The trouble with perceived racism

Well, I am over here in Prague and have just returned from walking my dog, Mike, having just read my morning newspaper. Usually, I get riled by some idiotic editorial on morality, or perhaps by some open letter from a politician to his detractors, or some other views on war and how best to do away with it once and for all. Today, however, it was a simple film review that got my blood pressure spurting, as it touched a nerve.

The film is called The White Massai (or, in the original, Der Weisse Massai), and it is a German film. I saw it three weeks ago at the Karlovy Vary Film Festival, and I liked it. I don't want to go into the details of it too much, and I'm sure you can all find a suitable review of it on the net, but, in short, it is based on an autobiography (bestselling I may add) of a Swiss woman who had gone to Kenya, fell in love (with a Massai warrior, no less), found the cultural differences too great and complex, and went back home. Pretty standard stuff, I liked the story and the way it was told (I hadn't read the book). Now, I'm sure that it wouldn't be most people's cup of tea, and I can see why a lot of people wouldn't like it, especially from an artistic view of things, but I did.

However, I am not writing this as some kind of defense of the bad review. In fact, if the reviewer had given it a bad review from a film point of view, I would have probably thought it a wise and learned opinion and slowly begun to shift my own opinions thus. But no, the reviewer didn't like it because of one thing: she perceived it to be a highly insensitive film and in essence, racist.

Hence, arrive at the title of my blog here, and my objection to her reasoning, and the reason why I share my view on here, because I think views like this are endemic in our European society and fundamentally stupid.

To present her argument: the heroine falls in love not with the man, but with a romantic notion of a 'virginal Africa' and is unjustifiably angry when she is unable to reconcile her learning and 'civilised' habit with her idealism that the relationship can work out. The heroine's 'immaturity' shows itself in cases when she tries to prevent a female circumcision, or when she teaches her husband the art of parity in sexual relations. The reviewer sees this all as a fallacy and presents the reason as being that since Switzerland has never had its own colonial empire it (personified in the heroine) has never learnt sensitivity towards the undeveloped world, and is itself uncivilised in lacking the necessary compassion for it. And therefore, racist. I would like to add that I am simplifying the argument - not that it is any more complex, but definitely more verbose.

Ultimately, my problem with this kind of perspective is that it amounts to saying that are wrong in interfering in cultures other than our own, because we show an inherent disdain for it in trying to change it to suit our own morals. Not that I am an entrenched socialist and think that certain liberties are natural, but rather, I think it completely disregards the way things stand in the world. Also, it underlines another point of distinction in the world, of which I will write in a future blog - that cultures in their quest for civilisation undergo a change from patriarchal to matriarchal (woo! whet the appetite there didn't I?). I think it may however be a fairly obvious point, so I will add my own prophesy to how I see future civilisations (woo! again...) .

Back to my argument: disregarding certain realities within the world. Fundamentally, they are contained in the case of the Swiss woman - in the story, she wants her cake and eat it, and hits a civilisational wall. She'd like her strong man and unforgiving scenery, and prove that happiness is a matter of hard work and perseverance, but she'd like to retain her self-respect and feminine nature. Her wild Africa replies: 'No!'. Swiss lady, you'd like to have power over men using your feminine charm - your Africa sees that as the actions of a dishonourable hussy. You'd like to have your shops and commerce, providing for your family - well, you're only painfully emasculating your African husband before his tribe. You want to strike back at your husband when he hits you - well, he's gonna kill you for it. And so on. The problem is why the hell should she not do all these things? I mean, we honour all kinds of martyrs for precisely those reasons, so why not when we are in the position of the oppressors?

Nobody likes to see Goliath win, but the fact is that until you get anyone as smart and resolute as David, Goliath will always smash your face in (I know, how western of me, quoting the Bible!). What makes the Swiss woman a Goliath in such remarkable circumstances is that she and all that she stands for will ultimately win in Africa*, because of the nature of politics: as we all know from Machiavelli, you can keep a state where the inhabitants have grievances or crave greater advantages, as long as you have the force necessary to maintain the status quo. The developing world, does not possess the means necessary to stop the influx of influence and interest from the Western world, and since the Western world is arguably the more powerful, these 'states' will unfortunately perish under the force of the West's more powerfully enforced value systems. It is perhaps sad and regrettable, but it seems the seed of destruction will be (or perhaps, more aptly, that had been, sometime in the 19th Century) sown by the so-called sympathisers as epitomised by the Swiss woman. To put it plainly, the reason for this demise is not only down to power politics, but it comes in the form we put our laws: the paradox of our enforcing the freedom from oppression of any kind.

This is a useful link for why I don't believe racism is the point either. It is not racism that makes us self-righteous, it is the centuries' old feeling of having overcome oppression from the forces which afflict the developing world. We cannot help but somehow link our own problems to the problems of the world, and our educational system encourages this attitude within us at every turn. We base it on having educational paradigms and then transposing them onto greater scale, from which we make our decisions and their subsequent justifications. Through this, Romeo and Juliet feel the same love that we feel toward our partners, tribes of chimpanzees make war against others in the same way that we make war against each other and why we are intrinsically sure that there is life on other planets in other solar systems (though none are as noble and great as ours).

I can bet that even if I went up to that reviewer and ask what she felt about circumcision as the act itself, she'd think it something she disagrees with, probably because she's so accustomed to enjoying having a clitoris. Hence, her argument begins to sound like, 'Leave them alone, they don't know any better'. In all this, she would probably state that it is up to the people themselves to overthrow these practices when they are good and ready (probably when their own women emancipate themselves, etc.). I don't think I am too unfair, but I could be wrong, so I apologise to her if she's reading this (highly likely).

Hence, I find this view fundamentally stupid in a European context. We have our opinions, we like our opinions, and seemingly like being so damn smug. The ones who feel self-confident about their opinions do not have to answer to politeness, especially since common morality finds no fault with man answering for making his immediate world his own. That is why, perhaps on a global scale, these opinions will always seem insensitive, but in the conduct in the lives of individuals they will be justifiable to anyone with a European education.

To conclude, I should like to speculate how many people saw the film/read the book and thought 'Poor woman, the things she had to endure for her love!' and 'Well, if she did love him, why couldn't she just adapt?' The first is out of sympathy, the second out of empathy, and both belie that opinion that leaves the heroine a victim of a world in which she condescended to live in.



* - I would like to add that I say in Africa, as I think that despite claims that the West will 'win' in the Middle East with all the democratic notions and intentions, it'll be more interesting than that. We'll still need oil, and we haven't manage to really subjugate the countries enough to make them give it to us happily. Well, my kids are gonna solve that civilisational conundrum, so I don't care. Much.