racist stereotypes in her supposedly anti-racist story.
At the end we know that the local police is racist (and the male part of it also sexist, and probably all homophob), that the local neighbourhood is racist, that our main character is a good anti-racist cop saving the 'Pakistani' child and that the 'Pakistanis' are criminals and murders. And the good cop understands at the end:
"We never thought it [the murder] could have been the means to an end having nothing to do with anything that we - as Westeners, as bloody Westeners - could possibly hope to understand."
So, now we readers also know that 'Pakistanis' are really strange and that it is the task of the good 'white' protagonists to save and understand them.
PS: If anybody needs a good example for the interedependency of racism and heteronormativity, just use this thriller (I have done so here (pdf). Everything is in there.
Maybe it wasn't quite enough to ask so few people, who know something about the 'Pakistani' experience in Britain. Not only would George then maybe have chosen names, which really sounded Pakistani and not just somehow Muslim (thanks to Kyla for confirming my impression that the chosen names really did not sound 'Pakistani' at all), she would hopefully also have not reproduced all racist stereotypes in her supposedly anti-racist story.
At the end we know that the local police is racist (and the male part of it also sexist, and probably all homophob), that the local neighbourhood is racist, that our main character is a good anti-racist cop saving the 'Pakistani' child and that the 'Pakistanis' are criminals and murders. And the good cop understands at the end:
"We never thought it [the murder] could have been the means to an end having nothing to do with anything that we - as Westeners, as bloody Westeners - could possibly hope to understand."
So, now we readers also know that 'Pakistanis' are really strange and that it is the task of the good 'white' protagonists to save and understand them.
PS: If anybody needs a good example for the interedependency of racism and heteronormativity, just use this thriller (I have done so here (pdf). Everything is in there.
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