Embedded Racism in Lebanon: What is funny and what is not

Today I 'unliked' a Lebanese news site on facebook after they put up a picture of two African men wrapped in white shawl-like garments sporting unconventional hairstyles that the website obviously thought was very funny. On the picture they wrote asking women specifically (Lebanese women, most probably) to answer a question: 'If these were the last men on Earth, which one would you choose, keeping in mind you have to pick one.'

The answers that came in were equally offensive: 'I'd rather die' one responder wrote in a comment and 'death is preferable' another said. This is yet another example of how callous and unfeeling some Lebanese can be, sometime without even noticing it. To this day many older folk still use the word ‘Abed’ (technically meaning ‘slave’ or ‘servant of’ in Arabic) when referring to all dark skinned or black people. It also explains why Asian and African domestic workers in Lebanon are treated so badly.

The problem of racism aimed largely at darker skinned races in this country is a reflection of the very clannish nature of the Lebanese to whom a foreigner speaking a foreign language is bad enough, but a foreigner whose skin color and features are alien too is just in for a world of hurt. Examples abound on YouTube of Asian or African domestics being denied entry to beach resorts, I even heard that a diplomat of some African country was denied entry to a local resort a while back, probably because she was mistaken for a maid.

Sadly, for most locals when it comes to foreigners their judgment is skin deep; we are used to judging books by their cover even when dealing with each other. We tend to be very cursory in our evaluation of people and quick to dismiss those who do not fit a certain profile. Ignorance and a lifetime spent in a tiny country are also largely to blame for this.

The Lebanese, however, are not to be derided for this as much as they ought to be pitied, for we are a failed society, we are a deeply wounded society, we are a society whose wounds have not been allowed to heal since the end of the 1975-90 Civil War. Simply put, we are damaged goods, and our insecurities are often expressed in a rabid and inexplicable xenophobia and a rejection of everything unfamiliar and strange and foreign, except for those cultural imports from countries we view as superior to our own and to which many of us owe what can be termed cultural allegiance. But even that allegiance is based on a superficial knowledge of the object of adoration.

But then even our enemy to the South, Israel, is no better when it comes to racism. One doctor at a Tel Aviv hospital addressing some government committee raised alarm bells recently that the number of African babies being born at his hospital was growing to average two births a day, which he obviously saw as a threat.

Gulf countries are no better when it comes to the issue of race. Gulf citizens of darker complexion are looked down upon and citizens with fairer complexions do not consent to marry their daughters off to men of very dark skin. Socially, they are at a disadvantage from birth, or at least this was the case when I was in the Gulf.

So, any way you cut it, Arabs, Jews, Semites in general, or so it seems, are a very xenophobic and racist bunch in dealing with each other and when dealing with strangers of all color, race, creed and ethnicity. I cringe to this day at the race-based jokes I used to hear in my family’s social circle. Growing up as an expatriate in the Gulf and as a child I too adopted this blasé attitude on such matters, as children often do, not knowing what harm I was doing, or how wrong it was. But, one grows and one learns and one hopefully changes, I just hope our society in Lebanon changes its sweeping racist attitudes and evolves into a more caring society.