i never said i was

nice

a series of bad political cartoons that rebut the notion of white allyship and reject white tears as a form of currency for justice

accompanied by short essays

You’re

authors’ note: before anything else, i would like to recognize my dear friend hillary for inciting the title of this zine in addition to long-time suppressed violence and intellectual thought in me. when asked by a white person why she would publicly condemn or chide about the exhibitionism of guilt-ridden white people on Facebook instead of ‘appreciating that they’re trying to learn’, hillary responded “sorry if i may sound blunt, but i never said i was nice.” thank you, hill. you are a light in this paltry, unlit hallway.

before that, for a long time i had been furnishing my own mental museum with dozens of cartoon ideas, but surrendering to the fact that as a ‘non-artistic’ person they could never be physically manifested. anywho, one day i said to myself i said ‘parisa, fuck it; as someone who’s never been particularly talented at anything, why limit yourself this time?’

i hope this doesn’t brighten ur day

</3 parisa rajabian esfahani

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*in the tradition of zines and zine-ing you are encouraged to print and share as much as you’d care to

#passiton #nocopyright

the #notreadyforhillary cartoon was inspired by lila abu-lughod’s essay “do muslim women really need saving?” which retaliates against the first world feminist discourse that argues that women in the middle east are acutely oppressed by the Islamic societies they live in. the discourse provides that middle eastern men and Islam are the biggest threats to these women’s lives, forgoing the actions of the west, such as colonialism and war which are agents of societal, political, economic, and psychological turmoil. “to save the women from their men” was the cry from western feminists which which functioned to gain popular approval of and justification for the u.s. intervention in afghanistan. the assumption that women who wear hijab need to be saved by white men with guns bears an uncanny resemblance to the logic of colonialism in the 20th century. the veil as a symbol of oppression, propagated by first world feminists, beget the image of the defenseless brown woman ‘forced to veil herself’, absent of agency, needing to be saved by the west. this logic has caused irrevocable violence on women in the third world and perpetuated white (women) supremacy. the veil is a symbol of piety! the veil is not a marker of oppression!

the ish with hillary clinton: she is a first world white feminist. she supports israel and its attacks on gaza and talks about womens’ rights/needs as if they are inalienable from her own and not intrinsically rooted in racism, colonialism, and classism. ultimately and palpably, hillary clinton is not a friend to middle eastern/muslim women. they don’t need to be saved from islam; they need to stop having their image and faith be exploited amerikkka.

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“you set fire to our house and get crossed when we try to put it outbut you’re always complaining about the smell

of the burning wood and the ashcatching in your eyes and mouth

and how do they expect us to put this fire outwhen they keep cutting off our water supply,so many people dying and you wonder why we call ourselves survivors”

political/social liberalism: functions within a neoliberal framework that compresses race, class, settler statuses into a utopian, post-race, multiculturalist society in which Black people don’t get killed by the police for being Black, “she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time” and “racism is over duh we have a Black president.” the ‘i don’t see race’ excuse doesn’t fly and you know it doesn’t, fool, every 28 hours a Black person is murdered by the police. the avoidance of this fact, or, rather choosing to not acknowledge the severity of this structural genocide is a privilege afforded by whiteness and/or affluence. actualizing this point further, disregarding racism as the basis of police brutality, specifically anti-Black racism, doesn’t only edify white supremacy, it permits the continuation of this violence. violence is when you condemn the people who are trying to put out the fire in their house.

as of june 7 2015, there have been 494 slain by a police officer/pig. freddie gray was unarmed when killed by the police, as was tamir rice, mike brown, tanisha anderson, and countless other Black victims. remember to #SayHerName; account for womyn* victims who are missing or marginalized in the conversations surrounding racicalized state violence.

white silence = white compliance white silence = white compliance white silence = white compliance white silence = white compliance white silence = white compliance white silence = white compliance white silence = white compliance (in police terrorism)

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this asymmetrical illustration is based off andrea smith’s essay “heteropatriarchy and the three pillars of white supremacy”. the text demonstrates the inextricable connections between the forms of oppression experienced by different communities of color, specifically in women of color coalition building. smith lays out what she calls the “three pillars of white supremacy” as the differing but inalienable precedents and agents of racial oppression in the united states. as illustrated in the graphic below, those pillars are war and orientalism, slavery and capitalism, and genocide and colonialism and are what smith points to as the cornerstones of past and present american white supremacy. smith addresses these systems as pillars intentionally—the fall of one will pollute the structure but the violent and beautiful annihilation of white supremacy is dependent upon the eradication of all three systems. smith challenges communities of color to look inward and upon their own behaviors and contributions that sustain the structure of white supremacy.

war and orientalism: orientalism, coined by Edward Said, is the discourse constructed by the west of the east as ‘inferior’. beginning with the exoticization of customs, dress, and culture of non-western countries, orientalism was and is a means of belittling and exaggerating the differences between western and non-western nations. it was through this construction of the east that orientalism became the logic of intervention to ‘reverse the backwards ways’ of these countries by the west. it is the logic of colonialism. the orientalist logic that defines nations as ‘uncivilized’, smith writes, extends to anywhere that presents a threat to american security or power, e.g.: latin america, central and southeast asia, and the middle east. continuously propagating images and ideas of these countries as primitive and, therefore, a threat to modernity functions to justify u.s. intervention and war. the u.s must always be at war, smith writes. asians, latino/as, and arabs may be subjected to less racial oppression than that of african-americans, however they will always be viewed and interacted with as threats to ‘homeland security’, exploited as their homelands are invaded and defiled.

slavery and capitalism: in the logic of white supremacy, smith writes, “Blackness becomes equated with slaveability.”(smith) the origin of commodification of capitalism can be attributed to the first system of slavery in the u.s., when Blacks were given no choice but to be objects of profit for their masters in exchange for life. to be Black was/is to be objectified by capitalism. Black americans have uninterruptedly been subjected to this commodification. the commodification of the self is a mode of a survival in this anti-black racist society. “The forms of slavery may change whether it is through the formal system of slavery, sharecropping, or through the current prison-industrial complex-but the logic itself has remained consistent.” (smith) Blackness continued to be a crime, deserving of imprisonment, as Blacks, once prisoners of slave masters’, rematerialized as property of prisons/the state post-civil war. today, the logic goes further to inform non-black POC populations that as long as they are not Black they have the opportunity to escape the commodification of capitalism. prior to the the 13th amendment, prisons were meant for criminal whites. following the civil war, prisons became the new plantation.

genocide and colonialism: genocide is what enabled the existence of the united states. the genocide of Indigenous peoples of this nation is justified by the settlements and livelihood of today’s non-Native population. (cont’d —>)

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for this logic to succeed, Native peoples are in a constant state of disappearance in which they have been constructed by the American memory as ghosts or only premodern and not as living and breathing and resisting colonialism today. this logic of disappearance provides that everything left of Native America belongs to settlers, this includes but is not exclusive to land, dress, and religious/spiritual practices. smith calls the appropriation of Indigenous culture and dress by americans as the “Indian ‘wannabe’ phenomenon”. the restless colonization of everything Native today by settlers further displaces Indigenous people in the American memory, thus, perpetuating the psychological erasure of living Indians. the american indian genocide continues.

so now that we know what the pillars are, we must look at how they are stabilized. smith explains “What keeps us trapped within our particular pillars of white supremacy is that we are seduced with the prospect of being able to participate in the other pillars.” for the edification of building POC alliances, she asks that in our confrontations against the systems that victimizes us we don’t haphazardly contribute to the victimization of another racial group. for example, smith reflects on how some people of color join the military to better their economic status but by doing so participate in u.s. imperialism/wars. the u.s. empire is the enemy; it’s in our best interest to not help maintain its supremacy. another manifestation of pillar-pillar antagonism smith draws upon is the cooptation of strategies of Black liberation movements by non-Black communities of color. the issue here is these groups are not simultaneously working in solidarity with Black communities, but treating Black liberation tactics of resistance as free game for their own movement. multiculturalism, or the demand to move past the black/white binary by other communities of color “obfuscates the racializing logic of slavery, and prevents us from seeing that this binary constitutes Blackness as the bottom of a color hierarchy.” (smith)

the fun doesn’t stop there though. smith directs the discussion towards the other block of white supremacy in the u.s., that of heteropatriarchy. heteropatriarchy is a system of policing gender, sexuality, and family, and was a tool of the colonization of Native America. to better justify the settlement, the colonizers inseminated Native America with their white european family and gender structures, decrying the Native Americans for their alternative structures as “uncivil” and “vulgar”. heteropatriarchy prevails today to maintain the steady beat of capitalism; capitalism might essentially cease to exist without it. smith rationalizes that if heteropatriarchy is indeed the initial foundation of white supremacy in the u.s., then any disturbance of heteropatriarchy is a threat to white supremacy. any affliction towards the hegemonic american family structure, whether that be recognition of trans* lives or the normalization of gay marriage, sends the alert of ‘crime’, ‘danger’ or chaos if heteronormativity isn’t restored. to push this analysis just a few steps further, gay marriage is not radical is not important; it has been normalized by the state, and ultimately furthers the colonial project. “Just as the patriarchs rule the family, the elites of the nation-state rule their citizens. Any liberation struggle that does not challenge heteronormativity cannot substantially challenge colonialism or white supremacy.” (smith)

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PINK-WASHING: OR THE GAY IMPERIALIST PROJECT

“what’s wrong with israel? what’s wrong with the naturalization of gayness? israel is the only refuge for gays in the middle east…what are you…an anti-semitic homophobe?” when explaining the concept of ‘pink-washing’ illustrated above in the graphic to a first-time audience, i like to begin by reflecting on these routine questions. israel is a settler colony, tantamount to the united states, its existence is predicated on the genocide of a Native people (Palestinians) and claiming ownership over all land, resources, and bodies; the success of the settler colony is its permanence (think: u.s., australia, canada). israel, settled and occupied palestine first in 1948 and then again in 1967 as a ‘homeland for jewish ppl’, rebranded itself in the early 2000’s as a refuge for queers. today israel uses its gay rights platform as further justification for its abject terrorism and genocide against palestinians.

note that queer identity/performativity in israel is a colonial modernity, rooted in white supremacist and anti-arab racist logic. to be ‘out and proud’ in israel is a personification of nationalism, or what jaspir puar calls homonationalism, a system characterized by the normalization of the gay man/woman in society who is not in fact a threat to society but another functioning agent of the empire. homonationalism further facilitates the justification of israel’s existence, thus further nullifying that of palestine.

pink-washing: israel’s deployment of gay rights or gay inclusion to distract the global eye from the severity of its atrocious human rights violations.

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to understand united states foreign policy, look to its imperial history.

where have we intervened in the past? what justification do we employ to intervene today?

is it a human rights mission or is to protect our interests/empire?

does the west have any palpable right to militaristically intervene in a region that it has already inflicted irreversible economic/political/social damage upon? does the u.s. have any right to project judgements upon a nation in its post-colonial state when this nation was built in and on and by the blood of the Indigenous and Black lives it criminalizes today?

critical thinking exercise!

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this illustration deserves no explanation 1. because it’s shitty & so accurately demonstrates my artistic ability and 2. it explains itself. yeah?

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