Don't Be the Native Informant

Fouad Ajami is one of several.

The Lebanese-American belle lettre write and poet Kahlil Gibran confided in the early 1900s about his fear of being the monkey for the White Man. That he did not want to dance 'on a rope' provided by the American elite he has welcomed into. By that he meant that White society often has expectations for how minorities - be they Arab, black, ect... - should behave. And that they seek to induce them, sometimes providing incentives, for them to behave as a, say, "Good Arab" or a "White Black Man".

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A many minorities are willingly to subjugate themselves to that humiliating puppet role for the 'privilege' of being accepted into the elite world they covet. Many of them are able to repress that internal feeling of humiliating and sometimes even convince themselves that they are truly welcomed as equals all because of the rewards of being part of American elite culture. The parties, the forums, the prominent publishing. All of it is a reward that for many is too lucrative.

And since September 11th, many Arabs and so-called Muslims have decided to dance 'on a rope' for the White Man by playing the role of the 'native informant' by attacking Arabs and Muslims on behalf of racist Whites who are too afraid to state their own prejudice so have a self-hating Arab and Muslim do so instead. Take this case:

Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese Christian immigrant to the United States and author of an anti-Muslim tirade "They Must Be Stopped", is the latest example of a publishing phenomenon that digs up women from Middle Eastern backgrounds or Muslim countries who know how to wear cocktail dresses and uses them as mouthpieces for racist and xenophobic beliefs that don't get much of a hearing when spouted by angry white men.

But there are those with integrity who refuse to fall into the White Man's trap.

Take Sinan Antoon, the Iraqi poet:

One can see how it might resonate for Antoon, for whom it would be all too easy to cash in on his status as an Iraqi émigré while it’s still a seller’s market. “Life for a displaced Arab writer, if you want to, if you’re willing to exoticise yourself and self-orientalise, life is very good and very profitable,” he says. “I jokingly say I can be famous for nine months in America. I write a novel about being a little Christian boy growing up in Iraq.” But he isn’t about to do that.

“I don’t want to be the native informant,” he says. “There is increased interest in the Arab world. But I call it forensic interest. For the most part it’s bad, because it’s assumed that novels and poems are going to explain September 11 to you. For example, I got a phone call from someone who says, ‘I want you to speak about agriculture in Iraq’. I was like, ‘Why would I know anything about agriculture in Iraq?’ But it’s assumed that as an oriental subject I would just know everything about my culture and civilisation.”

The curse of the 'native informant' is that he is neither regarded by his own people nor those of his masters.