Kanye 2020 | Page 16

Let Our Differences Unite US

Xenophobia. Noun. Defined as “an unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange. Today, we live in a culture where anyone who does not look traditionally “white” is perceived as an immigrant. I do not believe this sentiment is limited only to Americans. In The Headscarf Debates,…

National Belonging

The way in which the authors write chapter 2, through distinguishing narratives between headscarf wearers and non-wearers displays the distinction between who’s in, and accepted as belonging, and who’s not. The authors frame national belonging as not excluding newcomers to the nation in addition to not forcing newcomers to be forced to conform or defend…

Using the hijab as a veil for xenophobia

While reading The Headscarf Debates I felt repeated waves discomfort at the patently close-minded, antiquated reasoning for opposing the wearing of a head scarf in public. For starters, the framing of “secular versus religion” precariously centers on a christian, western world-view, and exhibits a complete lack of understanding of non-christian faiths of the world. The…

Banned for the Woman’s Sake?

Western Europe and the US dominate media coverage and reporter’s discourse in order to expose the problems and issues of the “others.” In The Headscarf Debates, Korteweg and Yurdakul examine the creation of national narratives and how these narratives form belonging, and who are the chosen ones who belong. Belonging is described early on as…

Land of the Free, Home of the Brave

A huge debate within the upcoming Presidential election is on our nation’s immigration policy. GOP Candidate Donald Trump has formed his campaign around “Immigration Reform that will make America great again.” In the first chapter of the book The Headscarf Debates, the authors identify “an immigration-related decline of the coherent nation-state, a decline that is…

Contradictory Conversations

Discussions of bans on headscarves, burkas, and niqabs are ridden with contradictions in relation to French national identity. Korteweg and Yurdakul emphasize the national narrative as one of republicanism (equal participation in government), laicite (secular impartiality/absence from government affairs), and gender equality. The decision to ban headscarves and face coverings in public violates all three…

Needless and Endless

Albert Einstein once said “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking that we used to create them”. I think that that has a great application to this topic of the headscarf and the role that the government has taken in it. It seems to me that the only reason that there is a…

America the “Free”

In James C. Scott’s book, “Seeing Like A State,” in chapter 2, “Cities, People, and Language,” he takes the standpoint of the state. He explains how there has been a certain structure in America, a tendency shared by many other hierarchical organizations. Some of these structures include roads, infrastructure, and languages. These examples give order…

Little Boxes on the Hillside, Little Boxes All the Same

Scott’s discussion of the gradual transition from the confusing geographical dialect of premodern cities to the neat, administratively streamlined topography of modern cities is supremely interesting and relevant to modern political landscapes. Although the stark juxtaposition of these two is fairly obvious, the logical underpinnings for the transition was not immediately obvious before reading Scott’s…

Not Staying Local

In some ways, those independently owned, local shops anyone can find in their neighborhood are reminiscent of what businesses and general livelihood used to look before industrialization. Scott Walker writes about the kinds of changes that occur with the implementation of standards and certain technologies. He explains standardization through a beekeeping analogy, and how any…