A recurring question that I have gotten from new colleagues and friends in Lahore is “Do you feel safe here?” This question has had a tendency to make me feel awkward because a rush of emotions lies behind my usual stuttering reply “Of … of course I do.” Some of those emotions are attached to my memories of teaching at LUMS 13 years ago when 9/11 happened, with the accompanying thought that “Nothing these days compares to that day in Lahore.” Many other emotions, however, swirl around my knowledge of the precariousness of everyday urban life in the United States, and the seeming impossibility of explaining this to rather-well-to-do Pakistanis.
Clearly, Saint Louis has been on my mind in Lahore. And how could it not be?
Explaining Saint Louis to Lahoris is difficult. Race is not a particularly salient political or legal category here, nor is police violence, at least in the way it is perpetrated in the United States. Indeed, if anything, people here—of every class—bemoan the fact that the police are often powerless in the face of 'VIP culture' or violent non-state groups. It is also worth mentioning that, in some ways, the transgender rights movement in Pakistan started with a violent attack by a mob of transgender folk on a police station where several transgendered people were being held (and harassed) by the police. This is all to say, then, that the police are not feared in Lahore in the way they are by racial minorities (and others) in Saint Louis and most other urban places in the United States.
If there is one way that I have been able to explain what is going on in Saint Louis to Lahoris, it is through using the explanatory lens of corruption. Indeed, talk of the state’s corruption is very much in the air these days in Pakistan generally. Since my arrival in mid-August, the former cricket star and now politician, Imran Khan, has been leading massive sit-ins and protests in Islamabad and elsewhere centering on the alleged corruption of the existing government and the need for a “Naya Pakistan” (New Pakistan)—one where corruption is eliminated and law-breakers are brought to account generally.
For some time before this most recent sojourn in Pakistan, I too have been contemplating corruption, though mostly that of Saint Louis and some of its leading personalities and institutions. In this respect, many have wondered out loud why it is that Saint Louis of all places is now at the forefront of a national movement for racial justice. Saint Louis is often a quiet city, where people like things to be nice and discord is either landscaped, paid off, or brutally silenced. In many ways, indeed, Saint Louis does seem like the last place in the United States where there would/could be accelerating street protests, and widespread acts of civil disobedience.
Yet, the past few years have seen Saint Louis’ quiet calm broken in a number of ways. Leading city institutions and personalities have come under investigation and attack in a way that few people seem to recall ever having happened before. Certainly, there has been an interesting and remarkable confluence of scandals receiving sustained and withering press coverage—scandals involving the ‘family’ Science Museum, the ‘hallowed’ History Museum, ‘respected’ Saint Louis University, and even the indescribable Budweiser/Busch family.
These are all symbols of white power, prestige, and patronage in Saint Louis. To be sure, African-Americans and other minorities have played roles in relation to each (unfortunately, an African-American former mayor of Saint Louis, Freeman Bosley, Jr., was one key personality under investigation during the History Museum scandal). But, otherwise, these are Saint Louis Establishments, with overwhelmingly white and wealthy leaders, largely located in a narrow 1-mile wide and 7-mile long corridor of the city which white people have reclaimed as ‘safe.’ There are of course ‘reasons’ for this state of affairs, but reason and justice are not synonyms.
In many ways then, it seems that some sort of anti-corruption, anti-Establishment movement in Saint Louis is now being brought to bear on that ultimate tool of white power in the U.S.—namely, the police. It is no small coincidence, I believe, that a significant element of the Ferguson discussion—in addition to the narrative centering on race—has been the financial corruption element: Saint Louis-area municipalities make money off of their legal victimization of African-Americans. Saint Louis, in other words, has become the poster-child for what happens when racism and capitalism marry.
But (rich) white people don’t like to be called corrupt. Or, rather, it’s not a pejorative that even makes sense in the first instance. “Us, corrupt? It’s not like we’re some third world country like Pakistan!” And, indeed, something like this incredulity has suffused the leadership at targeted Saint Louis Establishments over the past few years. For many of these leaders, the damage they were causing to their community and to their city—to themselves—could not be perceived. Until it was much too late.
That white blindness caused much damage. This time, however, I’m afraid it’s worse: the blind have guns and war debris. It’s America. One doesn’t feel safe in it. This is how I respond to my Lahori interlocutors these days.
I see there are no comments and I suppose there is nothing here to stir up people but I wanted to say it is a terrific post. Thanks.
Posted by: Jeff Harrison | October 20, 2014 at 08:25 PM