The lecture last week on orientalism reminded me of the firsthand accounts I’ve had with people I know viewing most of the rest of the world from an oriental perspective. I was born and raised in the U.S. as a Pakistani American. The last time I visited Pakistan several years ago, my family and I were also stopping in Dubai for a few days. When I told one of my high school counselors that I would miss the last few days of school for this trip, her response was “Oh what an exotic vacation! That’s going to be fun.” The word exotic never really left me and over the years I’ve found that exotic just means strange and interesting in the way that one would peer at some rare creature at the zoo. There was nothing “exotic” about going to Pakistan and Dubai to me. Thinking of exotic in conjunction with animals is something I find holds a considerable amount of weight. Exotic is just one of the words that portrays how the “Other” can be so foreign to Westerners that dehumanizing them is effortless.
Three days after Barack Obama was elected as President, he began launching covert drone strikes in Pakistan. For the most part, the general public was unaware about the occurrence of these drone strikes due to very intentionally limited media coverage. Over the years, these drone strikes have killed hundreds of civilians in Pakistan. A non-profit news organisation called the Bureau of Investigative Journalism published a report that showed data collected from 2004-2015 for drone strikes in Pakistan by the Bush and Obama Administrations. According to their numbers, somewhere between 416-959 innocent civilians were murdered during these attacks with approximately 168-204 civilians being children (Drone War). Different numbers have been reported by different groups so it is very difficult to tell how many people were actually killed. It’s easy to ask, how could someone do this? How could someone who cried on national television when giving a speech about the innocent children killed in the Sandy Hook shooting, continue to launch air strikes in areas knowing there are civilians present?
The answer to this lies in the way people are socialized in the West and the powerful forces that shape people’s beliefs. As Stuart Hall mentions when referring to the West and the rest, the rest is defined by the negative characteristics that the powerful West has constructed for it. The “Other” is uneducated, barbaric, violent and will kill us. There is this separation of us from them. With this separation, comes a nationalistic perspective that allows one to separate themselves both physically and emotionally from those that aren’t a part of their own nation. Instilling nationalism in children is a powerful tool in creating a culture of people who are not able to feel the same empathy for others across borders. Singing patriotic songs in grade school, pledging allegiance to the flag and being raised with the idea that the U.S. is the best country to live in is not uncommon for the average American.
Based on my experiences, I would say that most people in the West are conditioned to feel more for white bodies in particular, than we are for people of color. Unfortunately, the media plays a large role in this . From the negative representation of countries such as Pakistan to lack of media coverage for the atrocities that happen there. The media are big about talking about terrorism, but rarely covers the terrorist attacks that Pakistanis have to face by groups like the Taliban. And when the U.S. starts launching air strikes that kill people who have no warning or nowhere else to go, there is no empathy. A lifetime of the forces at work to create the identity of the “Other” result in something that is less than human and makes it okay for these sub-humans to be casualties. Because it is war afterall. And in war, your enemy can’t be someone who feels, someone who has a family and someone who looks like you. Your enemy has to be a reflection of what you have conjured up. Because how else would you sleep at night.
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