Ought there be a Limit on Free Speech in the Subway?

The subway is a public forum of sorts; it is a place where people of all races, religions, and classes intermingle, where commuters read their newspapers, gripe about the weather, and sometimes even wade into vigorous debate about the grand issues of the day. Without a doubt, the subway is a part of the public sphere where speech is protected by the First Amendment – to a reasonable degree.  

        However, subway cars, platforms, stairwells and tunnels were built by cities to move people from point A to point B as quickly and safely as possible. Speech activities are not as protected on the subway to the degree that they are in the public square. Likewise, the New York MTA prohibits canvassing, soliciting, leafleting, blasting loud music, and any other sort of disorderly conduct “which may cause or tend to cause annoyance, alarm, or inconvenience to a reasonable person or create a breach of the peace.” And the unwritten rules of subway etiquette include that one ought to refrain from giving co-riders eye contact – let alone get up in peoples’ faces and egg on a fight.

Enter stage right the ‘American Freedom Defense Initiative' (i.e. professional Islamophobe author Pamela Geller) and (her) now-infamous “Civilized Man” ad hanging in certain New York, San Francisco, and Washington public transit stations specifically selected for their proximity to Jewish and Muslim communities.

 

              You don’t have to try very hard to connect the dots in Geller’s crude analysis. Geller all but explicitly proclaims: “Muslims are a bunch of savages”, or “Palestinians are a bunch of uncivilized sub-humans”; “Israeli Civilization is at war with them, so you should fight them too.” Why does she want to do this? Pamela Geller runs a blog Atlas Shrugs where she documents her thesis that all Muslims are violent “savages” and that Judeo-Christian White America ought to take the offensive against these undermenschen in a Clash of Civilizations. There is not enough sectarian warfare in the United States for Geller to make a convincing argument, so Geller stitched together a message unarguably intended to offend, to provoke vandalism, and to create for herself more opportunities to find photos of Muslims standing around, looking angry and menacing in your subway! Like the “Innocence of Muslims” YouTube video, this is a perfect example of trolling – the “Civilized Man” poster was made for the express purpose of pushing people to commit acts of violence.  

Not without ample justification, the New York MTA originally rejected Geller’s “Civilized Man” ads, citing the agency’s advertising policy which prohibits any advertisement “that demean(s) an individual or group of individuals on account of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation.” However, Geller’s AFDI sued the MTA, pleading for a preliminary injunction to strike down the “no demeaning” standard.

               Quite consequently, the MTA had already been in the business of selling ad space to groups - including Geller's - advocating certain positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Witness the progress of the spillover of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on US metro transit authorities over the past few years:

A pro-Palestinian group put this poster went up in Washington-area trains and buses in 2011. The policy objective of the above is radical by any standard. But of course this is political speech protected by the First Amendment. It’s even gosh darn polite.

Another pro-Palestinian group decided to push the envelope a little further.

This ad generated plenty of controversy in the New York metro region; the MTA received thousands of complaints, my local Assemblyman Robert Castelli made a push to get the MTA to take the posters down from Metro-North stations, reasoning that though “there is no offensive language in the message”, “by its very nature, it is inflammatory an directs a negative message toward Israel and her people.” The MTA didn’t budge. Some Zionist groups went berserk.

                Just like the legitimate debate over Israel and Palestine’s borders has been hijacked by racial extremists on both sides, Pamela Geller sought to throw a Molotov cocktail into the debate to extinguish all civil discussion. Completely bypassing reasonable dialogue on U.S. foreign policy, Geller appealed to the vilest of strategies in political rhetoric:thinly-veiled white supremacy.
 

Surely there is a difference between Geller’s ad and the prior two not just in perspective but also in tone and substance. The first two might be thought-provoking, particularly controversial. But the “Civilized Man” ad went out of its way to be offensive. Unfortunately/fortunately (depending on your perspective), that's not a distinction that the First Amendment permits the government to make.

 In American Freedom Defense Initiative v. MTA, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer ruled for Geller, reasoning that the MTA had created a public forum, the MTA had sold ad space to pro-Palestinian groups, the MTA can’t engage in viewpoint discrimination and allow ads espousing one opinion and rejecting those of another. If the MTA is going to sell ad space, the state may not put its thumb on the scale of the free marketplace of ideas and allow one viewpoint but prohibit another. The majesty of the First Amendment entails that if the city is going to grant the NAACP a permit to parade in Central Park, it has to also grant a permit to the Aryan Nation.

                Moreover, the MTA “no-demeaning” rule was only applicable to language demeaning of members of the enumerated groups, and thus it was not narrowly-tailored to meet any justifiable end. As Engelmayer reasoned, according to the MTA rule an advertiser would be perfectly free to state “Southerners are bigots”; “Upper West Siders are elitist snobs”; “Fat people are slobs”; “Blondes are bimbos” or “Lawyers are sleazebags” – language demeaning of certain classes of people – so long as it did not demean classes of people on the basis of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc. The MTA policy regulated the content of speech in a way that was not inconsistent with the First Amendment. The ads went up last month.

              In American Freedom Defense Institute v. WMATA,Pamela Geller waged a slightly different lawsuit against the Washington-area public transit authority, which refused to put up her “Savage” ads not for demeaning language but for security reasons. WMATA lawyer Philip Straub invoked the then-still-ongoing mob violence and terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomatic personnel aroused by the “Innocence of Muslims” YouTube video. He even cited the Department of Homeland Security, which had notified the transit authorities that such an ad could increase the threat of terrorism in the Washington metro. According to Straub, DHS advised WMATA that the “Savage” ad “could not be displayed in our system until passions have cooled somewhat.”

Straub also argued that they agency could reject the “Civilized Man” ad under the “fighting words” doctrine. It is not difficult to see how Geller’s ad can be interpreted as falling into this category of “fighting words.” As Justice Frank Murphy articulated the exception to the First Amendment in the classic case Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire:

There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or “fighting” words which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.

Referring to Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims as “savages” is unarguably insulting, profane and libelous. But Geller did much more than that – but she called for subway passengers to side with Israel in the war against those “savages”. How ought we engage in such ethno-sectarian warfare against the “savages”? The AFDI’s innuendo-filled call to arms is reminiscent of the anti-Tutsi propaganda Radio Mille Collines’ broadcast during the Rwandan genocide; it came in coded phrases; “Cut down the tall trees!” and “Exterminate the cockroaches!” The ad doesn’t give explicit instructions – it doesn't say "Punch a Muslim!" or "Graffiti a mosque!" it lets its readers come to their own conclusions.  

In the end, U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer granted the American Freedom Defense Institute’s request for a preliminary injunction on the grounds that the WMATA’s fear of mob violence in the DC Metro was too vague and speculative. According to the Brandenburg Test, the government cannot restrict speech unless it carries:
1. the intent to incite violence;
2. the violence must be imminent; and
3. there must be a distinct likelihood that the speech will proximately cause violence.

Geller’s ad fulfills the Intent element, but even though the Department of Homeland Security had feared the possibility of terrorist reprisals, the mere fact that that the transit authority feared that someone could be whipped into violence was insufficient grounds for censorship.  

In the wake of these rulings, the transit authorities of New York, DC, and elsewhere are posed with a quandary; so long as they sell ad space along subway tunnels and the sides of buses, is there any way or the state agencies to regulate content without running afoul of the Constitution? According to Judge Engelmayer and Collyer’s decisions, say the local Neo-Nazi organization wants to put up a recruitment poster saying “Those greedy, hook-nosed shysters took your job and took your house. Take one of their silly hats!” Suppose the Klu Klux Klan wants to put up ads saying: “Those lazy bums are mugging you and stealing your hard-earned tax dollars to buy crack and grape soda. Fight back!” Is the MTA powerless to resist?  Must our trains and buses become receptacles for the absolutely most scurrilous vitriol? Do we subway commuters have to participate in this sociological experiment against our will?

In response to the federal court decision, the New York MTA board adopted by a vote of 8-0 a new policy banning any advertisement that the MTA board “reasonably foresees would imminently incite or provoke violence or other immediate breach of the peace.” Essentially, the new rule would ban “trolling” in the limited public forums of subway ad space.  

But when is speech “trolling”? It’s hard to lay out scientific parameters, but society has caught wind of the subset which gets its perverse kicks by throwing out incendiary words just short of being “fighting words” per se. Indeed, the sine qua non of trolling is that it doesn’t explicitly exhort the masses to commit murder and mayhem, but it drives right up to that line of sowing hatred and provoking violence with full knowledge that that is enough to achieve the intended result. And just before a troller actually becomes a co-conspirator in the violence which will foreseeably ensue, the yellow-bellied bastards tweak their speech just enough so that it is protected speech and they can hide behind the aegis of the First Amendment. Trolling is rather amorphous, inherently vague and difficult to define – but it is certainly identifiable on a case by case basis. Like how Justice Potter Stewart defined pornography, “I know it when I see it.”

Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz immediately cried foul at the MTA’s new anti-trolling rule.  “A. it’s clearly unconstitutional” he said, and “B. it incentivizes people to engage in violence. What it says to people, is that if they don’t like ads, just engage in violence and then we’ll take the ads down.”

I’m afraid that Dershowitz might be right on this one. According to Brandenburg v. Ohio, the government cannot punish even inflammatory speech unless that speech is directed to inciting, and is likely to incite, imminent lawless action. Even if Geller’s“Civilized Man” ad or Bacile’s “The Innocence of Muslims” were created with the express intent of inciting Muslims to violence, even if a violent reprisal is reasonably foreseeable, it’s very difficult burden for the state to prove that any such violence is both likely and imminent. Because it is indeed carefully threaded so as to comply with constitutional law, trolling might be just as much protected speech as is picketing a military funeral or burning an American flag.

So the sad fact of the matter is that Pamela Geller is like a bad case of anal warts – polite society might not have any effective remedy to make her go away, and we’re going to have to learn to live with her uncomfortable, obnoxious presence. Part of the deal of living in a free society is that we have to tolerate ideologues of intolerance, whether they be the Klu Klux Klan, the Aryan Nation, the Thirteenth Tribe, or the American Freedom Defense Initiative.

The silver lining is that even though Pamela Geller and her cohorts of hatemongers may have won their First Amendment case, it’s a very Pyrrhic victory. In winning the right to put up the “Civilized Man” poster, now the ‘American Freedom Defense Initiative’ has only won the opportunity to compete in the marketplace of ideas. And their ideas are losing. Big time. Mainstream liberal and even conservative Jewish voices including Rabbi Richard Jacobs – the leader of the Reform movement, the Jewish Federation, the Anti-Defamation League, et al., are unanimously horrified by how low Geller has stooped in her so-called “pro-Israel” advocacy. Pamela Geller may have won the battle to put up her racist placards, but in doing so, she’s really helping the Jewish Right lose the war for the hearts and minds of America’s Jewish youth. When self-proclaimed defenders of Israel denigrate Palestinians as “savages”, and make crude appeals to “civilization” i.e. white solidarity, they have lost an entire generation of American Jews. Thanks to this “Civilized Man” ad, showing just how race-baiting and fear-mongering “pro-Israel” advocacy can be, many Jews are probably going to be much more wary of the Jewish Right and its Willie Horton-like scare tactics.
 

When the dust has settled, it looks like Geller’s foray into the marketplace of ideas may just completely backfire. The ruckus over the despicable “Savage” ads are encouraging fair-minded Jews to speak up, to call out Islamophobia and racism amongst our own ranks, and we're much less scared of advocating for for a sane, peaceful diplomatic policy in the Levant for fear of being labeled "anti-Israel." When I read the literature of America’s new voices, I hear calls for a new identity of Jewish Americans based on tolerance, reconciliation and peaceful relations with other faiths and cultures. Most important of all, Pamela Geller may have inadvertently highlighted the imperative for civil negotiations over the Mideast conflict, leading to an independent Israel and Palestine, living together, side by side, in security and in peace. 

Bronx Killing Shines a Light on Police Brutality

The Bronx has long been infamous for the widespread enmity between its residents and the New York Police Department (NYPD). The borough of 1,400,000 mostly Latino and African-American inhabitants has the highest rates of unemployment, poverty, crime, and arrests of any in New York City. Since February 2nd, when an officer from the Narcotics Division shot and killed eighteen-year-old Rahmarley Graham, relations between Bronx residents and their Police Department have sunk to a new low.

“NYPD : KKK! NYPD : KKK!” protesters chanted as they marched from the home of the late Graham to the 47th precinct house. NY-1 reports:

"They cornered that little man in his house, perfect place to ask questions, but instead of asking questions, they shoot him down right then and there. And they are New York's finest - what is fine about that?" said one protester.

"They just judge by our looks, or whatever and think that some of is bad kids like that, they don't really want to give us a chance, as well," said another.

The New York Times quoted Graham’s sister “This is not just about Rahmarley. This is about all young black men.”

According to reports, plainclothes officers of the Bronx Special Narcotics Unit allegedly witnessed Rahmarley Graham conducting a drug deal, and suspected Graham held a handgun on his waistband. The officers chased Graham into his home and cornered him in his bathroom. Officer Richard Haste fired one time, striking Graham in the chest. Once entering, the officers discovered that the eighteen-year-old did not have any weapons on him, only a bag of marijuana that he was trying to flush down the toilet. Graham was rushed to Montefiore Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The NYPD stated that Graham had a record of prior arrests. Constance Malcolm, the victim’s mother, acknowledged this as much, “[e]verybody’s kids get into trouble. He smoked a little weed, but you know, like all the little, young kids does. And that’s what he had on him when they were chasing him.”

It appears most likely that the only unlawful activities which Graham was engaging in at the time were possession and possibly distribution of a controlled substance. Though in New York, possession of less than twenty-five grams of marijuana is only a violation punishable by a $100 fine. Consequently, if the alleged “bulge” in Rahmarley Graham’s pocket consisted of less than twenty-five grams of marijuana, and it never left the confines of his pocket, the Narcotics officers may have been unjustified in even stopping and frisking Graham.

Police officers are even more limited in their ability to conduct warrantless entries of a person’s home. In New York State, officers may enter a private residence without a warrant only if there are “exigent circumstances”; i.e. an emergency necessitating immediate entry. Here, the possible exigent circumstances of this incident include (1) reasonable suspicion of firearm possession, and (2) reasonable suspicion of destruction of evidence for a crime.

Because firearms can be so dangerous, a police officer’s reasonable suspicion that a person might possess a handgun can constitute an exigent circumstance justifying entry into a person’s home without a warrant. The legality of the NYPD officers’ entry into Graham’s home would depend on whether the officers actually believed that they saw a weapon or just a bulge in a defendant’s clothing, the vantage point of the officers in making this observation, the defendant’s demeanor and behavior, and whether the defendant was continuously surveilled between the observation of the alleged bulge and his entry into his home. Though Graham did not in fact possess a weapon at the time of his shooting, the NYPD Narcotics officers’ warrantless entry into Graham’s home may have been lawful so long as their suspicion that Graham possessed a gun in his waistband was in fact reasonable.

However, the Bronx Narcotics officers may not have been justified in entering Graham’s home on the basis of a reasonable suspicion of destruction of evidence of a crime. In order to make a warrantless entry of a person’s home based on the reasonable suspicion of the imminent destruction of evidence of a crime, those officers would have needed probable cause to arrest the individual. It appears that Graham was destroying such evidence when he attempted to flush the marijuana down the toilet. But if he possessed even as much as 24.9 grams, then the police would not have had probable cause to arrest him in the first place. It may not have been an exigent circumstance sufficient to justify a warrantless entry if Graham was only flushing a citation-worthy amount of contraband.

Of course, the reason why Bronx residents are demonstrating against police brutality is the NYPD’s killing of Rahmarley Graham. According to the NYPD Patrol Guide,

Police officers shall not use deadly physical force against another person unless they have probable cause to believe they must protect themselves or another person present from imminent death or serious physical injury. . . .

Police officers shall not discharge their firearms to subdue a fleeing felon who presents no threat of imminent death or serious physical injury to themselves or another person present

It is unequivocally illegal for the police to shoot a person merely based on the suspicion that that person might possess a gun. In order for a police officer to use lethal force in an instance such as this, that officer must be reasonably certain that a specific individual both has a deadly weapon and that that individual is either presently using or about to use that deadly weapon. During his fatal shooting, Graham did not even have a weapon in his possession, and nothing appears to suggest that he posed an imminent threat of death or injury to anyone. Even if Graham had a gun, a teenager cowering in their bathroom does not fit the profile of a person about to shoot someone.

One might like to think that the killing of Rahmarley Graham might even elicit some sort of policy change to prevent such a tragedy from occurring again. Mayor Bloomberg is expected to pay his personal condolences to the Graham family, perhaps make a point of attending more Bronx community meetings. But the death of Graham is not just a case of “a few bad apples” in the NYPD. With the mistaken slayings of Amadou Diallo and Sean Bell, the sadistic assaults on Abner Louima and Jatiek Reed all in such recent memory, it appears that the NYPD has a widespread brutality problem.

The people of New York City, especially the Bronx, are clamoring for substantive justice and comprehensive change. The NYPD must do more to curb the use of excessive force among its members. Granted, the Narcotics officer’s use of lethal force in the Graham case appears to have been in violation of New York state law and NYPD’s stated policy. The fact that NYPD officers have been violating the rules on the use of force so regularly evinces that the Department needs to thoroughly improve its recruitment, training, and oversight of its personnel. Police officers who use excessive force have no place amongst the ranks of New York’s Finest. Moreover, to demonstrate that no man is above the law, the Bronx District Attorney must adequately prosecute the Narcotics officer who illegally shot and killed Rahmarley Graham.

(Originally published by the WCL Criminal Law Brief Blog)

The Racial Geography of American Justice/Injustice

Free States and Slave States, 1854


Segregation, 1950
(National Park Service)

Incarceration Rate, 2011


Death Penalty by Statute and Executions, 1976-2011


Res Ipsa Loquitor.

Frambara

I believe that it is impossible for any reality to exist so miraculous that it can authoritatively prove the existence of God. However, the fact that the United States government assigned me to live and work in Mali because of my background in French is so absurd, in fact, that it ipse facto proves that if there is a God, He must have a sadistic sense of humor.

You see, the general rule among Peace Corps Assignment Officers is that if an applicant has any knowledge of the French language, they get sent to Africa, anyone who can speak Spanish goes to Latin America, and that one linguistics major who wrote her thesis on Kyrgyz poetry gets sent to Kyrgyzstan. This rule generally makes a lot of sense, for it efficiently utilizes Volunteers pre-existing skills and places them in communities where they can most readily integrate. And when PC Washington was going through my application way back when, they were apparently very impressed by the fact that I took 6 years of French back in junior high and high school – so much, in fact, that they decided that I should be assigned to a country in Francophone Africa.

The fact that I do know French has been more of a liability than an asset here in Mali. When people like me arrive with a solid background in French in this officially Francophone country, we wrongly assume that we can communicate with the locals and that they will understand what we are saying. I am one of those pretentious assholes who spends his free time reading Camus and Baudrillard in the original, so when I first came here and bank tellers told me that they too spoke French and I reflexively told them what to do with my money in the conditional pluperfect subjunctive tense, time and time again I would become enervated when they mangled my instructions. Presuming that people here actually speak French only leads to situations in which the Francophones get frustrated, the locals feel lorded over, and everyone loses.

Even in Africa where each and every tribe has developed their own language which they have been speaking for thousands of years, there are some African countries which have wholeheartedly embraced the language of their former colonial masters. In Ghana where there are 47 traditional tongues, the government is promoting English as the single national language in order to mitigate tribal identification and shore up national identity. Some former French colonies like Senegal and Benin have also forged such a post-tribal national culture that parents raise their children to converse exclusively in the official, formerly colonial language. And such profound cultural shifts don’t just happen with a presidential proclamation; the reason why English is the common vernacular in Ghana and French is so prevalent in Senegal and Benin is that the governments of these countries have spent the past half century investing in the education of their citizens, particularly in literacy and language instruction.

Senegal and Benin are exceptions in that they truly are Francophone countries. In the bulk of the former French colonies like Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire and Mali, there is an elite class of government officials, soldiers, gendarmes and teachers who use French for the workplace. And there is an even smaller minority of persons who do not work in government but can command the French language because they were born to such immense wealth to have attended private lycées. Though after decades of gross government neglect of the public welfare, the vast majority of adults have never received even a cursory elementary education, more than 70 percent of the population is absolutely illiterate, and they definitely do not speak more than a few token words outside of their local tribal tongue.

… But if asked, they will tell you that they do in fact speak Tubabukan ¬– the “language of the white people”. Of course, there is no such thing – the Tubabukan spoken here is a patois hybrid of French and Bambara we call “Frambara”; the nonsense that Malians who have never interacted with foreigners mislead each other into thinking is truly the “language of the white people”; usually, it is only Bambara laced with a few French nouns, maybe "est-ce que", "le voila", or - my favorite - "peut-etty". And likewise, most Malians are taught that if you see a Tubab, the proper thing to do is to address them in “their own language”:

“Bozu le Blanc!”

Here, the colloquial “Ça va?” – “how goes it?” – has transformed into functional equivalent of “Bozu”. People will shout “Sava! Sava!” and they think that they are greeting me. It is also common for Malians to greet Tubabs “Sava! Sava sava byen!” – which must have originated in the dialogue of an introductory French textbook “Ça va?”/ “Ça va bien!” and has now regressed into a greeting uttered by one single person. Thus it is thought that "Bozu sava sava biyen" is how we white people say hello.

The most entertaining phenomenon is how Frambara has taken certain phrases and so warped their meaning that they induce cringes in anyone with a rudimentary understanding of their etymological origins. For example, in Mali it is perfectly customary for people to come up to me at 8:00 in the morning and greet “Bo swa, Monsieur!”

“Soir means ‘evening’. You cannot greet anyone ‘Bon soir!’ until the sun is setting.”

“No, when you see a white person you are supposed to greet them ‘Bo swa’.”

“That… doesn’t make any sense.”

“That’s what we do in our country.”

“… As I said…”

Other times I am greeted “Bo swa, Madame!” When this happens I like to think that these kids must have learned this phrase in the context of a female teacher, which must mean that at one point in their short lives they have in fact sat in a classroom. But there are other Tubabukan bastardizations that suggest more nefarious settings.

Children in the cities greet me with a bastardization of French with a mission: “Bozu cadeau? Sava sava cadeau?” When I am confronted with such obscenity, it is apparent that some asshole taught this kid that if they see a white person, all they have to do is say these magic words and the white person will smile and give them a lollipop. But when you’ve been living here for an extended amount of time and have been petitioned for a cadeau every single day by kids and adults alike who think of white people as arcade machines which will give you a toy if only you toggle the joystick and push their buttons the right way, these childlike Frambara-isms quickly become downright dehumanizing.

The absolute worst bastardization of French is when I’m in the city and I’m approached by one of the barefoot, tomato can-toting beggar children and they blurt out, “Tubabu! Do mwa cinq mille francs!” Initially, such an utterance impresses me in that it is in fact a complete sentence – a lot more than can be said of 95 percent of the "French" spoken here. However, in every such situation it is fairly obvious that if I were to reply “Préferez-vous un billet de cinq mille francs ou cinq billets d’une mille francs?” or even “Tu t’appelles comment?” the kid would have no idea what I’m saying. These kids are never going to be taught proper French greetings, introductions, how to ask for directions or the weather. “Do mwa cinq mille francs!” constitutes the entirety of that garabout’s French, because their “Quranic teacher” only instructs their cash cows in that one saying to finance their sedentary lifestyles. Accordingly, the marabouts instill the despicable misunderstanding that the language of Senghor, Césaire and Fanon is the language of humble supplication to white people.

The logic of a Malian greeting white people in Tubabukan is inherently racist – not necessarily a vicious ideology of racial supremacy, but at least the belief that all persons of a similar skin tone are indifferentiable. Of course, if a given Malian is walking down the street and they see person with pale skin, to the Malian it makes sense to greet this stranger in Tubabukan when 70 percent of all of the melanin-deficient they will ever interact with are in fact French, Belgian, Quebeçois or Luxembourgian. But there are also a lot of Americans, Germans, Spaniards and Italians who come here speaking no French at all, and according to Malian logic they too are greeted “Bozu! Sava sava byen!” because Tubabukan is “the language of the white people” – all of them. The term Tubabu refers to Aryans, Slavs, Arabs, Persians, Latinos, and all non-African persons alike. Even when Japanese or Korean tourists trek through Dogon Country with their brand new video cameras, they too are greeted by the locals “Bozu! Sava bonbon!” When Malians address each and every white person with what they think is “our own language”, it only demonstrates how profoundly unaware they are of the outside world and the crudeness of their racialism.

Even when the adult population addresses made in grammatically correct, polite French along the lines of “Excusez-moi, monsieur, est-ce que tu es perdu?” or “Je vends du pain du qualité superieur!” it strikes me as patronizing and just as innocently racist. When people speak to me in French, it means they assume that I am a lazy NGO worker or gold miner who is only here to interact with government ministers and rarely leaves the hermetically-sealed, self-contained expatriate biodome – or even worse: a tourist.

So when anyone in this country ever speaks to me in French, I instinctively reply in Bambara – and after a few lines of dialogue in which the Bambara is speaking broken Tubabukan and the Tubabu is speaking fluent Bamanankan the former eventually realizes the folly of their efforts and switches gears into their own language. Now that I’m starting to pick up Miniankakan – the really, really local language which only has any use in the tiny homeland of the Minianka subgroup of the Bambara tribe, around my home base I can show off how dedicated I am to integration with an even greater effect. The response is universally effusive, for these people have spent their entire lives thinking that they have to learn the language of their former colonial masters if they ever want to do business with the West – with much detriment to their collective self-esteem. Thus when an Occidental comes to live amongst an isolated culture and takes the time to learn to speak to them in their own obscure tongues, the symbolism is lost on no one.

When people ask me why I do not speak to them in French like all the other Tubabs do, I point out the ideological chasm between my country and the Old World powers:

Americainw Mali la kono be Mali kanw kalan tiyenna barisa folofolo Angleterre tun be an mara i na fo jonw ye, ni an ye keleke fo an ye an yere ka jamana mine. I be se ka fo ka an te fe ka jamanw were mara.

“Americans in Mali take the time to learn Malian tongues largely because of our own history of exploitation by the British and our War for Independence… You could say that our own experience has left a particular distaste for colonialism.”

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.

A Malian Perspective on President Obama

Though Barack Obama has yet to take the oath of office as President of the United States, it seems this election has already made immeasurable progress in America’s standing with the rest of the world. Why do I think this? Because people tell me so.

Now when I walk down the street, people randomly come up to me and say "thank you". Thank you for what? “Thank you for voting for Barack Obama! America used to be very bad, but now you are my friend!”

Despite the general disapproval of our foreign policy in the Middle East and our occasional kooky outbursts of Christian supremacy, every Malian I talk to has an effusive attitude towards America per se. A common conversation starter here is “America… it is… Good!” I try my best to explain in Bambara income inequality and xenophobia, but it seems that nothing will shake the belief that America is a virginal exception to the Old World tradition of colony and empire.

Though Malians have their doubts. A general rule of thumb is that the more literate a Malian is and the more they identify themselves with Islamic culture, the more likely they are going to have an ax to grind with America. If they can pronounce “Abu Ghraib”, I brace myself for an uncomfortable feeling of personal responsibility for the collective sins of my countrymen. Unlike most governments in African history, America is a democracy whose faults cannot be ascribed to one man – if the government does something bad it is all the people’s fault.

No one in Mali other than President Toure has ever actually met George Walker Bush, but they know enough about the archetypical Tubabu to have a very negative view of him. “Joje Boosh is racist!” I am told, “Joje Boosh kills Muslim people in Iraq and Palestine because he thinks that Jesus is the prophet and Muhammad is a liar!” We have eight years of serious damage to control.

Some people have a few kind words to say about the incumbent administration, “Joje Boosh buys chemicals to kill mosquitoes and kill malaria banakise – but he wants us to become Christians because he thinks that Islam is a terrorist religion!” I do not know how much of these views are formed by al-Jazeera a few madrassahs removed, how much they are simply products of homegrown prejudice, or how much they are based upon an objective analysis of discernible reality. But I can say for sure that the negative attitude towards the President who said that America was fighting “a crusade” is somewhat related to generations of Malian interaction with well-meaning missionaries whose handouts have been laced with ulterior motives.


But no matter how many bones they can pick with America, all eyes light up upon the mention of Barack Obama. “Barack Obama… is… Good!”

Part of it is simply because Barack Obama is black… well, he’s actually half black, but he’s more black than any other President of the biggest most powerful white country in the world. Also, many Malians believe that Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim. You see, unlike America where calling someone a Muslim is tantamount to slander, in Mali it is a praise of a person’s ethics and morals. In an Islamic country, boys are regularly named Hussein after the grandson of Muhammad who rebelled against the Umayyad dynasty’s tyranny and injustice.

Some people here have an interestingly self-interested perspective on Obama’s victory; “Now that America has a black skinned president, America will give more money to black skinned Africans!” When I am told this I explain that yes, the Obama-Biden ticket did in fact pledge to increase the budget for foreign assistance – some of which might be allocated to Mali’s irrigation projects. But the understanding assumes more of an iron law of wages, “The black president is going to take money from the racist white people and give it to his brothers and sisters in Africa!”

Other people have a more comprehensive understanding of the history of American race relations. “You Americans used to own slaves from Africa, and then you freed the slaves. But you were still racist for many years…” I am lectured by shriveled old men. “But now you have a black President, and Barack Obama is going to smack the racists hard like a dirty old donkey!” Right on, brotha (terrorist fist jab).

I think there might be something a little more profound to what has happened, something with a connection to what I am doing here right now which I am still digesting. I think that after eight long years of insularity and fear of foreign-sounding Muslim people, America is – like Kevin McAlastair and the furnace in his basement – not afraid anymore.

I think that what America just did has something to do with why I left my comfortable, air-conditioned existence in New York and decided to spend the next two years living in a mud hut in a village of peanut farmers who eat millet porridge with leaf sauce and pray to an almighty Allah whom I can only begin to comprehend. I think that maybe it has something to do with the fact that instead of sitting by myself all day behind a locked gate, I have finally worked up the courage to invite my neighbors over to my garden to sip hibiscus tea and tell me their life stories. And the more that I hang out with the people in my village and listen to their fart jokes, the less anxious I feel about locking my gate all the time.

I think most of all, it has something to do with the fact that I spend each day walking the dusty, filth-ridden streets of my village, walking into people’s yards and simply having a chat about developing water infrastructure. People here think that their village is dirty and crumbling, though for years they have had the tools and the capacity to improve it. It just seems as if everyone has just always accepted malaria and gastrointestinal disease and poverty as immutable constants – and if anything could be done about it, it could only be done by white French people beyond their control. My job in the Peace Corps is really to explain to people that they don’t have to sit idly as they wait for the Messiah to return, that they have always had the power to change things themselves, so let’s turn off the boob tube, get off our butts and get to it.

If anything, the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States has demonstrated to the people of Mali that change is, in fact, possible.

As I explain in Bambara, “Owo, an be se.”

Yes we can.

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.