From Dubai Correspondent James O’Hearn…

In 2005 I married a wonderful young woman named Nerissa D’Souza. Her family is Goan, and though she is Indian by nationality, she spent her entire life in Dubai. When I moved to Dubai in 2006, I moved in with her family, and by 2007 I had become a “traditional” Indian son-in-law, that is, I became the sole earner supporting a multi-generational family.

Embracing my “Indian” identity, I learned to eat spicy curries every day, I fell in love with cricket, I learned to name the major political parities in India and speak at some length about their policies, I became able to hold forth on the differences between the many different religious, cultural and lingual groups in India, and I learned to love Bollywood movies. But even though I am now far more “Indian” than my in-laws will ever be “Canadian,” I have only ever been merely tolerated, not accepted by them.

So what does this have to do with race or racism?

Before I moved to Dubai, my wife and I were in desperate straits. Prevented from finding work on account of a visa mix up, my wife had to stay at home while I worked three to four jobs at a go, dropping jobs and getting new ones wherever I could eke out a few more dollars. After our first child was born, and freshly out of university with a mountain of debt, we hit the wall, so to speak. We had no money left, not enough coming in, and could see no way of rectifying our situation but for one – we had to leave Canada.

When I arrived in Dubai, a few months after I had sent my wife and child ahead of me, I was a nervous wreck. With only a couple hundred dollars to my name, living at my in-laws, and upon their kindness, I felt lower than I had at any point in my life. Yet my wife was entirely unconcerned. Why? Because, as she told me, soon after I arrived, I was “white,” and we were in Dubai.

Three years earlier, when I had lived in Japan, I had my first taste of what it was like to be a “minority.” Words like “minority” and “mainstream” get tossed about so much in Canada, with such specific associations, that it took me a while to see myself as the minority. In Japan I encountered racism every day, from mild examples to extreme xenophobia. But Japan is very homogeneous, and Japan has a long history of fearing and avoiding outsiders, so I didn’t think much of what I saw. The racism was never specific, just a matter of those who exhibited nihonjinron (Japaneseness) and those who did not. You were wither nihonjin or gaijin – Japanese, or Foreign.

But in Dubai, when I again found myself in a minority situation, where the locals only account for up to 10% of the population, the dichotomous nature of racism I found in Japan morphed into something more along the lines of a shattered mirror, with innumerable facets reflecting each other, but each being separate and unique. Here it seemed that race or racism as not something widely spoken about or acknowledged as a social ill, but was actually a functioning aspect of the societal fabric, ubiquitous and universal.

My wife’s faith proved justified, when, inside of a month, I landed the best paying job I had ever had, a job where in only three years I found my salary rising to a level beyond what I could ever hope to earn in Canada. I chalk it up to luck, and serendipity, but sometimes there is a part of me that wonders if I was the recipient of this bounty not because of extensive credentials or experience, but because of how I looked, and how I spoke. Then again, I had experience in the field, and my employer-to-be was facing a sudden manpower shortage. But still, from some of the comments and attitudes I later encountered from other colleagues, I had to wonder, because regardless of the truth of the matter, it is the perception of that truth that carries weight day to day.

As a Canadian, and a product of that education system, it bothers me sometimes, even though I have proven myself at work over and again since being hired, that others might think I am where I am now not so much because of who I am, but because of what I am. But whatever my feelings are in the matter, the fact is, my situation is accepted as the norm here.

A Keralite colleague of mine was shocked, not too long ago, to find out that not only did I not have any “lands” or “houses” in Canada, but that I had debt. As she told me, she had assumed that because I was white, that meant I was wealthy. She had never questioned why I was hired or my qualifications for the job, and simply assumed that I “should” have that job.

Though she worked the same job as I (but in a different department), and earned the same income, and even though what she earns is ten times what I earn in terms of relative purchasing power parity, she did not even really need the money because her family was very wealthy in Kerala. I, on the other hand, desperately needed that job to support my family, to start to make some headway so that we could build a better life for ourselves. From my perspective, I saw my colleague as being privileged, and felt more than a little envy. Yet even with that in mind, my colleague still felt there was some sort of hierarchy at play, that regardless of wealth or upbringing, race really and truly mattered – that everything aside, perhaps I was the one to be envied.

In Canada, my colleague would be considered the “minority,” and I would be seen as a privileged member of the mainstream. Here I am seen as a privileged member of the “minority,” and she was seen as just an “Indian.” And in there lay the irony.

Few in Canada would know this, but there are about as many Keralites as there are Canadians in this world, even though Kerala is about half the size of New Brunswick. And when you take into account the diasporic nature of Keralite society, there are probably more Karalites than there are Canadians by a good margin. With this fact in mind, in the context of globalization, words like “minority” and “majority” really begin to lose meaning, but what about concepts like “race” or “racism?”

Racism, in the North American conception, is a matter of the privileged actively thinking or acting against the less privileged. In terms of academia, racism relates to the white male patriarchy, and pretty much the rest of society. While anyone can have a racist thought, only a member of the majority can be a racist. That is, only a member of the privileged majority can discriminate or alter their actions towards others due to race (meaning also culture/creed, etc) and have those actions be considered racist. That’s because the discourse on race and racism has, over time, devolved to being an issue of black and white (figuratively speaking).

But is that correct? Is that true? If not, then who, really, is a racist? What, then, is racism? What sort of behaviour would qualify as being racist in nature?

When I go shopping with my wife, when we go to a jewelry store, I am often asked to stay hidden, outside, and around the corner. The reason being that if the salesman does not see me, and does not see that my wife has a “white” husband, we will pay half as much as we would otherwise. And when we walk in public, and get into an argument, when my wife yells at me or castigates me in public, I have to restrain myself from replying in kind because to my wife it would appear as if I was talking to her like she were a maid. Why? Because to others, the sight of a white man talking harshly to a brown woman would be seen as such.

Regardless of my being her husband, and the love, children, and experiences we share, the colorblind nature of our relationship falls away the moment we step into public view. We both have to play roles, roles which change and evolve depending on who we talk to or interact with.

By conforming to these unspoken dictates, does that make my actions racist, or examples of common sense? By avoiding being seen by a South Asian salesman in the knowledge that my wife’s colour and nationality will help us get a better bargain, I can hardly claim to be “colourblind,” because I acknowledge differences in race, and I alter my actions towards other based on those differences, which is what racism is.

Which makes me what?

From Abdullla Abdulsalam Belal…

Are interracial marriages a problem in today’s society? Do the children of interracial marriages suffer more than others? Are they doomed from the start?

I believe interracial marriages can work and that everybody, man or woman, should have the right to choose who they want to marry, regardless of religion or nationality. There are many skeptics who think that mixed marriages are bad for children, but problems also occur in relationships where both parents are from the same ethnicity.

I’m a child of an interracial marriage. My father is an Emirati and my mother is German. She comes from the former East Germany and was raised in a small coastal community near the ocean called Rostock. A part of me considers myself to be an Arab, but there is another part of me that tells me I’m also German. I have an Arab name, I speak Arabic, (even though it’s not perfect) and I’m a Muslim. Yet there is another part of me, who talks, thinks, and acts more like a European. I think that my mother has more influence over me and my siblings, than my father. My mother was an atheist before converting to Islam on her own. She raised me and my siblings as Muslims and taught us important values, which many teens in our society lack. I think she’s done a great job.

My mother is always around and my father only occasionally comes to stay with us. The reason for this is that my father has two wives. His first is to an Emirati woman, with whom he has several children. My mother is his second wife. He works very hard to provide for both of his families. He spends most of his free time with his first wife and their children, however, since they live near his workplace and we live quite far away. If he finishes work late, which is most of the time, he feels too tired to drive all the way up to see us. He promises that in the future everything will change and he’ll have more time for us. I recently graduated from high school and will start college in the fall, so I don’t think that I will ever see this day. When I was younger, we used to go out on picnics together, have barbeques on the beach, play football in the park, eat out in restaurants, or visit relatives. I really miss those days. I wish that my father and mother, as well as my siblings and I, could spend more time together as a family.

I know I will never marry two (or more) women, because I don’t think a man never can be just to both, even if he intends to be. In the end, one or both will suffer and this isn’t fair.

Nowadays, it’s become very difficult for an Emirati man to marry a foreigner. The government says it’s not good for society. They often ask if a local boy marries outside his country, who will marry all the local girls who are waiting to get married? I say, why not let the local girls marry from outside our country, same as the boys? Life always changes and nothing stays the same. People should start to embrace those changes, instead of fighting them. Interracial marriages are not a disease that will wipe out an entire nation, but it’s sometimes treated this way in my society. It’s seen as unacceptable by some and something that must be stopped.

Why? Some say children from mixed marriages are more delinquent than children whose parents are both Arabs. Does anyone really believe this is true? Some say most of these mixed children don’t speak Arabic. I have to say that during my school days I wrote and read Arabic better than most of the Arab children I went to school with, whose parents were both Arabs. I even got certificates from schools, which state that my Arabic writing and reading is excellent. Many so-called pure Emiratis in my classes never reached the same levels as I did. I will say that I don’t speak what would be called fluent Arabic, but I do understand everything and communicate with others without any problems.

Some say there are many behavior and attitude problems that come with being a child of a mixed marriage. I say what about the children of so-called pure Emiratis? I think there are some who need to be educated about having good manners, respecting the elderly, their parents and their teachers. Some need to grow up and act more mature, to think more independently, and to learn only hard work pays the rent or the luxurious lifestyle so many chase and think they’re entitled to. At the end of the day, those that seek the easy way need to stop cheating their way through things and taking shortcuts through life to get what they want.  Further still, some get involved with drugs, alcohol and crime; and some barely speak Arabic anymore, preferring to speak only English.

That doesn’t mean that only pure Emiratis are lazy and get into trouble; of course not.  Many children from mixed marriages think and do all of what I have listed above. These attitudes and behaviors come from both sides, and in the young people of countries around the world. I only want to point out that nobody is perfect and problems can arise in families where both parents are from the same nationality. Problems occur everywhere and in every country and none of this has anything to do with the fact that someone marries outside their own ethnic group. I think some people in our society need think twice before claiming the mothers of interracial marriages have a negative influence on their children, that they kill the Arabic language, or that they are bad mannered and no use to local culture. My mother has guided me towards being a good man, a good Muslim, and good Emirati, all of which I am very proud to be. 

Those of pure descent also face many problems, but nobody ever talks about it or badmouths them. In fact, many people here choose to cover things up, so nobody outside the family knows what is really going on inside the house. Many pure Emiratis listen to English music, they like to talk English, and love many things from the Western World. Who influenced them? Why do they follow Western Culture? Nobody is telling them to adopt the same Western lifestyle, or to wear Western clothing, or to eat Western food or to listen to Western music. Why blame the foreigners and why put the blame on interracial marriages?

 It’s always an easy thing to do, putting the blame on others. I think we all should try and live together in peace and respect our differences. Don’t judge others only because they are different from you – just learn to accept. A mother always tries to do her best in raising her children, to teach them well, and to prepare them for life. It doesn’t matter if the woman is poor or rich, if she is educated or never finished school.  It’s the mother’s love for her children, the way she cares for them, that should counted and not her language or nationality.

Why not fight the real problem, instead of questioning mothers who are only trying to do the best they can. I am not ashamed of my parents. I love them both dearly and I don’t care if anyone thinks marrying a foreigner is wrong, because I don’t believe it is. I don’t know from which country my future wife will be, but one thing is for certain – I will follow my heart and not any set of rules and regulations, when deciding on the woman I want to spend my life with.