Hair Craft and Ethiopian Coffee

A few friends and I recently stumbled into an Ethiopian hair salon in the Karm el-Zeytoun neighborhoods where we curiously explored this intimate setting. Hair is very much a craft for the ladies and getting it done is a full day’s affair accentuated with plenty of coffee, arguileh and gossip. They graciously welcomed our group in and allowed us to observe their Saturday afternoon ritual more closely with our cameras.

Link

Contre la discrimination sur les plages libanaises, le ministère du Tourisme passe à l’action

Thanks to L'Orient and its article, we finally have a copy of the famous circular.

Check it out.

URGENT: Call for Donations for Prisons

Please share and spread widely.
In early 2012, we at the Anti-Racism Movement decided to make a team of volunteers dedicated to improving the living conditions of the prisoners in Ebbe prison. In this women's prison, which is located in Tripoli, there are over 130 women, most of whom are migrant workers. Since they are migrant workers, most of them do not have anyone outside the prison to follow up on their case, visit them, or bring them supplies. Most of them have very unresponsive embassies, and many have no embassies at all, and therefore no access to any sort of assistance or representation.

Therefore, we created a team of volunteers to collect the items needed by the women and deliver them to the prison on a regular basis. At first, only small personal donations were collected from the volunteers themselves, and taken to the women. But seeing as this is long-term effort to respond to long-term needs, we have decided to cast a wider net and begin collecting items (or funds for us to purchase these items) from anyone who is willing to support this cause!

Below is a list of items needed by the women. There is also a separate list of items needed by Rondaline, a prisoner who gave birth to a baby in the prison. The baby girl is now 9 months old, and is being raised in the prison. Although she is provided with basic nutritional and hygienic supplies, there are other items she needs. Below these lists, you will find all the information you need in order to donate.

Items needed by the women on a regular basis: Shampoo/ Sanitary products
Towels
T-shirts and Underwear
Rice/ Pasta
Unrefrigerated cheese (picon, smeds)
Coffee/ Tea
Candy for children (and other things that can be taken with them once they leave prison and go straight to their home countries - going home empty-handed is sometimes extremely difficult and painful for many of the women)
Small “carry-on” bags, which they can fill with their possessions and papers once they travel back to their home countries (the women usually leave the prisons with their belongings in garbage bags, as they do not have any luggage bags with them)
Magazines, games...
Anything a woman in prison might need

Items needed by the nine-month-old baby: Stroller/ Diapers
Vitamin D tablets for babies (sun replacement)
Fluoride drops
Milk for an nine-month-old
Wet wipes
Any other essential baby hygiene product

How to donate:
If you would like to donate any of the above items, there are several ways to do it - choose the one that is best for you!

- call Farah on 70 066880
- email antiracismlb@gmail.com
- pass by Nasawiya space in Mar Mikhayel to drop off your donations anytime between 11 am and 9 pm, weekdays. Call for weekends on 01 565442.
- pass by the Migrant Community Center in Nabaa to drop your donations anytime between 11 am and 9 pm on weekends. Call Priya beforehand on 76740871

We collect the donations and deliver them to the prison every 2 weeks.

Please circulate this widely! We need all the help we can get.

** This is not a one-time call for donations, but a continuous and on-going effort!**

There are so many women staying in this prison for a long time, and they will be needing these items on a regular basis!

Thank you,

The Anti-Racism Movement

For more information about the Anti-Racism Movement:
Blog: http://antiracismmovement.blogspot.com/
Facebook page: Anti-Racism Movement
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email us at: antiracismlb@gmail.com

IMPORTANT: A Message to Everyone Who Watched, Heard of, Loved, or Hated the Controversial Video Released by the ARM

A message to everyone who watched, heard of, loved, or hated the controversial video released by the Anti-Racism Movement last week:

On March 15th, we released a youtube video depicting a widespread discriminatory practice at Lebanese private beaches. The video was meant to address the common policy of not allowing migrant domestic workers in swimming pools, and to generally highlight the absurdity of treating people differently based on their skin colour (or any other irrelevant characteristic). Unfortunately, the video itself was subjected to more attention and scrutiny than its message. Though we are glad it created a heated debate, we deeply regret that it offended many people, some of whom are victims of the sort of discrimination we are fighting against. This was the opposite of what we intended to do, and in order not to offend any more people, we promptly removed the video from public access.For those who have not seen it, the video goes like this: a young, attractive, Lebanese female is tanning at the pool while a lifeguard is eyeing her and smiling. Time passes, and the Lebanese girl emerges with much darker skin. The lifeguard spots the girl trying to get into the pool, and assuming she is a migrant worker, starts blowing his whistle at her. Text appears on the screen that says, in Arabic, ‘it is forbidden’. We then see that the lifeguard has forced the woman to wear a “maid’s” uniform. Text reappears saying ‘to remain racist,’ a continuation of the previous text.

Responses to the video varied greatly. They ranged from praise to indifference to offense, to accusations that the Anti-Racism Movement was ‘using racism to fight racism’, and silencing migrant domestic workers by using a white person to represent them.

A recurring comment was that we used “Blackface” by painting the Lebanese girl to make her look dark. We would like to clarify that, having grown up in a Lebanese context, those of us who worked on the video had never heard of this concept. (“Blackface” is the infamous 19th and early 20th century American practice of white people painting themselves black in order to ridicule and exoticize black people for their audience’s entertainment.) The association with that history in our video was deeply offensive to many people, and we would like to apologize for this and to clarify that the “paint” on the girl was meant to depict her as a very tanned person, not as a black person. Nonetheless, we have learned that putting dark paint on a white person’s skin is very offensive, but unfortunately we were not aware of this negative mental association. We should have been more culturally aware and sensitive, and even though the video was targeting a Lebanese audience, we realize that we do not operate in a bubble, and that our work can quickly spread across the globe.

We were also accused of robbing migrant domestic workers of a voice, by using a Lebanese actress to portray them. It cannot be stressed enough: there was no migrant worker in the story line, and if there had been, there is absolutely no reason why we would not have had a migrant act the part. Those who know the Anti-Racism Movement know that we work very closely with migrant communities and, more importantly, that we are strong believers in migrants representing themselves. It is the character of the lifeguard who mistook the dark girl for a migrant domestic worker. The Lebanese person was a Lebanese person throughout, and this is a marked difference from Blackface and the way that is traditionally understood.

Nor did we mean to say that “black people” are “very tanned people”, and we know that this is very offensive as well. The lifeguard’s sexism and racism was unfortunately attributed to the video itself, and its makers, despite the fact that it was made by people actively fighting these forms of discrimination. Nor did we mean to commit any racial profiling by suggesting that all migrant workers subjected to racism can be represented by one dark woman.

We regret having offended anyone, and admit that there were many other ways we could have gone about dealing with the barring of maids from pools. We are all victims of faulty thinking, and all we can do is grow and learn from our mistakes. We try hard to mitigate the mistakes by including migrant community leaders and migrant workers in our decision-making process.

Thank you all for your comments, critiques, and understanding.

***

For more info, please write to antiracismlb@gmail.com

Black is Not Thought Beautiful

The multilingual, fashion-conscious residents of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, fancy their city to be cosmopolitan. But not everyone is welcome. Black people and foreigners from Asia and elsewhere in the third world who make up the bulk of migrant workers are often turned away from the city’s smarter venues. Conscious of the bad blood this can cause, Lebanon’s government has warned beach clubs against barring entry on the basis of race, nationality or disability.

But racism is unlikely to be erased overnight, either in Lebanon or in many other Middle Eastern countries where blacks are routinely looked down on. Racist taunts are often heard on Egypt’s streets, and in Yemen, darker-skinned people, known as al-akhdam (“the servants”), who make up perhaps 5% of the population, are confined to menial jobs and tend to dwell in slums. In Libya rebel militias often targeted darker-skinned people from nearby countries such as Chad and Mali and from countries further south, accusing them of being mercenaries of Muammar Qaddafi.

Filipinos, Sri Lankans and Chinese-Americans, among others, whisper of racist slurs both at work and on Lebanon’s streets. “When black or Asian friends visit,” says a young Lebanese professional, “I’m at the airport the moment they land to make sure immigration officers don’t ask inappropriate questions. It’s a disgrace.”

Some people blame the legacy of the slave trade, which brought sub-Saharan Africans, as well as others, to the region from the 7th century onwards. But Nadim Houry of Human Rights Watch, a New York-based lobby group says that racism persists in the region because governments have been lax about tackling it. “There are racists everywhere in the world, but in many countries it is now taboo to make comments, partly because there are laws against it,” he says. “Here, even when there is legislation, it is never applied.”

Snobbery makes things worse. Millions of foreigners in the Middle East do cleaning and building jobs which locals consider beneath them. Sponsorship schemes often deny such workers basic rights. “People just see us as cheap labour,” says a Filipino university graduate who makes $200 a month in a Beirut beauty parlour. Some beach clubs have already said they will ignore the new regulation. Their customers, they say, would not tolerate having to rub shoulders with the dark-skinned servant class.

MTV’s Xenophobic Crusades

Having already trained its disapproving crosshairs on minority groups such as Palestinians and migrant domestic workers, Lebanese channel MTV (Murr Television) has found another axe to grind away at this month.
As part of a growing list of social subsets to whose existence the channel apparently objects, MTV has served up a fearless “exposé” on homosexuals.

More.

Racism in Lebanon: Apartheid at the Beach

As many visitors to Lebanon can attest, some Lebanese have the rather charming habit of asking them, “Do you love Lebanon?” One assumes they actually mean to inquire if the visitor likes Lebanon and is enjoying their visit. No doubt most do, given this country’s kaleidoscope of attractive and hospitable features, that to name just a few include idyllic spring weather, wonderful topography, delicious food, a nearly unmatched collection of archeological remains from half a dozen civilizations, and not least, a friendly people who make visitors feel at home.

But with the arrival of the vernal equinox and the rebirth of flora and fauna, accompanied by rising water temperatures of the Mediterranean an uglier facet of this gifted country surfaces.

Racism.

Racism.

Racism.

On "White Privilege"

In order to address that oppression, we try to get people to talk frankly about race – never an easy task in a cultural paradigm that has been described as ‘colorblind racism,’ ‘race-evasive,’ and ‘racism without racists.’ Talking frankly about race doesn’t just mean pointing out hostile attitudes and narrow stereotypes based on race, though; it also means being honest about our own experiences as raced beings. It means talking about how we are embedded in racial systems, not disembodied and dispassionate viewers of them. It also means talking about how being against racism doesn’t mean that we don’t say and do racist things.

More.

IMPORTANT: A Message to Everyone Who Watched, Heard of, Loved, or Hated the Controversial Video Released by the ARM

A message to everyone who watched, heard of, loved, or hated the controversial video released by the Anti-Racism Movement last week:

On March 15th, we released a youtube video depicting a widespread discriminatory practice at Lebanese private beaches. The video was meant to address the common policy of not allowing migrant domestic workers in swimming pools, and to generally highlight the absurdity of treating people differently based on their skin colour (or any other irrelevant characteristic). Unfortunately, the video itself was subjected to more attention and scrutiny than its message. Though we are glad it created a heated debate, we deeply regret that it offended many people, some of whom are victims of the sort of discrimination we are fighting against. This was the opposite of what we intended to do, and in order not to offend any more people, we promptly removed the video from public access.For those who have not seen it, the video goes like this: a young, attractive, Lebanese female is tanning at the pool while a lifeguard is eyeing her and smiling. Time passes, and the Lebanese girl emerges with much darker skin. The lifeguard spots the girl trying to get into the pool, and assuming she is a migrant worker, starts blowing his whistle at her. Text appears on the screen that says, in Arabic, ‘it is forbidden’. We then see that the lifeguard has forced the woman to wear a “maid’s” uniform. Text reappears saying ‘to remain racist,’ a continuation of the previous text.

Responses to the video varied greatly. They ranged from praise to indifference to offense, to accusations that the Anti-Racism Movement was ‘using racism to fight racism’, and silencing migrant domestic workers by using a white person to represent them.

A recurring comment was that we used “Blackface” by painting the Lebanese girl to make her look dark. We would like to clarify that, having grown up in a Lebanese context, those of us who worked on the video had never heard of this concept. (“Blackface” is the infamous 19th and early 20th century American practice of white people painting themselves black in order to ridicule and exoticize black people for their audience’s entertainment.) The association with that history in our video was deeply offensive to many people, and we would like to apologize for this and to clarify that the “paint” on the girl was meant to depict her as a very tanned person, not as a black person. Nonetheless, we have learned that putting dark paint on a white person’s skin is very offensive, but unfortunately we were not aware of this negative mental association. We should have been more culturally aware and sensitive, and even though the video was targeting a Lebanese audience, we realize that we do not operate in a bubble, and that our work can quickly spread across the globe.

We were also accused of robbing migrant domestic workers of a voice, by using a Lebanese actress to portray them. It cannot be stressed enough: there was no migrant worker in the story line, and if there had been, there is absolutely no reason why we would not have had a migrant act the part. Those who know the Anti-Racism Movement know that we work very closely with migrant communities and, more importantly, that we are strong believers in migrants representing themselves. It is the character of the lifeguard who mistook the dark girl for a migrant domestic worker. The Lebanese person was a Lebanese person throughout, and this is a marked difference from Blackface and the way that is traditionally understood.

Nor did we mean to say that “black people” are “very tanned people”, and we know that this is very offensive as well. The lifeguard’s sexism and racism was unfortunately attributed to the video itself, and its makers, despite the fact that it was made by people actively fighting these forms of discrimination. Nor did we mean to commit any racial profiling by suggesting that all migrant workers subjected to racism can be represented by one dark woman.

We regret having offended anyone, and admit that there were many other ways we could have gone about dealing with the barring of maids from pools. We are all victims of faulty thinking, and all we can do is grow and learn from our mistakes. We try hard to mitigate the mistakes by including migrant community leaders and migrant workers in our decision-making process.

Thank you all for your comments, critiques, and understanding.

***

For more info, please write to antiracismlb@gmail.com

Wasn’t Working Fast Enough

“Madam told mister to stand on my little finger and crush it because I wasn’t working fast enough” - Harriet, a domestic maid who ran away from her employer because she was physically and emotionally abused. She was forced to work from 6am-3am seven days a week. When she asked for her salary, she was told ” you don’t deserve it”, after eight months of work.

Link