
Duccio's rendition of the temptation of Jesus. Not sure why the Devil's portrayed with black skin but, whatever. You gotta pick your battles.
It’s Lent again and, if you’re Christian, you’re probably giving up something you like. Or perhaps you thought about giving something up, but decided against it: Either way, thoughts of sacrifice must have crossed your mind. And, while I can’t speak for myself—I am not a Christian—I certainly know many Christians who are giving up everything from chocolote to alcohol to sex.
Once upon a time, Christians were only asked to make sacrifices in the real world but this year, at least one Italian cleric has asked Catholics to make sacrifices in the virtual world as well. According to the BBC , the Archbishop of Modena wants young people to give up texting and social networking sites (like Facebook) in order to ”cleanse themselves from the virtual world and get back into touch with themselves.” Other Italian Archbishops have asked people to give up mineral water or to recycle more (I’m not quite sure how recycling is a fitting “sacrifice” for Lent, except that maybe not recycling is a luxury that would be hard to surrender).
All this got me thinking: People are giving up all this stuff for Lent but what would Jesus give up?
The question (like the title of this post) is purely rhetorical because we have a good idea of what Jesus would give up (if we take the Gospels at their word, anyway). In Christian tradition, Lent commemorates the 40 days and nights Jesus spent in the desert. According to three of the Gospels (Matthew, Luke, and Mark), Jesus was driven into the desert by the Holy Spirit after John the Baptist . . . um . . . baptised him. He ate nothing while in the desert and, at the end of 40 days, was quite hungry. As if all this wasn’t bad enough, he was visited by Satan (or the slanderer, depending on the translation) who tempted him with food, wealth, and power. Here’s how Mark, the least verbose on the subject of Christ’s temptation, put it:
At once the Spirit sent him out into the desert, and he was in the desert forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.”
The other two Evangelists go into greater detail, listing the actual temptations. First, Jesus was tempted with food:
The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Next, he was tempted with wealth:
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”
Finally, the Devil tempted Jesus with power:
Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down. For it is written: ”‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
Jesus answered him, “It is also written: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
In the end, Jesus triumphed over the Devil and resisted his temptations, which leads to another, bigger question: If Jesus Christ, the spiritual founder of the the Christian religion, endured 40 days of hunger in the desert, at the end of which he rejected both basic needs (food) and luxuries (wealth and power), how is it that modern Christians have to give up so little for Lent? I mean, don’t get me wrong, texting is an essential part of many modern Christians’ lives, but is giving that up really in keeping with the spirit of sacrifice? Could the Vatican not demand a greater sacrifice from the congregations it instructs to emulate Christ? Frankly, it’s a little demeaning to the memory of Christ’s ordeal in the desert that today, people who claim to be memorializing his suffering, have the option of giving up something as trivial as chocolate.
Ultimately, what we choose to “sacrifice” says as much about the modern world we inhabit as it does about the gap between how we live and how the majority of the rest of the planet lives. Most people on this planet have never owned a cell phone, let alone a computer. Every day, millions of people wake up hungry and go to bed thirsty. Millions have no access to clean, pipe-borne water. And uncounted numbers of women and girls have no say in when, where, how, or with whom they have sex. For them, giving up sex is impossible. Likewise, for most of the rest of the people on this planet, giving up texting or chocolate or mineral water is not even an option. These are luxuries they have no choice but to do without—day after day after day.
There is, however, a glimmer of hope. At least one of those Italian Archbishops asked that people recycle more. Recycling is certainly a good start. Maybe next year he’ll ask his worshippers to oppose war or not beat their wives. Hopefully more and more religious leaders will ask people to not only give up things they enjoy but also to take up things they may not enjoy but which are beneficial to the rest of the human family. Maybe one day, a courageous Archbishop somewhere will order his congregants to never take a human life. After all, war and wifebeating (like most of our world’s ills) are intimately linked to wealth and power. Most importantly, lest we forget, these two temptations make up exactly two thirds of the temptations Jesus resisted in the desert.
Today, what are we to make of this story, which teaches us that 2000 years ago, a lone man starving himself in the desert knew that, in order to prepare for his mission, he needed to make some sacrifices? After all, his mission was no small feat: He had taken on no less a challenge than the salvation of the world! Of the three temptations, Jesus rejected one for only 40 days, but the other two he rejected for ever. He gave up food for just 40 days and nights, but he resumed eating once he returned from the desert. The bigger temptations, wealth and power, he gave up for ever—if the Gospels are to be taken literally, he did not pursue them for the rest of his life.
So when Lent rolls around next year, what will you give up?
When is a Racial Slur not Offensive? Never.
February 3, 2009 by Abdul Kargbo
Not long ago, Prince Harry, son of the late Princess Diana and third in line for the British throne, unleashed a storm of controversy after a three-year-old home video was released in which the prince used the terms paki and raghead. The video was shot while Prince Harry was still a cadet at Sandhurst, the Royal Military Academy.
In the first scene the prince pans his camera over fellow soldiers waiting in an airport departure lounge, pausing on fellow cadet Ahmed Raza Khan and referring to him as “our little paki friend.” In another scene, he tells another soldier that he “look[ed] like a raghead.” Prince Harry rightfully caught flak and did the right thing by promptly apologizing, but he’s had more than his fair share of apologists who want us to believe that calling someone a paki or raghead is not really that offensive. But they’re wrong: directing a racial slur at someone is always offensive.
Rod Richards, a former Royal Marine and Foreign Office minister in the Conservative government of John Major had this to say in defense of Prince Harry’s use of the slurs:
And this was the response of Michael Evans, Defense Editor of the Times Online:
Richards and Evans, and the many others who defended the prince, are missing the point. Paki and raghead are not mere pet names that can be tossed around willy-nilly. They are racial slurs and that makes them offensive. For starters, paki and raghead are used solely in reference to South Asians and Arabs/Muslims respectively, and never as terms of endearment or respect. Furthermore, calling people names based on their skin color, ethnicity, language, or region of origin is plain wrong. Even kindergarteners know that. After all, nobody chooses their skin color or where they were born, and nobody should be called names because of things over which they have no control.
But the bigger issue here is that unlike nicknames, which may stem from an individual’s height, weight, or hair color, racial slurs are used against entire populations. And, unlike nicknames, racial slurs are created and used in specific historical and political contexts. In other words, they are created in a context of inequality in which one group (let’s call them the namecallers) creates and uses a slur while simultaneously doing violence to, marginalizing, exploiting, or otherwise denigrating another group (let’s call them the namecallees). For this reason, it is impossible to separate a racial slur from the context in which it was created.
Take, for example, two common American slurs—nigger and gook. These words were created, and came into popular use, at a time when the namecallers were doing some kind of violence to the namecallees. Nigger came into use at a time when Africans were being captured and sold into plantation slavery in the New World, and continues to be used as a derogatory term to this day. Gook came into being as long ago as 1899 and has been used sequentially against Filipinos, Japanese people, Koreans, and Vietnamese people. Is it any coincidence that these uses followed the sequence of America’s wars in Asia?
Similarly, paki came about at a time when newly arriving South Asians were experiencing hostility, to say nothing of violence, at the hands of native-born Brits. Is it any wonder, then, that attacks against South Asian immigrants came to be known as paki bashing? Michael Evans, the Times editor, lent (perhaps inadvertently) support to this point when he reminded his readers that “the term ‘raghead’ is used not infrequently in the Army when soldiers are referring to the ‘opposition’ in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Put another way, this means that British and American soldiers are doing violence to Arabs and Muslims, all the while referring to them as ragheads.
Wars might end and time—to say nothing of equal rights legislation—might pass, but racial slurs do not cease to be offensive, nor do they lose their power to denigrate. Because they are conceived and used in violence, they can never go back to being mere words. To call someone a nigger, a paki, a gook, or a raghead is not just to remind them of the violence done to people who shared their skin color, religion, or birthplace. It is also to point out that they are different, that they do not belong, and that they will always be outsiders in the dominant culture. After all, can nigger be separated from the brutality of the Middle Passage, plantation slavery, and Jim-Crow segregation? Can anyone honestly claim to have successfully divorced paki from paki bashing? When will gook lose its connotation of napalm and free-fire zones? And, long after the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan come to an end, what meaning will raghead retain? Will it really be possible to draw a neat, sharp line between the word and the violence done by British and American soldiers to the people they called “ragheads“?
To be clear, this is not to argue that anyone who uses a racial slur is a racist. The question, ultimately, is not whether it is possible for someone to use these words and simultaneously not be a racist, but whether it is decent to do so in the first place! After all, racial slurs on their own do not constitute racism but their use is an essential component of it. Using racial slurs is an exercise of power by the namecaller, used to establish his dominance over the namecallee and everyone else who shares his skin color, religion, language, or birthplace. In addition to being reminders of past violence, racial slurs let the namecallee know that he does not belong, that he is inferior to the namecaller. The intended use of a racial slur is immaterial: the context in which it was created—in other words, how it acquired meaning and thus the power to offend and demean—is what really matters.
So while Prince Harry may not be a racist (although showing up to a party wearing a swastika armband does little to rule out the possibility), his casual use of racial slurs proves that a top-notch education does not necessarily endow its recipient with common sensitivity, let alone common sense. As for Ahmed Khan, Prince Harry’s “little paki friend” (now a captain in the Pakistani army), there is no way to know how he feels about having been called a little paki: the army has barred him from discussing the matter.
At the end of the day, Prince Harry’s affinity for swastikas and racially insensitive language says a lot about his level of cultural sensitivity, but at least he has enough sense to apologize when he has caused offense. That’s much more than can be said of the people who rallied to his defense and tried to argue that paki and raghead aren’t so offensive after all.
Posted in Politics, Race Relations, Racism, Uncategorized | Tagged Current Events, Prince Harry Paki Raghead, Race, Racial Slur, Racism, Social & Political Commentary, Thoughts | 6 Comments »