I've just watched Tiazza's vlog on racism, xenophobia and bellydance.
I think the discussion she is starting is a very important one. More and more I'm seeing awful hatred towards those considered "other" to ourselves across the world. Be it in the U.S. election, Syrian immigrants, or South Africa's latest #ScienceMustFall debacle - it all sucks. There is so much hatred coming from all sides that I want to hide in a cave.
When it comes to belly dance, I don't feel there is space for xenophobia or racism. Obviously, we aren't all going to love or like each other, but race and culture should not determine our feelings for others.
A few years back, there was a South African belly dancer who had some very negative things to say about one of our beautiful black belly dancers. She claimed that black people shouldn't belly dance because it's not part of their culture. Please note: this was a white woman, who is not in any way, shape or form, from the middle east. After several of these incidents, she was excommunicated from the South African belly dance community.
It's from this particular incident that I have started to form my thoughts on Tiazza's question.
White supremacy or entitlement intrenches in people that westerners have the right to take whatever they want. They can colonise, appropriate and use anything they wish, but other's cannot. They can use what they want from other cultures and force westernisation on the rest. To me, this is the reason why people can love belly dance but hate the middle east, why they can eat tacos but hate Mexicans, why they can eat meat but not want to see where the meat comes from.
This has been the relationship with all non-western countries throughout history. If we look at just the past interactions between the middle east and the west that I can think of off hand, we see:
the crusades, where western Europe wanted to control and own the "Holy Land"
Orientalism of the 19th and 20th centuries, where Europeans were taking all the archeological finds back to European museums.
Take, take, take.
Non-Westerners have always fought back, but they have been vilified, killed and destroyed for their efforts, strengthening the white supremacy ideology. Now, with better social and cultural awareness, plus social media, they have a bigger voice which cannot be shut down.
But I digress.
This ideology of take what you want and be disgusted by what you don't want, is unfortunately very entrenched in some people, and they don't know it. I don't know how to help them, other than continuing to educate and lead by example.
In the comments on the vlog, evilcrabsitchalways says, "I don't think most of it is racial or against the people, it is against religion and what some people see as a regressive ideology that may be incompatible with western values".
S/he has a very good point. The west seems to be crippled by the fear of other religions. What I find amusing is you find some of the worst offenders to be more regressive in their Christian ideology that the majority of the people in other religions.
Here, the saying, "a few bad apples spoil the barrel" rings true. Extremists give the rest a bad reputation. However, you have extremists in every religion. You cannot judge a religion by just looking at it's extremist.
Once again, it's take what you want and despise or ignore the rest.
On another note, there are some things that Tiazza said in her video that I love.
There's something beautiful about borrowing from different cultures and borrowing from different styles around the world to create any form arts. Whether it's dance, whether it's painting, whether it's acting, whatever it is. ...Any art doesn't grow and doesn't survive in history unless it gets itself, you know, moving forward and one of the ways we more forward is by borrowing from different cultures"
I feel the same way. However, it is important to know where what you are borrowing is from and to respect the culture from which it comes.