In Bangladesh, we never identify with the African-American. Indeed, in South Asia, the middle class aspiration is to be like the white middle class: affluent. We forget that until recently, we were despised by our colonial masters, whose rule has proven so effective that we have become mental slaves – the only kind that endures "emancipation".
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In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.
- W.H.Auden
We consider ourselves a free nation. We have the vote. We can choose our representatives. Well, so can black Americans.
We never identify with the African-American. And why should we look down when we are trained since childhood to look up? The streets of Dhaka were recently bannered with announcements of the latest lottery for American citizenship. "DV-2007 Let's go to the land of our dreams, America!" Newspapers reported that the cyber-cafes were full since the forms had to be filled in on-line.
We were the "niggers" and "wogs" of the British Empire. For the first term, read casually through George Orwell's Burmese Days. Here's one passage that always has me chuckling:
"'Is it quite playing the game,' he said stiffly, 'to call these people niggers--a term they very naturally resent--when they are obviously nothing of the kind? The Burmese are Mongolians, the Indians are Aryans or Dravidians, and all of them are quite distinct--'
"'Oh, rot that!' said Ellis, who was not at all awed by Mr Macgregor's official status. 'Call them niggers or Aryans or what you like. What I'm saying is that we don't want to see any black hides in this Club.'"
For the term wog, I recommend John Masters' Bhowani Junction (see below).
Quondam wogs and niggers, therefore, have suffered a bout of amnesia and have American aspirations – here the Dravido-Aryans are like the Americans in that, like them, they can vote. Yet we have far more in common with the Afro-American than with the unhyphenated kind.
Malcom X continued to identify with black convicts after his release from prison, and he frequently used prison metaphors in his political rhetoric. "Don't be shocked when I say that I was in prison," he liked to tell his urban audiences. "You're still in prison. That's what America means: prison." In comments to reporters he characterized President Kennedy as a "warden," former Vice President Nixon as a "deputy warden," and called New York City's mayor, Robert Wagner, a "screw."
Why didn't black people seek the vote after emancipation? It would have been the logical thing to do. Voting brings power. But they were just too savvy to be deceived by a piece of paper.
Lincoln had written to Horace Greeley that his goal was to save the Union, not to free slaves. However, he did finally issue the Emancipation Proclamation. After war, the Thirteenth Amendment was modeled on the Northwest Ordnance, which allowed involuntary servitude as a punishment for crime. "Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a means of punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States...." Blacks feared they would be re-enslaved – and their fears proved perfectly justified. Therefore, they did not seek the right to vote, but the right to sit on juries – which was denied them.
In 1826, the population of New York State had been 1/35th black, while the prison population was ¼ black; and New York state was a free state! In Massachusetts the figures were 1/74th and 1/6th; in Connecticut, 1/34th and 1/3rd; in New Jersey, 1/13th and 1/3rd; in Pennsylvania, 1/34th and 1/3rd. Thus was born the coloured criminal. Today, African-Americans constitute 14% of the population, and 44% of its prison population.
The 'free' states were, therefore, only nominally free. The bias against the black man found expression in his incarceration. He was released from bondage to the individual only to be bonded to the state. In addition, his labour was contracted out to private businesses. In the South, after 'emancipation', black prisoners replaced their white counterparts. In the North, that had always been the case. They were now put to profitable use. Where formerly they had slaved on plantations, they now slaved in prisons. At any rate, they slaved. (For the above facts on slavery and prisons in America, see Scott Christianson's contemporary classic, With Liberty for Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America, (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998))
What good does the vote do for suppressed people?
In Bangladesh, the piece of paper that was supposed to have 'liberated' us from tyranny, has had the same effect as the emancipation of the blacks or that of granting them the vote – that is, it has had no effect. We are still an outpost of the American Empire; the Europeans are just as bad. There is an NGO in Bangladesh which gets more western aid than the ministry of health. Foreign aid has corrupted the nation – and rendered the nation malleable to foreign influence (the most corrupt section, of course, is the intelligentsia.) The effect of aid in the European Union is well-documented: it has led to corruption and the resignation of the entire commission in 1999, and things are still the same. What research has been undertaken here shows that only 25% of aid money reaches the poor. The rest is spent on perks and salaries and consultants' fees. Aid corrupts.
Aid also dominates. It has reinforced our feelings of inferiority resulting from colonial rule. As one observer said of the emancipated slaves: "chains of a stronger kind still manacled their limbs, from which no legislative act could free them; a mental and moral subordination and inferiority, to which tyrant custom has here subjected all the sons and daughters of Africa" (for a similar effect on the Indian mind, see click here
NGOs make sure that western foreign policy is carried out here and that no negative publicity – such as foreign policy failures – are reported in the press, local and international. For instance, the fact that thousands of women in Bangladesh have been raped by the student wings and thugs of the "democratically elected" parties never makes the headlines. For that would discredit western foreign policy since the end of the cold war. Again, the western press translates "hartal" as "general strike": in fact, hartal is a violent affair, undertaken by the student politicians to keep people off the streets by burning cars, trucks, auto-rickshaws – and people! But we won't see any of this on CNN; neither will Amnesty International say a word about the use of under-age students in politics, even though its current general-secretary, Irene Z. Khan, is Bangladeshi, and regularly visits the country.
An English friend of mine who had 'gone native' had the following story to tell. He had taken a local friend of his to a club for expatriates. As he was parking his motorcycle, one of the members came out, drink in hand, insisting loudly, "There's no one here you would know!" Translation: "Keep the nigger out of the club".
Consider this passage from Bhowani Junction. The characters are Eurasians.
"I said, 'Where's your topi? You will get all sunburned."
"I never wear one," she told me.
" 'But the sun,' I cried. 'It is the hottest time of the day! You will get all brown!'
"She tossed her head. The heavy dark curls of hair swung round on her shoulders. She looked at me in a funny way and said, 'It isn't sunburn that makes us brown, is it?'
"I was bending over the handlebars, turning the twist-grip throttle. It was not a nice thing to say, and I felt frightened that she had said it. If we don't wear topis people would think we were Wogs – not me, I have pale blue eyes, almost green, a sort of dull ginger – but most of us. She knew that, so there was nothing to say."
Authors Website: http://iftekharsayeed.weebly.com
Authors Bio:Iftekhar Sayeed teaches English and economics. He was born and lives in Dhaka, ‎Bangladesh. He has contributed to AXIS OF LOGIC, ENTER TEXT, POSTCOLONIAL ‎TEXT, LEFT CURVE, MOBIUS, ERBACCE, THE JOURNAL, and other publications. ‎He is also a freelance journalist. He and his wife love to tour Bangladesh. ‎