Field Study Posts and Answer

Sorry--my last post was cut short and the photos didn't upload.
Don't have time to try again at the moment but wanted to publish two recent journal entries that did not focus on personal relationships/did not include names, and therefore are permissable to post.
Would love people's thoughts :)

Note to Mom about the use of color:
Omani clothing is traditionally very colorful, and in the interior it is possible to see beautiful patterns and brilliant hues. However, in the process of creating a national identity a white "dishdasha" (what Ghalib is wearing in the pic with the baobab tree, and what my dad Khaled is wearing) is the required dress for men. Most women wear black abayas--community (particularly as re-enforced by at least superficiall i.e. visual conformity) is important.
Houses are generally white.

Field Study Journal #15: Night Walk
Recorded 03.10.07
Context, Location: Neighborhood near our house, Al-Ghubra
Time: Around 10:45, Wednesday, October 3
Individuals Involved: Annelle, Lokhman
Coding:
! 1. Gender
(1.1 Norms, 1.2 Roles, 1.3 Expectation, 1.4 Interaction)
^ 6. Foreigner in Oman
(6.1 Outsider/Insider, 6.3 Culture Shock)
& 7. Family
(7.1 Sibling Interaction)
Description:
When I went with Tumathr and Rayan to the dukan we noticed the cool night air, our first night when walking five hundred meters hasn’t left me feeling sweaty. Tumathr and I planned to take a walk later, but then Naila wanted her to come to a relative’s house. At 10:30 I asked Belquees if she wanted to take a walk. She said no, she needed to take a shower; Rayan also did not want to walk. I asked Lokhman, he agreed. On the way out Lakshmi told him to not go far. Outside, our usually populated street looked nearly deserted. Lokhman brought his bike, I began to walk. Lokhman saw a dog across the road and told me to be careful; we saw another one coming from a dumpster in front of our house. Lokhman did not want to go near them, but I told him he would be fine, you only need to be careful of dogs in packs. We passed a few men, and a group working on house construction with a pulley. We passed an old man in dishdasha digging near plants in front of a home. Lokhman salaamed, and told me he was the father of friends of his sisters. We passed another house; Lokhman told me the Imam lived there whose young son sometimes calls the Aden. The street was dark near the houses, brighter when we came to a commercial area. A car passed and honked twice. Lokhman told me that Omanis honk a lot and he does not understand why. Returning to the house, Lokhman told me that a graveyard lies in the open field beyond the trees, and explained that the low building near our house held something related to electricity. Our walk lasted about twenty minutes.

Interpretation:
I interpreted my sisters’ reluctance to come with me as possibly related to the late hour; if I had asked Tumathr at that time she might have said no. I interpreted the dogs as being more afraid of us than we were of them, although this could potentially have back-fired if the dog were threatened into attacking at our approach. I believe that the empty street resulted from the time of night, although Tumathr had also mentioned earlier that more people will be at home or at the mosque during these final ten days and nights of Ramadhan. I believe that the honk was probably directed at me as a foreign woman, although from Lokhman’s comment this could be wrong; perhaps the driver wanted us to move away from the edge of the road. Always covering my head when I go outside, I wondered how everyone can immediately tell that I am a foreigner. Then I remembered my own response when seeing foreigners in Oman; I stare as much or more than the Omanis. However, I think that perhaps seeing a foreign woman in abaya or kanga might present an even rarer sight.

Evaluation:
I felt a twinge of uneasiness, rare thus far in my experience of Oman; Lokhman’s nervousness about the dogs raised my nervousness about the few men walking the street alone or in clusters. Although I did not consider it remotely likely, I wondered what I would do if someone started to harass me, or came up behind and grabbed me. I wondered what Lokhman would do, and reminded myself that he is only seven years old, and his first instinct at any dangerous situation would probably be to run away. I felt vulnerable only wearing a kanga over a tanktop and higher-than-ankle loose pants. Although similar attire is not uncommon for women in my neighborhood, I would have felt more secure in an abaya. However, after the initial adjustment to the almost empty street, I enjoyed the walk. Crossing through the more populated and brighter commercial strip I felt aware of the bracelets Lokhman had put on my wrists earlier and that I had not removed: the one part of my body that carried something meant to draw the eye rather than deflect it. Traditions of ornamenting the hands, such as with henna, I understood in a new way; that afternoon Abuii Khaled had explained that for Eid we would do henna. He laughed and said that while some men are turned on by henna, he is not. Although I had appreciated the aesthetic beauty of henna, for example, or wrist and ankle jewelry, I had not yet experienced the importance of decorating the hands, or putting kohl on the eyes, decorating any exposed body part: I felt what I had previously only thought of as an “interesting cultural practice.”

Afterward:
In reading over my thoughts on the walk, I sound like a cowering wimp. I have been in situations in New York that would rate as much riskier than a nighttime stroll through a neighborhood in Muscat. I know that if I were not living with my family I would probably take nightly walks alone; yet having experienced life in Muscat only in the context of life with my family I have equated the two, and thus taken on some of their habits and expectations, (according to which near-midnight strolls are perhaps “eccentric” at best). I wonder whether this will affect my ability to function alone in the Middle East in the future, in Yemen for instance, or whether I will react as my family would: total shock at a woman traveling alone. I suspect that once I am out of my family’s sometimes stifling embrace I will revert to my usual independence; however, I can appreciate people’s reactions when they hear that I will be traveling through Yemen and Egypt on my own.

Field Study Journal #14: Skin Color in Oman
Recorded 03.10.07
Context, Location: In the girls’ bedroom, Mama Naila’s house
Time: Around 14:00, Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Individuals Involved:Annelle, “L.” extended cousin
Coding:
% 5. Citizenship
(5.2 Expatriate Differentiation, 5.4 Race)
^ 6. Foreigner in Oman
(6.2 Being American, 6.4 “Social Scientist”)
Description:
I was lying on my bed after class when my sisters and one of their cousins came home from school. The kids stayed in the room for a few minutes, then all but the cousin left. She asked questions about American pop culture; she asked “Do you know Tyra Banks’ show? She is black.” I waited a few moments as the conversation continued, then asked her to explain what she meant when she said that Tyra Banks was black. She told me that this was what people said in America, that I, Annelle, was white, while Tyra was black. I asked her what she meant by “white” and “black”. She said that I should know, I was American. I asked if she would be “black”; she said no. I asked why Tyra Banks was black. She said because her skin was darker than mine, it was like hers. I aksed why Tyra would be black if she wasn’t. She said, “Ok, Tyra isn’t black, she is like me.” I asked whether people in Oman say that people are “black”; she asked why I was asking this question. I explained that she was right that in America people will say that someone is “white” or “black” depending on the color of their skin, but I wanted to understand why she had said “Tyra is black” and asked again if Omanis would say, “That person is black.” She said that she did not understand. I explained again that she was right, that “black” and “white” are used to identify people in the States; I added that this was “wrong” and “racist”, and asked again whether people would say the same sentence “So and so is black” in Oman. She asked if I wanted to know how to say the sentence in Arabic. I said no, that I wanted to understand if the term “black” is applied to people in Oman. She said yes. I asked who would be called “black.” She said that she did not understand. She then began to ask me how I would feel if black people in the United States said “We don’t like white people.” I told her that I did not believe that “white” and “black” actually meant something real; that it was a way in which to discriminate against and oppress people. She told me that America fought a war because they did not like black people. I tried to explain that the Civil War was not because white people did not like black people, but because some white people wanted to keep slaves while others wanted slavery to end, and that the war was based on money. I asked her if Oman had had slavery, she said that she did not know. I told her that I thought so, but that slavery was different in the United States. I asked again who would be considered “black” in Oman. She asked if I could stop asking her these questions. She began to talk about the number of Filippino, Chinese, and Indian people in the United States. I told her that there were a lot of Indian people in Oman. She agreed, and began to talk about house-maids that had killed the children of the people they worked for. I told her I did not believe her and so she told me a story about a housemaid who had been yelled at and killed a little boy in revenge. The conversation moved on.

Interpretation:
I have had difficulty trying to decide whether to create a separate coding category for “Race”, or whether to include it with issues related to “Citizenship”. In the United States, race would unquestionably require its own category for reasons of political correctness as much as for the weight of the psychological and political implications. Yet in the Gulf, citizenship seems to be the more-loaded issue, the category by which some are included or excluded. I am unsure whether to code the experience under an Omani rubric or an American one, for although I as an American may never be able to completely erase the effects of an American upbringing on giving me a “black and white lens”, I must hope that a different context could allow me to conceive another perception, as least. Perhaps the best I can hope for is that by learning the discriminations of another society I may conceptualize them as constructed and thereby weaken those that I have internalized.
I think that L. included the sentence “She is black” as way to help me remember the show. I believe that she is aware that “white” and “black” are important methods for identification in the United States, and perhaps assumed that I would need this differentiation. I do not think that she meant “black” to carry any meaning beyond a visual cue for recall, and I interpreted her later behavior as an indication that she did not expect such a probing from me.

Evaluation:
The conversation was one of the few in Oman during which I was less careful to “take care” of the person to whom I was speaking; I pursued the topic almost relentlessly and at the time was aware of crossing my own “interview etiquette” boundaries. Looking back I do not know if I behaved unethically by not responding earlier to her apparent discomfort with the topic. I do not feel that I caused her undue emotional stress, although I know that had she been one of my sisters I would not have pressed her to the same extent, partly because I feel more protective towards them, and partly because I would not want to damage our established trust or make them feel that I was “studying” them, despite the fact that I am. In agreeing with L. and assigning myself as an example of “white” I was careful to not say that L. would be “black”; I consider this an American label, and hoped that she had not felt it necessary to insert herself into America’s racial(racist) boxes.
I also pursued an obviously delicate issue because I have wondered about the subject of race in Oman, and how an Omani would feel in coming to America, particularly Omanis whose skin color would have them categorized as “black” in the States. The conversation felt particularly unusual because unlike discussions I have had about race in America, this did not follow the patterns that I am used to. The “political correctness” without which I would not feel comfortable talking about race in America, and which generally leads to both discussants rehashing statements and positions that both have already heard, played only a minor role. Although the conversation felt loaded, as has every discussion of race I have ever heard or been part of, it also felt potentially open-ended. For a few moments while asking L. to tell me what the meaning of “black” and “white” would be for her, these terms lost their meaning for me in a way that no other dissection of race has ever managed to do. However, I think that part of this comes from a naïve idolization of the situation, based on my assumption that L. has not internalized an American projection of color. Her statement that “You are American, you should know”, is true; a discussion among Americans of all races starts with a shared basic understanding of the daily implications of race in American life, thereby perhaps limiting the potential of the discussion to change participants’ perceptions.
While I do not know the extent to which “white” and “black” carry meaning in Oman, nor for L., I know that she is more exposed to American culture than my siblings, another potential reason that I pressed her for answers, as I consider her, correctly or not, to be “tougher” than my sisters. Her level of exposure could have the opposite effect; talking to someone for whom skin color-based discrimination has no personal meaning would be less potentially stressful or damaging than someone who holds these ideas, particularly a teenager who idolizes the culture that would and will send her negative signals about her skin color. Afterwards I felt almost sick at the thought that every American cultural export carries a degree of racism woven within it, even if at the subconscious level. I do not know what L. has been exposed to, but she obviously already knows that in the States “white” and “black” have very different connotations, especially based on her reluctance to label herself as “black”. Although I know that paler skin is considered more desirable in Oman, I have been uncomfortable broaching the subject of race in previous situations. Looking back at my attempt to describe the Civil War both understandably and somewhat accurately, I realized that she had a better explanation than I did, that not only did “white people not like black people” then, but that many still felt the same way. Luckily she did not ask for an explanation of why, because while I could list historical facts and factors, in the end hate does not have a rational explanation.
When she asked if I could stop asking her questions, I felt simultaneously relieved and frustrated. I had so many other questions to ask; at the same time, the discussion was emotionally draining for me as well. When she asked “How would white people feel if black people said they didn’t like them?” I felt annoyed at her naïvete, at her feeling legitimate in nonchalantly taking up as complicated and explosive an issue as American race relations, a topic in which I doubt she has much knowledge; yet if she had been an equally uninformed but African-American teenager, I would have considered her indignance completely appropriate. In retrospect, I think that my feeling would apply to all contexts; I think only an American would be qualified to speak about American race issues. (What this says about my legitimacy as a “researcher” in Oman is a question I will have to try and answer.) However, I think that this reaction is closely tied to emotions, white guilt in particular. I do not want to have to carry the eternal baggage of American racism: I feel fascinated by the chance to live in Oman where oppression lies along different lines, and I resent the possibility that this might be taken away from me by camraderie among “global oppressed” against the “global oppressors”. Yet this is not my choice to dictate.
There have been moments, when glancing up at my three sisters doing their homework with me in the dining room, and at our little brothers cavorting around, under and over the table, that I have thought about the fact that in the States they would be considered “black”. Looking at them as “Omani” and “my family,” it feels surreal to then to feel a “lens” slip over my eyes and see them as “black”. The American connotation of “black”, with all its bloodied history, cannot coexist as yet with my everyday interactions with my siblings. This is not to say that I cannot see them as having African heritage; it re-enforces the construction and manipulation of the concept of “blackness” in American society.
Afterward:
I noticed that I put most of my comments in the Evaluation section; I have been taught that in speaking about race, the subject cannot be handled at all unless discussants first admit to their own “racial psychoses” and emotional investment in the issue. Yet I hardly brought actual “emotion” to my so-called evaluation, because while I have learned to admit that I cannot discuss race objectively, I then try to pretend that my “emotional” response is objective, intellectual, and mildly self-abasing, rather than let slip actual gut reactions for fear of demonstrating what I have allegedly admitted, i.e. being inescapably racist. The elephant is still in the room.