On p. 245 of the novel Horizons, Ahni Huang declares: "The only way to keep them safe is to be separate. A nation with the power to protect its own." Do you agree with her?
Upon reading the quote “The only way to keep them safe is to be separate. A nation with the power to protect its own” (245), I immediately thought of Week 10’s theme on “us”, “them”, and “national security”. First, it is necessary to define “us” and “them”. With the way that this quote is written, the “them” is ambiguous; it is not immediately apparent whether the goals of the “them” align, conflict, or even are related to the goals of the “self”. To keep “them” safe, do we need to separate “them”, or do we need to separate ourselves? In the US under Jim Crow laws, in order to protect white people from “dangerous” and “morally corrupt” black people, laws were created which made separate (better) facilities for white people to keep “them” (white people) away from black people. On the flip side, now in order to protect “American” interests, US policymakers are busy thinking of ways to close the Mexican border and keep “them” (rapists, criminals, and drug dealers) away from “Americans”. According to conservative rhetoric, this keeps Americans safe and keeps the US “a nation with the power to protect its own” (245). These racial precedents are important in the “us” and “them” because Mary Rosenblum’s discussion of “us” and “them” in the above quote is also based on a divide between the human race and a similar-yet-different biologically-advanced version of the human race. Rosenblum then discusses “tribe/not tribe hardwiring” (158), raising the question of whether differences between “us” and “them” are human constructions or natural occurrences? Race (which is mentioned so often in Horizons) is a man-made construction based on biological factors that we’ve assigned arbitrary value to, and stemming from a system which profits off of subjugations of the other (see: phrenology and the American race-based slave system). Similarly, the biological differences which supposedly define the human/non-human races in Horizons are also only looked at through the dominant group (human’s) lense of what “humanity” is. This then only serves to reaffirm the dominant group’s position as the dominant group. Regarding race relations, Rosenblum writes “If anything , the vanishing barriers or distance and physical isolation had increased the racial divides rather than healing them” (159); besides in Horizons this can be seen in the growing populism movement in Europe, or in The Conquest of the Americas when Spanish-Native proximinity is what gave rise to constructivism and justified vilifications (and extermination) of the “other”. In the quote on 245, Ahni is talking about creating a state by the humanoid species for the humanoid species. However as we discussed in class going back to ideas of the “double consciousness”, creating separation does not fix the issue, it just erases it. I think the risk would be that you create these separate states without actually addressing the root problem, and that allows the hate of the other to grow and continue to fester independently. For example, North Korea and South Korea are separate states divided by a communist/capitalist ideology, yet despite having their own separate states from which they can protect their own interests, their relationship hasn’t really improved. Given these purposeful parallels to current and historical race relations, and the obvious negative consequences our past racial hierarchies have created, I don’t think it is possible to say that separation can mean safety, when those ideas of safety and separation are so steeped in racist ideology. Separation does not fix the root causes of hatred or danger, and instead reaffirms the “other”.
2 Comments
Vicky
12/5/2018 11:47:34 pm
Kate, I too immediately thought of the blog question we discussed a couple of weeks ago on "us," "them," and national security. I think you post, this week's blog question, and Rosenblum's Horizon as a whole also conjured ideas that the Inyatullah reading on sovereignty and quasi-states explored, especially when you claim that you don't think "separation can mean safety." And now I'm realizing that your post, this week's blog question, and Horizons ALSO connects to the blog question we had on Todorov regarding how "only the man for whom the whole world is as a foreign country is perfect (p. 250)." Everything is interconnected! While I agree that separation cannot mean safety especially when those ideas of safety and separation are so steeped in racist ideology, I think that we should still be careful to distinguish our own differences in order to further emphasize solidarity because saying that we are all the same erases solidarity and doesn't absolve racism and hatred, but rather seems to brush it under the rug.
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Kate
12/9/2018 05:09:08 pm
Hi Vicky, I 100% agree with you that it's imperative to acknowledge our diversity rather than pretend it doesn't exist. We are all different, and strength lies in acknowledging and accepting those differences rather than believing that difference (from the "norm" which invariably is the dominant group) is inherently wrong. The difficulty then of course is how to convince people (mainly those in the dominant group) that difference is indeed okay. How should that be done? Is the "us" and "them" binary inevitable? Is it inherently wrong?
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KateHi, I'm Kate! I'm from Madison, WI and am planning on majoring in SIS focusing on East-Asia China. I like practicing kung fu, listening to music, and drinking bubble tea. Archives
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