Hollywood has an Arab problem

A time-honored myth is the idea that Hollywood is a bastion of politically correct liberal media elites, accepting of everyone except for white, heterosexual males. Hollywood doesn’t like people like me, a white male that tries to follow Jesus and takes the New Testament seriously, so I’m told. That’s partially true. Conservative religious believers are often portrayed in film and TV as sexually repressed, anti-science, simple-minded folk with narrow worldviews that resemble Machiavelli more than Jesus. But since I’ve decided to become an aspiring filmmaker, I’ve been studying the industry, and the open secret that everyone in the industry knows, but might be shocking to outsiders is this: Hollywood elites are comprised mostly of older, white males, which are the staggering majority of Oscar voters; and women and minorities don’t get a fair shake in the industry—and it’s not even close. Knowing that Hollywood is mostly run by older, white males has helped me become a more thoughtful consumer of media, which has led me to discover another truth: Arabs are the most maligned people in America today.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that other popular scapegoats have it easy. Gays in particular have it pretty bad, especially gay youth who are bullied at school and have nobody to turn to when they come home, since their church and parents reject them too. Without diminishing the pain of the LGBT community in America, at least they have a large section of Hollywood and pop culture rooting for them. Not so with Arabs. With the exception of Amreeka which is a beautiful independent film about a Palestinian Christian family that settles in Illinois where the mom gets a job at White Castle, and The Visitor, a film that humanizes an undocumented Syrian, I can’t think of many positive—or even nuanced—portrayals of Arabs. Okay, there is Paradise Now, also an independent, which puts a human face on...err...a suicide bomber.

See what I mean?

Try it for yourself. Think of an Arab you’ve seen in a movie or a TV show. Who are they? What are they doing? How are they portrayed? Are they portayed as human beings who work hard, love their children, with real emotions, flawed, neither saints nor villains—like you and me? Or are they one-dimensional stereotypes? I’m thinking of the fumbling idiots in Back to the Future who can’t get their bazookas to work, the Arabian Knights in Aladdin, the terrorist mom in 24 hell-bent on setting off a WMD, the fat oil sheiks in Taken who run a sex trafficking ring, the Iraqi women in American sniper who don’t grieve over their dead children. And if that’s not dehumanizing enough, we could expand our critique of media to video games and listen to the words of Arab American commentator/ comedian Amer Zahr who said in a recent blog post:

It has always bothered me that the targets on the video game Call of Duty all look like my dad.

Religious conservatives often raise the point that sex and violence in media have a corrosive influence on society, and that artists have a responsibility to shape the moral climate of our culture. I think that's a fair point, though I do think that portrayals of sin in film and TV should be examined by the larger context of the point the stories are trying to make. Having said that, there’s an old adage that says “Perception is reality”, and it’s hard to argue with the fact that the film and TV industry is one of the primary shapers of perception in U.S. culture, as well as the global culture. We know that Hollywood portrayals of African American men can lead to the fear and suspicion of black men that many people are now protesting, and at least some in Hollywood are trying to rectify that with shows like Black-ish and the variety of roles that are available to black actors. Given the success of American Sniper, I don’t think the issue of Arab villification is much on the radar for socially conscious industry workers in Hollywood.

It’s about time that somebody calls Hollywood’s portrayal of Arabs for what it is: racism.

Up until this point in my life, I’ve only written and produced non-fiction. I’ve finally begun to work on my first novel, and I’m also co-writing a screenplay with a friend. So here’s my pledge as an aspiring storyteller. Regardless of who I write about, I will do my best to portray people not as one-dimensional stereotypes, but as human beings. Whether my characters are saints or villains, or anything in between, I will do my best to portray the truth of who they are and will portray to the best of my ability the context in which they live. To do anything less is un Jesus-like, and goes against the core of my faith.

You have my permission to hold me accountable.

What I dread telling my black son

By Aaron Taylor

It’s nearly 11 P.M. I’m sitting upstairs in my recliner typing away on my laptop, trying to figure out which words will follow the next. What I really want to be doing is holding my 4-year old son. I want to rest his head against my shoulders and cling to his innocence before it slips away. I used to believe that by providing a middle class suburban life for my son, complete with the best public schools and services that my state has to offer, that somehow I could keep him safe. Since the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the gunning down of Trayvon Martin, that illusion is now gone.

My son is black and I am white.

This is what I dread telling him when he becomes a teenager.

Isaac, when you were 18 months old, you left your native country of Ethiopia and you became our son. Your mother and I love you. Your grandma and grandpa, aunts and uncles, cousins, and friends: we all love you and want the best for you. But Isaac, you’re not the cute little boy anymore that looks like he can be on the Disney Channel. Now that you’re a teenager, there are some in our society who will make assumptions about you based solely on how you look. And if you’re ever in a situation where you feel threatened by someone who has made assumptions about you, even if you’re walking home unarmed in the dark of night and some creepy guy is following you, you don’t have the right to defend yourself. Because mark my words son, if there’s a confrontation, society will not side with the guy who looks like you, they’ll side with the guy who looks like me.

I know that when you were a little boy you used to look up to police officers. When you saw a police officer, you used to tell them that you wanted to be a police officer too when you grow up. And the police officers adored you right back. But now that you’re older, if you’re ever confronted by a police officer and you do the wrong thing, I’m not going to be there to protect you. So, please, respect their authority and know that they’re there to help you and protect you. But if they ever stop you for any reason and you run—they just might shoot you. So, please, don’t run!

I imagine there are some who might be shocked at the prospect of me telling my son to be cautious with police officers, lest he be shot. But let me tell you about millions of people who wouldn’t be shocked. Black people.

Growing up I was never taught to be cautious or afraid of police officers because police officers were the good guys that could protect me from the bad guys. Racial profiling wasn’t real because nobody that I knew had ever experienced it. Part of me wishes that I could still live with that worldview, the one that says that racism is a thing of the past, that anyone who says otherwise is simply trying to further an agenda to fatten their pockets, that racial profiling is something that black people made up so that they can keep prejudice alive and our nation divided. As wrongheaded as it is, it can be very comforting when you reflexively attribute morality to people who look like you and menace to people who look like them. Now that I’m a white father with a black son, I don’t have the luxury of that kind of delusion anymore.

So to my fellow white adoptive parents with minority children, when the white establishment tries to deflect the subject away from civil rights for black men by talking about “black on black crime” (as if the vast majority of white people aren’t killed by other white people), we can’t let the establishment get away with it. They can change the subject. We can’t.

When a black male teenager is shot and killed and the white establishment goes on a smear campaign against that teenager, digging into his school records and sniffing for drugs, let’s remind the establishment how many troubled white teenagers smoke pot and yet we assume that they simply need more love and nurture, not that they deserved to die because they wore the wrong piece of clothing on a dark, rainy night.

Let’s remind them.

Because at the end of the day, these are our sons that they’re talking about.

Avoiding the R-Word

When Mitt Romney stood before a group of supporters in Israel and declared that cultural superiority and divine providence are the reasons behind the economic disparity between Israelis and Palestinians, the corporate-sponsored “liberal” U.S. media called his remark ignorant, insensitive, and a “gaffe, but other than taking the indirect route of quoting Palestinian leaders, you’d be hard-pressed to find an American journalist with the moral fiber to call the remark what it actually was. When it comes to the R-word, the U.S. media bows to the sacred cow of silence. Nobody wants to say the word racist anymore.

True, the word racist is loaded. The word conjures up images of attack dogs, fire hoses, church bombings, guys in creepy robes riding horses in the dead of night torching homes, not to mention Hitler, neo-Nazis, skinheads, the Help. Given the historical baggage associated with the word racist, it’s understandable that in America today, when somebody throws the R-word out to denounce the words of another, the shame more often goes to the accuser, not the accused.

That’s exactly the problem.

Because the word racist is so often associated with its most obvious manifestations, it’s difficult to call into question the racial views of another, even when their words and actions reflect a worldview that says that God favors one group of people over another.

When it comes to Israelis and Palestinians there are, of course, other complicating factors. Jews for centuries have suffered horrific atrocities under the banner of racism. Academic circles endlessly debate whether Zionism is racism, or whether anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. The words Judaism, Israel, and the Jewish people are synonymous for many people, making it difficult to criticize one without criticizing the other. To make things even more complicated, the very concept of the Jewish people’s “chosen-ness” comes straight from the Torah, which both Jews and Christians revere as the Word of God.

As complicating as these factors are, at the end of the day we’re left with a socio-political-religious ideology that says that God favors one group of people over another, and when God’s favored people (Israel) happen to exhibit near total military and economic control over the other (Palestinians), it’s entirely appropriate to call into question the moral implications of such an ideology, and to raise the question of whether it might be considered racist.

While Romney was for sure attempting to rake in some cash and shore up the Jewish vote, it’s no secret that any comment that praises Israel and insults Palestinians might be considered a wink and a nod to the supposed “evangelical” base of the Republican Party. The dominant media narrative is that evangelical is synonymous with Christian Zionist. Christian Zionists believe that God obligates them to support the state of Israel—including the expansion of Jewish settlements—because any nation that refuses to do so will be cursed. Palestinians are an invented people that don’t exist in their view, so when their homes and orchards are demolished to pave the way for new settlements, it doesn’t matter because Palestinians (who don’t exist) are trespassers on land that God says belongs to the Jewish people. Christian Zionists oppose a two-state solution and they want Israel to permanently occupy the West Bank and Gaza strip.

This is the ideology that Romney was trying to appease by insulting Palestinians. And make no mistake about it. Romney’s remark was an insult. Romney says that his remarks were mischaracterized, but in what universe does telling an entire people that they’re culturally inferior to another people not an insult?

Sorry Mr. Romney, you can’t blame the media on this one.

As for my evangelical friends that Romney was trying to please, if you’re not at war with the Muslim world, if you believe that following Jesus means challenging racial and religious prejudice, if you believe that loving your neighbor includes practicing nonviolence and combating Islamophobia, if you believe that Jesus calls you to work for the peace, safety, and well-being of all people, without distinction of their race, religion, or sexual orientation, then I invite you to register for the Evangelicals for Peace Summit coming up on September 14th in Washington D.C.

It’s time to reclaim our faith.

Ignoramus racial moments

Sometimes in life you learn best not from the times that you shine, but from the times that you act like a total ignoramus. It seems that racism and fear of outsiders are on the rise in the U.S.A. With this in mind, I’d like to share two different occasions in which my big mouth revealed my profound racial ignorance. I’m sure there are more, but these are the two that I remember the most.

Ignoramus moment number one: It was 12 years ago. I was working at Steak N Shake training an African American guy how to make the shakes and the desserts. From what I gathered from our conversation, I could tell that this was a man deeply interested in his African heritage. I also got the sense that he felt that the American dream wasn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. With pride the man told me that his ancestors were from Nigeria and that he wanted to reconnect with his roots. That was when I said the words that have haunted me ever since, “If you don’t want to be an American, why don’t you go back to Africa?”

Ignoramus moment number two: It was 9 years ago. I was working as a telemarketer. Lessie was an African American woman around my age that sat a couple of seats down from me. We often talked and laughed about many things to make the day go by faster. One day Lessie got on the subject about people that live in the ghetto. Without giving it much thought I blurted out “Why don’t those people just work harder? Then they could leave the ghetto.” Lessie went off on me. “You have no idea what you’re talking about! You don’t know how hard it is to grow up in the ghetto!” Lessie was right.

So why am I bringing this up years later? Because in two weeks I’m traveling to Ethiopia to pick up my adopted son. Before we were married my wife told me that she always wanted to adopt from Africa. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but after years of miscarriages and fertility specialists we finally decided to adopt. About a month after we started the adoption process, my wife got pregnant and now we have the world’s cutest baby, but in about three weeks I’m going to be the father of two boys, a black son and a white son.

Over the past several years I’ve worked hard to educate myself on racial issues the best that I can. For example: I know that white privilege and institutionalized racism are verifiable realities that exist today despite the claim by many that white people are now the victims. I no longer believe—thank God—that the reason why most black people in America vote Democrat is because all they want is a handout from the government. Basic knowledge of history and sociology can go a long way to clear up these misunderstandings, but the problem is that these are things that you get from a textbook.

The real question that I’m pondering is something that I’ll never be able to get from a textbook. How do I as a father teach my son to respect his culture (both as an Ethiopian and as a black American), to identify with the black American experience, which means recognizing the historical sins of the past and how they’ve contributed to the ongoing realities of white privilege and institutionalized racism; how do I do all that without stifling his individual drive to succeed? I want my son to grow up believing that through faith, hard work, and perseverance anything is possible in this great country of ours even though I know that our nation’s history of racism has made it more difficult for some racial groups to succeed than others. How do I balance concrete reality with faith, imagination, and a sound work ethic?

I’ve asked some of my white friends this question. The typical response I get is that while I should teach my son to respect his culture, I shouldn’t dwell on the sins of the past and on institutionalized racism today because that would stifle his individual creativity and work ethic. I can understand that perspective, but I think it would be wise to hear from black Americans on this issue. I have a feeling that my question is anything but new and unique to most African American households. I also have a feeling that there’s a broad range of opinion on this issue within the black community. If you’re a black American and you’d like to share your experience with me on how you’ve dealt with racism, both individual and institutional, and how you’ve overcome obstacles to create a life of meaning and purpose for you and your family, then I’d like to hear from you.

Aaron D. Taylor is an author and a speaker. To learn more about Aaron’s ministry, go to http://www.aarondtaylor.com Aaron can be contacted at fromdeathtolife@gmail.com