Michael Jackson, Tubabu Hair and Racial Transmogrification

Abel: Madu, the American singer Michael Jackson has died. Why is this?

Madu: Apparently he took a few too many drugs. Not drugs like heroin or cocaine, but medicine drugs. You see, even if medicine drugs can help a person fight illness, if you take too many pills at once or if you take certain drugs together at the same time it has such a powerful reaction that it can be deadly. Michael Jackson was taking many medicine drugs at the same time it seems.

Abel: Why was Michael Jackson eating so many medicines?

Madu: Michael Jackson was a little bit off his rocker. He had many operations of what is called "plastic surgery" - not because there was anything wrong with his body, but because he just wanted to change how he looked.

Abel: How does this "plastic surgery" work?

Madu: Well, in America there are doctors who can change your skin! If people do not like their nose, they can have the doctor cut their nose bone and put their nose back together and have a brand new nose! Or if their ears stick out too much and they think it is ugly, the doctor can pin their ears back closer to their head. Michael Jackson was born with black skin like African people, but he did not like his skin to be black, so over the years his doctors conducted many operations and changed his skin so that it was lighter and lighter - to the point that his skin was as light as white people!

Abel: This is very bad!!! Black people should not transform into white people!!!

Madu: I agree. I think that Michael Jackson looked just fine the way he was originally with black skin.

Abel: ... But I can understand why Michael Jackson wanted to transform into a Tubabu. All of us Africans know how you Tubabus have much better doctors, much better schools and you are all so much richer and have big houses and fancy cars. If we could, we would all become white-skinned like Michael Jackson!!!

Madu: I think you're missing the point. Michael Jackson was rich before he had plastic surgery on his skin. When his skin was still black, he was selling so many records and concert tickets that he had many millions of dollars. He was a very rich man, a very rich black man, and he had a big house, fancy cars, and the best doctors in the world. He didn't need to change his skin for any of those things!

Abel: No, Madu. Many of us Africans want to become white simply to become white! We think that the white skin is more beautiful than the black skin, and especially the women want their hair to be straight like Tubabu women's hair so they buy it at market. Has anyone asked you for your hair?

Madu: No. Why would anyone to wear my hair? I practically have a buzz cut!

Abel: No, no one would wear your hair. It is too small. They would use it to cook medicine.

Madu: What?!?!?!?!

Abel: Yes, we take Tubabu hair - especially the hair from the arms, the chest, the legs - and we pound it into fine powder and simmer it in a pan. And then we brew tea and add the simmered Tubabu hair and drink it as medicine.


Madu: You've got to be kidding me. What exactly do people think this Tubabu hair will do for them?

Abel: Clearly the Tubabu men have such ease with finding women because of their hair. The women find it to be very spicy!!! And so if you drink Tubabu hair in tea, it will help you catch the woman of your dreams.

Madu: That is debatable. I can't think of a single instance when my chest hair has been an asset in such matters.

Abel: Oh, but it is surely true! That is why Michael Jackson wanted to be a Tubabu with white skin and straight hair! So he could catch the woman of his dreams! So he could have much money and have the biggest house and the most expensive cars and the best women and schools and the best doctors in all the world!!!


Madu: But now Michael Jackson is dead. Even with all that Tubabu skin and hair, his expensive doctors could not keep him from dying. In fact, it was precisely those expensive doctors and medicine which killed him!

Abel: .... Oh.... That is a good point. Maybe he should have just changed his hair then.

More Fun With Racial Identity

Segou, Segou Province

Due to our long, sad history of racial oppression, segregation and discrimination, In America it is essentially verboten for a white person to at all acknowledge the race of a non-white classmate, business associate or anyone but your best of friends - unless they bring up the topic of race first, or you are walking out of the latest Spike Lee joint in which case it is expected.

And so in America, it is particularly rude to address someone by their race or ethnicity. To my understanding, to call the attention of a perfect stranger by shouting the name of their race is reminiscent of the days of slavery and Jim Crow when Southern gentlemen would tell the "boy" to shine their shoes. For example, if a white person walking along 132nd Street in the year 2008 were to purchase a hot dog from an African-American street vendor, the polite thing for the Caucasian customer to do would be to ask, "Excuse me, sir, may I please buy a hot dog?" and go about the transaction as if there were no racial difference at all between the two parties. It would be frowned upon for the white person to say "hey, black man, gimme a hot dog!" It would even be rude to call his attention with "Hey, hot dog vendor!" because to address someone by their profession would be to disrupt the natural foundation of equality upon which our casteless society was supposedly built.

That is why I think I have such a difficult time adjusting to the sheer literalness of the Bambara language and Malian culture. Here, it is quite customary for people in the market to say Tubabu, e be nka concon san - "Hey white French person, buy my cucumber!" Here in Mali it is no different than saying "Hey you with the blue shirt." Though every time I am addressed as Tubabu I cringe as a little bit of my liberal conceit of racial nonexistence is punctured by the inescapable fact that most people in Mali think of me as first and foremost a white person with oodles of money, and secondly that I am a Frenchman gallivanting around his former colony.

When I am at my village where people know my name and that I am an American who is there to work, it is not so bad. When in Sinsina or Sanadougou, if someone calls me Tubabu I politely tell them that my name is Madu and the next time they remember. But here in the bustling metropolis of Segou, only a handful of people know me, and so my racial identity precedes me by a full city block. In no other place have I ever before been made so conscious of my race. It is kind of like how I had never been made so aware by the society around me of the fact that I possess a Y-chromosome until The Elements of Style gigged at Mount Holyoke College.

I have become so accustomed to the crowds of children chanting Tubabu! Tubabu! that I have learned that in order to make it into a positive experience, I must seize the opportunity for cross-cultural education. When people call me Tubabu, I like to demonstrate the absurdity of the social construction of race by turning social conventions upside down. So when a kid runs up to me and points and proclaims "You are white!” I now announce with equal gusto trying to mimic their every intonation, "And you are black!" What follows is an awkward pause during which I want to believe that they realize the inferior quality of their conversational skills, and I hope that every time I do this it brings us a step closer to a post-racialist, post-nationalist global society.

When more business-oriented adults bring up my race, there is only one direction that that conversation could possibly be heading; Tubabu, wari di ya - "White French person, give me money!" So when people say that to me now - which is maybe every 5 or 10 minutes - I like to say Farafin, wari di ya - "Black person, give me money!" Often they think that I didn't understand so they ask me again, and I repeat, "Yes, I am white and you are black, so you should give me money!" The response I get is a puzzled look of astonishment as though I have traveled back in time, reversed the course of history to institute the Bambaras’ military occupation and exploitation of the French, and forever altered the space-time continuum. They often think that I am severely mentally ill and leave me alone.

It is particularly difficult in the market though when I am clearly purchasing food to put in my mouth and other people would prefer that I purchase food so that they can put it in their mouth instead, such as when I am buying a meat sandwich and a hoard of eight or ten garibu surround me and shove their plastic buckets in my face chanting Tubabu! Wari di ya! Tubabu! Wari di ya! as though it is the Qur’anic trope which they are supposed to be learning that week. For such sticky situations I need to come up with real humdingers in order to clear my path, so now I often employ a line like:

Sisan n be sogo san. N be fe ka denmisen fitini sogo dun. N be se ka wari di e ma, nka folo n ba fe ka e bolo ni e sen ta, oko n be na u dun.

“I am shopping for meat now. I want to eat little children meat. I can give you money, but first I must take your arms and legs, and then I will eat them!”

After that, the little beggar children usually put their hands in the air and run away screaming – which makes me think that I’m making full use of the novelty of my perceived racial identity.

My Two Years of Arabic Save My Jewish Face

At first when the Peace Corps told me that I was going to Sub-Saharan Africa, I was slightly bummed because I thought that my two years of sleepless night spent studying Arabic vocabulary would therefore come to nil. However, I was quite content when I later found out that I would be living and working in Mali, a culturally diverse mélange of West African, Islamic and French cultures across the Sahel plains and Sahara Desert. For the most part I have only really been using my French and Bambara tongues. My Arabic has only helped navigate Allah’s blessings which are wished upon me each day, the instructions on Saudi-built water pumps, and Muammar al-Qaddafi’s ubiquitous presence in the form of posters, hotels and LibyaOil stations now that he is no longer a pan-Arabist patron of terrorism but a pan-African nationalist sugar daddy of trickle-down economic development.

Last night my Arabic finally came to practical use. And it involved the worst of ethnic stereotypes related to people with my distinguishing features – even more sinister than those pertaining to my butterscotch-colored skin. It involved my nose.

So this week was time for my site visit in Diaramana (it will be explained in more detail in a future prior post). But public transportation in Mali is very limited and unreliable, so in order to travel from the Peace Corps training compound at Tubaniso to my pastoral paradise and vice versa I had to spend a few nights at L’Hôtel Joliba in Segou, the capitol of my local Segou Province. Segou is a fairly large city for Malian standards – about 100,000 people – but my presence was fairly limited to this strange parallel universe which is Le Quartier Touriste. This little neighborhood which consists of my hotel, another hotel, a half-dozen upscale bars and restaurants feels like many things, but it does not feel like the country of millet farmers that is Mali.

The vibe there is very Casablanca. Neither I nor any of the other Tubabs patronizing this oasis of Western comforts are really there to see Segou itself, but we are there en route to other places. This applies to the Peace Corps Volunteers trying to get to our sites, some of the few USAID consultants venturing outside of the Bamako metropole to improve the roads and build a new airport, dreadlocked Italian hippies who don’t speak a single indigenous language but thinking that they can revive the economy by teaching Malian kids to play soccer, and of course many French tourists who are there to see the hippos in the Niger on their way to the mosque at Djenné. While in limbo in anticipation for our rides to Somewhere Elsewhere, we wait. And wait. And wait.

And we shuffle from one café to another and drink a lot of black coffee. In this insular bubble from Malian reality the Tubab society is very brackish – you see the same white people over and over. After all, asides from the proprietors of the businesses which cater to Tubabs, there are very few Malians who can afford 4,000 CFA for a brick oven-baked pizza. For someone who is training to integrate into rural Bambara society, I felt like such a member of the neocolonial bourgeoisie that is was quite unsettling.

Of course, there is an entire population of people who feed off of the captive Tubab audience. There is an entire class of Rastafarian-looking fellows who are hawking beaded necklaces, wood carvings and other such souvenirs. It is kind of ironic, because there are multiple Peace Corps Volunteers in Segou whose entire job is to promote the nascent tourism sector which provides much-needed jobs to these artisans. But they can’t tell the difference between the French tourists who come there with wallets stuffed with money precisely to buy such tchotchkes and us Peace Corps Volunteers who are working to stimulate their economy, but don’t actually have any expendable income to do so ourselves. So when I tell them that I don’t have any money, they accuse me of being “a liar” and “a racist.” Every white person in Segou is here because they want to buy useless conversation pieces!

The reason my Arabic finally came to fruition was borne out of one tourist leech who is referred to by the Segou Peace Corps folks as Doujanber al-Damashek. Actually, I am the only one who calls him that – most simply refer to him as “Box Man.” Doujanber al-Damashek is a friendly Tuareg man, an overly friendly Tuareg man donned in traditional green jalabiyya and headscarf who stands outside of any of the handful of establishments where white people might be holding his inventory: a sword, and a box. Every time we walk out of the bar, Doujanber is waiting for us with a big, toothy grin and he unsheathes his sword! He doesn’t speak a word of French or Bambara, and he knows that we don’t speak Damashek, so he just communicates via the universal gesticulations of capitalism. “Oooo… shiny! You must certainly want to buy it!”

Other times we are slowly downing our cheap beers and Doujanber al-Damashek walks up to our café table and plops his box down in front of our faces. He tries to tell us the same two items over and over again, so we know his routine by heart. Some PCVs have fun with this; they put on an affected look of astonishment and exclaim “Oh my, a box! I bet I can put things in it! Wait… do you think it has drawers?” Doujanber al-Damashek opens and closes each of the box’s threes drawesr individually. “Wow, the box does have drawers! I’ve never seen anything like it!” I’m more polite, so I just pull out the linings of my pockets and shake my head in exaggerated sorrow.

Last night I walk over to the bar of L’Hôtel Joliba to pay for my pizza, and Doujanber al-Damashek is sitting there sipping a Fanta, taking a break after a long night of trying to sell his wares. His turban is untied, lying in a ball on top of the bar – clearly Doujanber is there to unwind after yet another day of no takers for his scimitar, or his box.

I actually take my wallet out – a rare occasion, and fiddle with the many large bills the Peace Corps gave me for three days food and lodging. Doujanber is obviously staring at my money. He is to my left, so his view of my side profile allows Doujanber to take in my expansive, Semitic nasal cavities.

Doujanber actually says something – in Arabic, assuming that this Tubab obviously won’t understand. "عندك فلوس! عنت يحود!" But thanks to Fulbright Scholars Naglaa Mahmoud, Heba Arafah, Bouchra Lif and all of the staff at the Five College World Language Program, I understood that utterance crystal clear: “You have money! You are… a Jew

It fazed me for a couple of seconds, for I had to process the slur which I had just heard and I haven’t heard or made a substantial sentence in Arabic in months . The recognition of being accused by an angry Muslim man with a sword at his hip for hindering his business with my ancestry caused a certain, instinctual flight-or-flight response in this Son of Israel. The collective memory of my people instructed me that to tell the truth would only lead to certain martyrdom to prove a completely unnecessary point, and so I preferred the survival technique used by birds which ruffle their feathers and raise their wings to demonstrate that they are simply too big to mess with... kind of like Levi Eshkol during the Six-Day War. In a similar fashion, I had to demonstrate that I was both intellectually and spiritually bigger than this simple Tuareg. The adrenaline from my pituitary gland shot straight to my adrenal gland, which in turn spurred my cerebrum into overdrive to summon the choicest of obscure political Arabic vocabulary words from the folds of my outer lobes. And then I turned towards Doujanber al-Damashek, gave him a look of most blithely disinterested hauteur and my tongue whipped out the greatest triumph of linguistic skills in the totality of the life of Zachary Asher Mason

"لا, ليسة أنا يحود. أنا مركسية لا اعتقد ان في الوطنية ,لأن فقط الفاشيون مثلك يؤمنون به الوطنية. لا احد يشتري الاطار الخاص بك إنشءاللة."
No, I am not a Jew. I am a Marxist. I do not belief in nationalism, because that is only for Fascists like you. Allah willing, no one will ever buy your box

Doujanber al-Damashek was so dumbfounded by this Tubab from New York speaking the language of the Prophet that he dropped his non-alcoholic Fanta all over the barroom floor

Ever since, Doujanber al-Damashek no longer asks me whether I want to buy his box, or his sword

The moral of this story is that everyone should learn to speak Arabic - especially Jews

Tubab Like Me

In the de facto class segregation of the United States of America, I have not had many opportunities to be overtly consciuos of my race. After all, though I put "white" on my census forms, never before have I ever felt really white. I mean, honestly, what the fuck is white culture? Playing golf, eating mayonnaise and wearing those stupid salmon-colored pants? I don't do any of that shit. I come from Russian, Polish, Hungarian Slavic stock, I identify with fellow ethnic Jews, musicians and earthy hippies. Ok, so my freshmen and sophomore years I accepted Hadley Arkes' invitations to the Colloquium on the American Founding - which is pretty much the whitest thing I've ever done. But I found that if being white consists of dressing up in a stuffy suit and listening to people who have had boring missionary sex exactly 2.3 unmemorable times wax philosophically about their bizarre fixation on weird, kinky sex and its compatability with Platonic-Aristotelian ethics, then I have very little to identify with white people.

Ergo, I do not think of myself as white. I think of myself as a Jewish democratic revolutionary.

But here in Mali, I am white, uptight and out of sight. Here people who do not know my name as Madu Doumbia #5 call me "Tubab" - which is a derogatory term like "honky" or "cracker", only it is even worse because it specifically refers to the French. You see, unlike us Americans who should be grateful to France for bestowing upon us le Marquis de Lafeyette, victory at the Battle of Yorktown, and the Statue of Liberty, Mali suffered under the cruel, exploitative colonial occupation of the French from 1880-1960. Granted, "Western Soudan" as it was then known, was subject to considerably less direct exploitation than more convenient colonies like Algeria for nothing more than the Bambara tribes were a long distance up the malaria-ridden Niger River. The French tried to play the role of "mission civilatrice" here with a system of Francificating and pacificating "Western" schools, and so many generations later Bambara still fear white people coming to their village because the last time that happened back in the day they took everyone's kids by gunpoint. During the First and Second World Wars there was also a lot of involuntary conscription of military-aged men.

So when I'm walking around the village of Sinsina and little kids start crying because they see my very obviously non-Bambara face, it's not because I did anything particularly wrong. They're crying because they heard stories about the Tubabs who came here 50 years ago and stole grandpa away. And thus I am the recipient of the blame for something that I did not do, something that my parents and my grandparents did not even do, but something that a race of people whom I do not even really identify with, a race which has only over the course of the past 30 years begun to accept the most Islamophobic and Arab-hating of my people as members of their exclusive country club, did before my parents were even biologically capable of conceiving me. But then again, as anyone who has ever been to Israel/Palestine, Iraq, or the former Yugoslavia might know, ethnic conflicts of the past are not dead; in fact, they're not even past.

Let's just say that its very discouraging integrating into Bambara society when all the collective sins of White People are held against me.

But I manage. Adults in Sinsina treat me with more respect, and they all know that my name is Madu Doumbia #5. Though a lot of kids still come up to me when I'm trying to study my Bambara flashcards, "Tubab! Tubab! You have a camera! Take a picture of me! Give me candy!" There is nothing more emasculating than being thought of as another stupid Tubab with nothing to offer more than my bank account. I look at them really menacingly at them and ask "What is my name?" And if they say Tubab one more time, then I go right for the Achilles' heel of any naked child - the armpit - and tickle them until they call me by my real fake name. So far it has worked - none of the kids in my 'hood call me Tubab anymore.

But its when I go to the city that I really get it bad. The only white people other than vicious colonialists whom the Malians have ever known are rich, stupid white people who come on buses to see the mosque of Djenne and the erstwhile capitol of Islamic culture-turned-dusty small arms trading post that is now Timbouctou. So except for when I'm in Sinsina where people know what us Peace Corps Trainees are all about, i.e. whenever I go to Bamako, people are very, very friendly - because they think that I might give them money. Beggars are really aggressive here, because unlike American beggars they aren't looking to buy drugs to get high - they want to buy food so they don't starve to death. And they're used to French-looking i.e. white people feeling collective guilt for the years of colonial occupation and handing out money. They go right up to my face and in either French or Bambara say "Money! Money!" And they do not go away until I tell them Allah m'a son; i.e. Allah will give you money if you pray harder.

Though everyone mistakes me for a big, stupid tourist, unlike the tourists, oilmen and the Embassy staff, Peace Corps Volunteers as a rule are very poor - we eat what the peasants eat, only with enough additional nutritional content so that our teeth don't rot out. I don't feel any white guilt towards the ubiquitous beggars in Bamako because 1) I don't have any money to give them; 2) I'm spending 2 years improving their country's water sanitation infrastructure, also with no money. I have become so quickly accustomed to Malian nutritional poverty that I have come to eat anything that I can get my hands on (which is also the reason why I ended up in the Bamako Peace Corps Medial Unit for the night a few weeks back - I learned my lesson that I should be more discerning as to what potentially parasite-laden fruits I put in my mouth)

Likewise, many Malian businessmen are also used to white people being really rich, really stupid, and really manipulable. It is hard knowing when you're getting ripped off; for example, I bought this really awesome shirt for 2000 West African francs - about $4.73, which I thought was a steal. Later I found out that if I were not white, that same taylor would have charged me more like $500 francs, or slightly more than 1 dollar. The standard of living in Mali is really, really low, and so prices are so low that my Western orientalist mind cannot confound how cheap life really is.

Thankfully, over the past month I have learned enough Bambara that I can actually haggle at the markets now. My Jewish mother would be proud. Hey Mom! I can bargain in another language for things that are already dirt cheap!!!! Malian merchants are used to being able to rip off stupid Tubabs, but what they're not used to are Tubabs who actually speak their language. I can now say things to the effect of I am not a stupid Tubab. I live in Mali, and I do not have money. If you give me stupid Tubab prices, I'm giving my money to the guy next to you who sells the same bootleg merchandise. So far, the few times I have pulled that one out, the merchants have caved and lowered their prices 75% to what actual Malians pay.

As my Bambara slowly improves and I can talk about more high-level subjects than my food preferences and bodily functions, hopefully people will treat me more as an individual person than as a generic Tubab. Perhaps one day the friendlier kids who come up to me saying "Bonjour! Bonjour!" will realize that I'm not from goddamn motherfucking France. I'm from America, dammit, and I'm not white, I'm a self-hating Jew. I do not yet know how to explain Marx's theories about post-nationalist proletarian consciousness as espoused in The Jewish Question, but in time I suppose that that too will come, donne donne.