Entrepreneur Pics; Propaganda, Paranoia,Prejudice & Seeing Terrorists Everywhere

[Guest]

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[Jill]

      This is going to be much too wordy, probably, for many of you. 
        No worries.  Just click yourselves out of here.
       
        My reactions, upon seeing certain Entrepreneur photos, have both fascinated and really troubled me
as I've reflected on the reasons for  -- and the implications of --those reactions,
and I'm wondering if  anybody else here has experienced anything similar. 
       
        What I'm talking about is how I, a supposedly relatively bright, thoughtful and highly"educated" individual,
for all I know about propaganda, mind manipulation, the incredible power of the media to affect and to influence, about
government chicanery and dirty tricks and its no-holds-barred campaigns to sway the populace
in whichever ways it seeks to sway us, and
the absolute and total unreasonableness and unfairness of profiling/typing individuals
based on looks... and/or on cultural background...

in spite of all I know about things like that,
incredibly, I still occasionally experience a "pause", a hesitation, a wondering,
when I see pictures of certain individuals, who have a "certain look,"
particularly when I see they're from certain countries. 
Not super often, but every once in awhile,
I've noticed how, even merely looking at certain Entrepreneur photos,
I've had to intentionally, mindfully fight off
the seemingly reflexive, totally unwanted thoughts that first come to my mind.





       And I've thought to myself how insidious it all is--
how easily we all can be manipulated,
especially when you toss a little fear into the equation.

It's made me think about the origins of prejudice, about
the phenomenal effectiveness and destructiveness of name-calling, of branding and depersonalizing and
making less than human individuals
merely by crowding them under umbrella terms like "terrorists"*, "illegal aliens," the "N-word," "the defendant," etc.
     
        It's completely subjective and way way beyond irrational. 
But I find it really really scary to realize how maybe none of us is impervious
to the influence of the onslaught of persuasion and propaganda by government and media and television, and
by movie, music, and video game programming. 
     
        With how much fear and intolerance and an "us against them" mentality
there seems to be prevailing in the world, these days,
it just seemed worth calling some attention
to the potential there may be in all of us to getting "sucked in" by it all,
and suggesting that maybe all of us need to be vigilant, mindful and careful
that we don't get manipulated, in spite of ourselves.


* Some of you may have already heard the
(for me, really thought-provoking) saying
that
One Country's Terrorists Are Another Country's Freedom Fighters.
     

[Peter S]

That's very thought-provoking Jill, and it really did need all those words to express the subtleties... I'm going to re-read it when I'm not meant to be working..

I just wanted to say briefly now, that I was surprised to see my (and Diane's) borrower Ahammd Sadiq Gulam Sarwor cited as someone for whom you've had to fight off "reflexive, totally unwanted thoughts".   I posted about him in the "How Wondrous is The Variety" thread a couple of weeks back, calling attention to his being a "master body builder".   My first reaction on seeing his picture and reading his write-up then was how cool and "western" he seemed - which I suppose just goes to show how different our ways of seeing can be, and vive la difference..  None of which goes against what you have to say, and now I really must get back to work.. 

[Jundee]

     
          Just click yourselves out of here.    
      

Thank you for the warning... I did.

[Peter S]

...what I also wanted to confess, Jill, was that when I read what you wrote there about "the absolute and total unreasonableness and unfairness of profiling/typing individuals based on looks... and/or on cultural background..." it brought to mind 9/11, and that FBI agent who when he flagged up doubts in the summer of 2001 about a group of men from the Middle East taking flying lessons, apparently ran into agency concerns and policies about racial and ethnic profiling.   Perhaps by even allowing that thought to cross my mind I'm kind of proving your general point (which I agree with) about how easy it is...

That whole can of worms has been and continues to be debated endlessly of course, the populist case for profiling energetically put forward here for example:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-smerconish/profiling-street-smarts-_b_27443.html
and equally vigorously opposed in most of the 72 reader comments.

In answer to the question you posed at the beginning of your piece, I personally haven't had the same kind of "reflex" feelings about any borrower I've seen on Kiva, but I don't rule out the possibility that it will happen one day...

[Peter S]

hmmmm    seeing terrorists everywhere...

I was reminded of this thread when I read this article on the BBC today:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/west_yorkshire/7066944.stm

Britain's first Muslim minister, Shahid Malik, has said he is "deeply disappointed" that he was detained by airport security officials in America.

The international development minister was stopped and searched at Washington DC's Dulles airport after a series of meetings on tackling terrorism.

Mr Malik, MP for Dewsbury, West Yorks, had his hand luggage checked for explosives when returning to Heathrow.

He said the same thing happened to him at JFK airport in New York last year.

On that occasion he had been a keynote speaker at an event organised by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), alongside the FBI and Muslim organisations, to talk about tackling extremism and defeating terrorism.

'Respect needed'

Mr Malik said he had received numerous apologies and assurances from the US authorities after that incident.

But he was again searched and detained by DHS officials on Sunday.

Mr Malik said two other Muslims were also detained.

"I am deeply disappointed," he said.

"The abusive attitude I endured last November I forgot about and I forgave, but I really do believe that British ministers and parliamentarians should be afforded the same respect and dignity at USA airports that we would bestow upon our colleagues in the Senate and Congress.

"Obviously, there was no malice involved but it has to be said that the USA system does not inspire confidence."

No comment

[Kay]

Doesn't surprise me in the least--unfortunately.

[Jill]

This particular post isn't, itself, about entrepreneur pics, so I wasn't sure whether I wanted to place it in this thread or not.  It was between this one and "Peace Starts HERE," and I chose to place it here because I thought there were some common themes.  Anyway, I like reviving old, nearly dead threads.  The ones I started myself, I believed in -- in their potential for getting some wonderful discussions going, that is.  I still believe in them, if only the will were there....


There have been a couple of indescribably horrible stories in the news in the past few days about some really incomprehensible and yes truly unspeakable violence inflicted upon innocents.  Violence that was wrought by extremist adherents of some extremist offshoot of what I’ve been given to and do (choose to) believe is an otherwise peace-preaching and peace-teaching Islam religion.  A religion that is as good and as fallible, I’m inclined to think, as probably just about any other religion is good and is fallible.


I’d actually considered posting the first of the two stories, which I later saw remarked upon in one of Nick Kristof’s columns.  I love Nick Kristof and his giant giant oversized heart.


What happened, though, was that I started thinking about how I, personally, responded internally to hearing these stories and others like them.   The last thing I wanted to do was post them here and risk the possibility of fanning the flames of the insidious, mostly unrealized potential we, probably all of us have, for falling prey to these too human of predictable almost reflexive responses.


There’s absolutely no question that the kind of stories that got me to writing this post in the first place operate to increase the anxiety that reading almost anything, these days, in the mainstream media serves to create.  There’s also no question that they exacerbate the fear that I, for instance, deep down underneath, know that I feel, and that, very very much in spite of myself.   That kind of fear,  I know and I hate knowing, is a precondition to prejudice.  


I will do absolutely everything that it is in my power to do  to resist succumbing to it.  It would be so easy.  That’s true, especially, because I haven’t had the good fortune of becoming friends with anyone (whom I know to be) Muslim.  If I had, I’d have all kinds of counterbalance and reality-testing that would help insulate me from the plagues of fear and prejudice.


I’m not sure why I’m writing about all this except for the fact that I think that all of us either have been or will be “tested.”  I think that it’s only by realizing, by acknowledging our susceptibility, our vulnerability to giving in to our smaller selves that we have even a chance of resisting the temptation when and if a particular situation arises that might present us with the challenge.


There’s a show that I watched part of last weekend that I see is going to be shown, multiple times, this weekend, on CNN, called Unwelcome: The Muslims Next Door.  It might be worth your time tivo-ing it, taping or just watching it.  It’s about people who probably are not fundamentally different from me and you who, ultimately, found themselves fearing and turning on people they’d been living with peacefully in their community for decades.  If that turnabout could happen to them, it could happen to us, irrespective of the fact (the fallacy) that we may choose to believe that we are “too educated,” too worldly, too caring for it to happen to us.  


Sinclair Lewis once wrote a book entitled, “It Can’t Happen Here.”  The fact is, oh yes it can and oh yes, it very well might, if we’re not careful, reflective and vigilant enough to prevent it.


EDIT: Too bad for those who weren't here at the time that I hadn't included the link to the second of the two entrepreneur photos at the top of this page.  The specified loan purpose for the second man was that he'd wanted to buy more poisons.  You can imagine that that raised a few eyebrows and caught a lot of people's attention.  Turns out that he was an exterminator, that he was selling these poisons to rid people's homes of different kinds of vermin -- legitimate enough.  Legitimate, yes, but that particular loan purpose coupled with his Middle Eastern location and the blankety-blank little, but still present, fear I realized I had all combined to make this guy look scary, at least, to me.

[brooke]

https://app.e2ma.net/app/view:CampaignPublic/id:1407873.7016404609/rid:7aee2dffadd0e2664febd7dfd09cb7aa

Okay, so here's a link to a great video spoof on the Daily Show, really gets the point across, leavened with humor:  Allah in the Family

[brooke]

Oops,  scratch that link to Allah in the Family, which was some unrelated Architecture newsletter.
Try this:  The Qu'osby's (a spoof on the Cosby Show done on the Daily Show)  by TempUsercca21e7656f6f304e78698aaef7810a
Sent by a techno-dork who doesn't know link from shinola

[Jill]

Hey Partner*,
Are you still around?  You must have been posting while I was getting lost, again, in Life.  
Anyway, I just checked your link, the one in the first of your 2 posts, and you did it all right.  All people have to do is click on the link you gave and then click on the part that says "The Daily Show," and that will activate the clip.  Thanks for posting it. I don't know if it's going to be funny to people, especially, the young'uns, who may not be familiar with Bill Cosby's sitcom which this is spoofing.  

But I thought it was pretty good, myself, actually, really funny, and incredibly apropos.  Anyway, great minds think alike, I guess.  First, the coincidence of yesterday's exchange and now,  both of us being here at the same time.  Hey, if you haven't checked out the Website thread, here in the Lounge section, do.  I just added some more links to it and a picture of Our Man Pete that you'll like.  Fella says hi.  Byeeeee


* KF Brooke is my old teaching partner-in-crime. We once taught 9th grade English together.  To Kill a Mockingbird, poetry, all kinds of civil and global rights stuff and whatever just seemed important and rich for our kids to know.  We had a terrifically sweet time.  

And oh, I almost forgot to tell you.  Right after I finished posting that neverending post in this thread, yesterday, I went to check my e-mail.  And in one of those synchronicity moments that could almost make a believer out of me, I found an e-mail from her waiting for me with that very same page that Brooke just gave you the link to.  My sweet buddy.  Anyway, I wrote her back and told her that she should check out the post I had just written and asked her to think about maybe coming here to post the thing that she had sent me.  And so she just did.

She lives about a half hour from me and was one of the very very first people I met when I moved to Washington state, over 20 years ago.  She's much much nicer and a lot easier to get along with than I am.  If you go over to the Teachers Rock! team page and look at the members, you'll see her with her friend, the otter. Both are pretty cute.