Today I will be looking into the background and discriminatory themes behind the 3rd season of The Sopranos. A TV Series from which I am focusing was made between 1999-2001, portrays an Italian-American family, where the father is one of the main men in the North Jersey Mafia. It dives into family struggles, life as an Italian-American, depression and mental illness, betrayal, abandonment, and more. The main character, Tony Soprano, is a middle-aged Italian man with 2 kids, AJ and Meadow Soprano, and wife Carmella Soprano. There are a lot of moments of discrimination against both Italians and those of our ethnicity’s in the show, as it is meant to show a ‘traditional’ time as an Italian-American in the USA.
One example of this is when Meadow Soprano begins dating an African-American male, and when Tony finds out about this when he meets the man, he confronts him with racial slurs and disrespectful language and the man doesn’t come to visit Meadow at her house after the incident any longer. When Meadow finds out about this incident, she says that she is no longer on speaking terms with her father, and that he is a bigot, and stuck in the past. Tony’s explanation discussed about how Italians have to fend for themselves, that he has plenty of ‘black acquaintances’, and both sides know not to go any further than that. He claims it is wrong for his Italian daughter to date a black man, and it shows how Others can have a mentality to stay together rather than diversify when discriminated against. Throughout the show, Tony and the rest of the Sopranos are looked down upon by high-class Americans, as they don’t believe there is a way that an Italian family can be wealthy without coming from crime. Once, Tony goes to a golf outing with some high-class individuals. The entire time, they ask him about mafia movies, Italian culture, and make him do things they think a stereotypical Italian would do. This is why Tony is so passionate about his Italian background with his family, because he thinks it is them against the world, and is in his head why he denied Meadow from dating Noah.
Although Tony has no power over being Italian, it is identity that in the USA he has to live with, and to take control of it, he makes it a prideful thing rather than something to be ashamed about, for better or for worse. In cases, this means he doesn’t let xenophobic comments affect him, but then in other instances it means that he is discriminatory towards others in the show. This is what happens when somebody who has been discriminated against has a chance to be the one doing the discriminating. Even though he understands how much it affects him, he wasn’t hesitant to do it to someone else, this shows how people react to power or control over another, no matter how they were raised or treated before. Power changes people, and this is no different in the situation of Tony Soprano and his daughters boyfriend, Noah. The directors of the show wanted us as viewers to see how traditional values can affect discrimination, and how having power can result in the worst of a person to come out. It asks us the question about if one would be willing to get rid of their discriminatory values or if what is comfortable and safe is what is better for them.
Throughout time, discrimination on others based on their country or region of origin has been around. This discrimination is called xenophobia, and typically coincides with a feeling of racism. From people assuming the country of others based on actions or looks, to hating one due to it, xenophobia has many forms. As countries fight for independence around the world, from Kosovo, Catalonia, Armenia and Palestine, angry debates circle around whose side we as people are supposed to take, and to the extent we defend one side or the other. Today, I am discussing the xenophobic comments and experiences I have seen with my own eyes, and ones around the world that raise the question; how do we battle the prejudices people from certain areas feel towards those from others?
I am the son of a Palestinian immigrant, and although according to many I don’t ‘look’ like I am Arabic, I indeed am, and I hold my roots extremely close to me. No matter what side of the baton you consider yourself to be on, it is generally agreeable that the situation over in the area of the Israeli-Palestinian battles is not a good one. Racism, xenophobia, and religious intolerance in the area are at a tense stage, and the people of both sides do not find peace to be a fitting solution just yet. When I tell others of my origins, I am responded to with questions, such as “How could you be Arabic, when you do not look like you are?” and I am investigating what exactly people mean when they say this. Do they expect me to look a certain way because of the country I am from? I believe the answer is yes, and this kind of assumption is a dangerous one in all aspects of life, from the class someone else is in, to their religion, to the gender they identify as. These assumptions are dangerous, and a very under-looked degree of discrimination is xenophobia. When in 1939, Adolf Hitler paraded around Germany spreading xenophobic comments about the Austrians and Polish, the German people were more than convinced that they were the chosen people. Xenophobia is a common technique from rulers of countries around the world for centuries as a means of getting their people to not only believe they are the best, but rather that the other side is bad.
The United States, a nation built on the backs of immigrants from around the world, and hailed as the nation of multiple backgrounds and ethnicities, has itself a disgusting past with xenophobia. An example I could easily point to would be that from President Donald Trump and other media outlets, who have covered and called the Coronavirus ‘ChinaVirus’. This kind of terminology is extremely damaging to the Chinese people, and more to the Chinese-Americans, who have to deal with the hate filled speech in their own homes, and this rhetoric influences the USA to believe the reason they are at home is because of all Chinese people, and obviously this causes hate to spread. This is why xenophobia is so important to stop or put a stand against, because it is the exact kind of behavior that causes wars, hatred, and racism, both home and abroad.
Around the world, Chinese and other Asian people are defending themselves against cases of racism and xenophobia, as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic (Times Higher Education).
This isn’t a United States issue, this isn’t a China issue, this is a worldwide issue, and it is extremely bad in the European continent, and, myself included, had underestimated just how bad this issue was before I started writing this. I have seen my own mother experience it, my own sister, and now I am witnessing just how bad it can be on a global scale, especially with all the anger and madness that the coronavirus has caused. Everyone needs someone or something to blame for anything that doesn’t go how they wanted it to, and for the coronavirus around the world people have turned to anger towards a large scale group of people as the culprits for the mismanagement of a virus that nobody saw coming around the world. I just read a quote from Joyce Lau, writing from Times Higher Education that I would like to narrow in on. “Even the University of California, Berkeley, one of the world’s most liberal-minded and diverse campuses, has not been immune to administrative bumbling over the coronavirus outbreak. Its health service was roundly criticised when it said in a public message that xenophobia was a “normal” response to the epidemic. About half of Berkeley’s student body is Asian, including both Asian Americans and international students.” The link to the full article exposing instances of Anti-Chinese xenophobia can be found here https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/coronavirus-sparks-rising-tide-ofxenophobia-worldwide.
That quote just shows the heights of the institutionalized xenophobia and racism that countries like the USA are experiencing as a result of this pandemic. Xenophobia of any kind is never normal and under any circumstances accepted. UC-Berkeley quickly deleted the post, after a ton of criticism came their direction after the post. They later apologized in full, but that kind of dialogue even being brought up in the first place is extremely damaging, as all it takes is one person to be influenced by posts such as that, and use it as an excuse for them to discriminate against others for where they are from.
This podcast I have linked above was a discussion from experts in the United Nations on this topic, and they offer their perspectives and observations which I will discuss as well. The main speaker here is Tendayi Achiume, the UN’s human rights expert. She explains that this xenophobia and racism that has stemmed as a result of the pandemic has been waiting to come to fruition, and that people needed reasons to pursue their political agendas against certain groups of people, including but not limited to those from China. Asian-Americans as a whole have taken a big hit in countries such as the USA and UK, with targeted attacks and blame being shifted onto them for mostly political reasons as certain people in these countries think they would benefit from widespread hate and blame of these people for the virus and its spread into their communities, no matter how off-base and inaccurate some of these claims have been. It is a fact of life that people will look to blame others, but the focus of doing it to not only escape blame yourself but to use the blame to shift a narrative onto others is extremely damaging and the COVID-19 pandemic is a reason why this has come to surface in a much larger scale here in 2020.
Achiume describes the people that are pushing these politicized xenophobia narratives as “entrepreneurs of intolerance”. This definition to me shows that they have begun to try and take advantage of anger in their communities to push agendas of intolerance and xenophobia. Why would one gain anything from removing or causing hatred towards a group of people? For the USA, China is viewed as a ‘threat’ to the progress of American companies as they look to outsource to China for production and headquarters. If the USA were to push some insane narrative that China and its people were fully responsible for the virus, that would put pressure on companies that have outsourced to China to move back to the USA, and to be able to tariff the country heavily without as much outburst from the citizens they have convinced to despise the country and its people. This is extremely dangerous as a proposition, as it causes unfair hatred that begins to stem on both sides, and the danger of violence and discrimination arises from this irresponsible narrative. Thinking solely about the economic or status gains from a xenophobic agenda is extremely ignorant when you step back and realize that Asian-Americans are a rather large group within your own society, and the agenda that you push against these people from the area directly negatively impacts them as well. Along these, lines, a racist and xenophobic agenda causes mass hate, and in the worst case could lead to hate groups uprising, which happened in Germany prior to the second World War. That is a worst-case scenario, but it isn’t far-fetched when you understand the severity of this pandemic and what misinformation and a harmful narrative can cause a hurt public to pursue.
All in all, this issue of xenophobia will continue to rise around the world, due to the narratives being brought out as a result of one of the deadliest pandemics in modern history. This is not only dangerous, but extremely disrespectful and hurtful to those that will be impacted from these narratives, everyone reading this must realize how severe this situation can become and remember that love wins, and to spread it today, and every day, as we unite to take down this terrible pandemic and the effects of it around the globe, not only from its horrible self, but the racist and xenophobic agendas that have risen from it.
Sources:
Achiume, T. (2020, April 17). PODCAST: ‘Entrepreneurs of intolerance’ compound COVID-19 racist backlash | | UN News. Retrieved November 10, 2020, from https://news.un.org/en/audio/2020/04/1061952
Lau, Joyce, et al. “Coronavirus Sparks a Rising Tide of Xenophobia Worldwide.” Times Higher Education (THE), 5 Apr. 2020, www.timeshighereducation.com/news/coronavirus-sparks-rising-tide-ofxenophobia-worldwide.
This week we will be reading Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Hamid is writing in this about a Pakistani man named Changez. For this presentation, I will cover the context and background of Pakistan in the 90s-00s. Pakistan in history had been a country of many different leaders and directions of politics, however the 90s brought a bit of a brighter form of power to the country, as in 1988 the peaceful transition from a militaristic dictatorship to a democracy happened and the people were more than ecstatic and ready to take on the future ahead of them. The Haq dictatorship’s falling meant a brighter future for the Pakistani people, as they were able to now try and repair any problems that were caused under Haq’s reign. However, unlike how intended, the democratic system was full of corruption, lies, and a ton of shifts in power at a crazy rate. Four different parties took control in the 90s alone, and 2 of them were charged by the military in corruption at the end of the decade. This meant the rebuild for the Pakistani people was not going exactly how they wanted and restlessness soon followed. Culturally, the change to democracy was positive. Although ethnic violence continued, the introduction of new TV stations, a booming Pop music scene, and more really took shape in the 90s under new rule. The country’s favorite sport was successful as well, as the cricket team of Pakistan won the World Cup in 1992.
The 2000s brought a new dictatorship to Pakistan, with leader General Pervez Musharraf, but the people of Pakistan were happy to see some stability in their country, rather than the constant revolving door of corruption that had followed in the 90s. This new dictatorship was comfortably in power during the time period of The Reluctant Fundamentalist. Violence was down, hopes were higher, and it was generally recognized as a culturally excelling period for Pakistanis (2000-2005), unless you were part of the people who were politically repressed, in order for Musharraf to gain the power he had. With the banning of radical terror groups and the expansion of culture, it was a blossoming period for all of Pakistan. This dictatorship group did cause some controversy among some of the more radical groups that lived in and around the country however, as they joined the United States in the “War on Terror”.
General Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan from 2001-2008.
Sources:
Paracha, Nadeem. “The Pakistan Zeitgeists: A Nation through the Ages.” DAWN.COM, 29 May 2014, www.dawn.com/news/1109105.
An example of a systematic injustice I have witnessed recently is the unfair treatment of the Uyghur Muslims in the country of China. In case you haven’t heard, there are currently millions of Uyghurs being sent to camps and being tortured because of their religion, and the world has been very quiet about it. This has the potential to be the modern day version of the Holocaust, and it is disheartening that people are just letting it happen without speaking up. It is something that means a lot to me, especially coming from a family where my mother and her family are all a part of the Muslim religion. In the link I will provide here, The Guardian provide an aerial view of the internment camps that these Muslims have been sent to, and information behind the terrible mistreatment of these people by the Chinese Government. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/24/china-has-built-380-internment-camps-in-xinjiang-study-finds.
There have been over 380 camps built for the Uyghurs, and there are more being built as I write this post. They are being systematically dragged away from their homes, families, friends, and lives to these camps on the basis of their religion and political affiliations. The Chinese Government is using these camps as a way to “re-educate” these Muslims into the way the Chinese government want them to think and behave. There are several ways that the Chinese government finds these Muslims, from the fact that they do not consume pork, to simply owning the Qur’an. This has a lot of relation to the course material The Leavers, where Deming, due to not particularly fitting in with new environments, was practically forced into changing everything about himself to fit in, even going as far as to be called Daniel. This is a lot of what is happening in China, as the Muslims are being “taught” how to be how the government wants them to be.
There isn’t much one person in myself can do about this, however spreading awareness with the people I know about it could lead to somebody more important hearing about it. If this can become a mainstream story, then the countries can condemn the Chinese government and work against letting them discriminate against these people simply on the account of their closely held values and religion. If we can catch and stop this through awareness and condemnation, we can be proactive instead of reactive and not let something such as the Holocaust repeat itself in any fashion. That is an example of a systematic injustice I have seen in recent times, and I hope talking about it and speaking out can help to stop and free the Uyghur Muslims in China.
