Blaming the Other through Orientalsim

           In the videos, Said asserts that Orientalism stems from the desire of powerful western countries to exploit and control other countries.  Demonizing cultural diversity is a sure way to justify such domination.  One of the videos touched on this tendency by mentioning that the media originally covered the Oklahoma City bombing as the potential work of Middle Eastern terrorists.  This bias suggests that Orientalism has also encouraged the West to use cultural differences as scapegoats for the source of homegrown issues. 

For instance, in 2011 France banned women from covering their faces in public.  The law was meant to prevent the population of Muslim women who wear burqas and other traditional coverings from doing so outside their homes.  While members of the French government were patting themselves on the back for promoting feminism through the “liberation” of an oppressed female minority, the move was clearly hypocritical.  The politicians who supported the law did not seem to consider that a woman of Middle Eastern descent could possibly be capable of making her own personal and informed decision about something as simple as what to wear.  They accused Muslim men of forcing women to dress a certain way, and then retaliated by also forcing women to dress a certain way.  Any feminist should recognize that the problem here isn’t the dress at all, but the force.  Whether the lawmakers were conscious of it or not, by blaming the “other” for gender inequality they sidestepped their own tendency toward the patriarchal worldview revealed in the irony of their political rhetoric. 

So, as Said suggests, Orientalism is used to create the illusion of a morally inferior "other" on which to blame certain issues.  Another example of this took place a few years ago in my hometown.  I grew up in a predominately white Christian suburb.  Tragically, one of the few Middle Eastern men in my town murdered his wife.  The national and local media, in my opinion, sensationalized the man’s background as a Pakistani-American Muslim and ventured to label the murder an honor killing.  While this may have been true, people around me clung to the criminal’s “foreign” identity as a way to distance themselves from the situation altogether.  Instead of addressing the issue of domestic violence, a problem rampant across all societies, in a constructive manner, the man’s actions were written off as a symptom of his religion and ethnic background.  He wanted a divorce, and as a Fox News article put it, “This is not permitted in their culture.”  Such a disturbing “us” vs. “them” mentality was obvious in everything from formal news coverage to snippets of small-town gossip in the supermarket.     

Edward Said’s explanation of Orientalism definitely helps me to better understand instances of bigotry I have encountered over the years.  As a member of a generation partially defined by 9/11 and the U.S. military presence in the Middle East, I am looking forward to more in-depth analysis of the problematic perceptions of “East” and “West” in this course.  Through this, I hope to become more critical of my own worldview and identify and address some of my own cultural misconceptions.