Holier Than Thy Autocorrect

This little number popped up in response to a photo of HHDL on facebook.  The first person was a Tibetan and the second person, white.  Let's call them "Tsering" and "Max" for the sake of ease.

When I saw this interaction, I was so shocked by how quickly and harshly Max jumped on Tsering that I had trouble identifying what was the shocking part.  It took me a while to realize that it was a combination of factors.

Let's be clear: was Tsering, when wishing Long Life to HHDL purposely mispelling lama? Not a chance.  I do, however, challenge any reader, Tibetan or not, to honestly tell me that they've NEVER had "lama" autocorrected to "Lana", "lame" or some other variant while using the ever-popular iphone.  I know I certainly have hit "send" before realizing that I've referenced the Lana visiting the local Buddhist center.  (Other favorites, asking my Tibetan friends what China they are wearing for Losar, instead of chuba, and referring to Hatches Rinpoche instead of Garchen Rinpoche.)

So, chances are Tsering, like the vast majority of Tibetans who want to have easy access to Tibetan language while texting, was using an iphone and it autocorrected Lama to lame.  An unfortunate autocorrect, but one that I hope most people would just get an embarrassed giggle out of.  But not in this case. In Max's effort to show his own holiness and how he is a better servant/representative/whatever of the Dalai Lama than Tsering, he attacks.

Not only that, but "the Precious One"?  I did a quick look at this guy's page. He generally refers to HHDL as "HH."  Yep.  Two letters.  But in this case, "the Precious One"? Really?  Sorry, that sounds a bit forced to me.

Then his charming comment about "write in your own language."  What on earth is that?  OK, good, he acknowledges that English is likely not Tsering's first language, but then denies Tsering the right to choose to comment in English, the primary language of this thread (and facebook in general)?  Let's make the assumption for the moment (and this is a total assumption, because we have no way to know) that Tsering is, like many Tibetans, not fluent in English.  And let's make a second assumption that the error was neither an autocorrect, nor a typo, but an actual spelling error based on difficulty with English. Who the hell does Max think he is to tell a Tibetan, who is clearly trying his best to use the language of the conversation in order to express his own devotion to the spiritual leader of his own people, that Tsering doesn't have the right to use English unless he can use it perfectly?

This is just as bad as when white supporters demand that Tibetans, in a Tibetan space, speak English.  But in this case, instead of acknowledging that learning a second (or, as is the case of most Tibetans, likely a third or fourth) language is difficult and the effort should be lauded and encouraged, he feels like he should flaunt his own supposed holy superiority and basically demand that 'if you can't speak English, go home.'

All this for what was probably a stupid autocorrect.

White Saviour Slacktivism at its Finest

One Tibet Support Group (TSG) just hit 20,000 likes on their facebook page and posted this infographic to remind everyone of "how you really make a difference for Tibet."

First of all, this infographic is giving three big cheers to slacktivism.  You are at the "centre of freeing Tibet" just by sitting at a computer and clicking 'share'! Wow! And that is that is at the centre (their word, not mine.)

Do you know what's not at the center according to them?  Take a nice look at those teeny tiny figures up in the right hand corner.  That group of characters that could easily be fit 3 times into the "centre" circle of YOU at your laptop (capital letters their choice, not mine.)  What are those minuscule figures in the periphery?  "Tibetan protesters" and "Tibetans risk[ing] arrest and torture for sharing information".  Man, I'm sure glad to know that these guys feel that privileged folk sitting on facebook clicking 'like' and 'share' are the ones freeing Tibet, not the thousands of Tibetans risking their lives protesting, organizing grassroots boycott campaigns inside of Tibet, promoting Tibetan identity through Lhakar and risking (as the infographic acknowledges) torture and arrest to make sure Tibetan voices are heard.  I bet it makes all their facebook fans with the Free Tibet bumper stickers feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

And yes, I acknowledge the irony of ranting about this on a blog.

Tibetan Studies Conference: Tibetans Not Welcome Here

Recently the blog Angry Tibetan Girl posted a guest rant about Symposiums on Tibet.  The article highlighted one of the many big issues in Tibetan academia (alright, let's be honest, any academia concentrating on a non-white area).  The heart of the article is really summarized in these paragraphs (although I encourage reading the whole thing):

Aren’t you tired of the double standard that comes with academics/intellectuals that are doing Tibet related stuff? I recently noticed a symposium on Tibet and realized only a few Tibetan names. Here’s the thing, for a Tibetan to be invited to these things, they need to

1. Have published several academic papers already

2. Weirdly, be of a certain age, and most likely, has to be a man.

... 

For a westerner to be invited to these, only few things are required, they need to not be Tibetan, studying Tibet as a graduate school or working at a Tibet NGO

And yeah, that sounds about right.  Read the article, there isn't all that much I can add to it.  But I do want to try to expand based on my experience, and the experience of many of my friends, wandering through the labyrinth of academia.  This doesn't just happen at seminars.  Take a look at staff.  Of the Tibetan studies staff at the SOAS in London, out of ten, only one is Tibetan.  And he is a research associate.  At Columbia University, one of the few schools to have a modern Tibetan studies program, out of three, the only Tibetan is the Tibetan language instructor.  The director, as well as the lecturers on "Modern Tibetan history; Manchu Qing Empire frontiers; role of Tibetan Buddhism in Sino-Tibetan relations, Culture and politics; film and television in Inner Asia; nationality issues in China" are all non-Tibetans.  Where are the Tibetan lecturers on Modern Tibetan culture?  

Many academics make the excuse that, of course Tibetans would be biased! Well, if that's the case, let's remove every American from American history and American studies lectures, every European from European History and most philosophy lecture positions!  Do you see that happening? I certainly don't!  All I can think back to is what a professor said to me years ago, and which I posted about early on, this idea of knowing better than Tibetans, or being the "true" safeguards of Tibetan history.  

And it's sick.

But back to symposiums.  There are other issues at hand too: Tibetan studies symposiums often, in their structure, isolate or make it especially difficult for even the most qualified of Tibetan scholars to attend!  The best way to illustrate this is actually to look at two conferences that avoided some of those problems, because the measures they took help illustrate the institutionalized failure of academia to attempt to work with Tibetan scholars.  The two conferences I would like to look at are the International Association of Tibetan Studies (IATS) 13th Seminar, hosted in Ulaanbaatar Mongolia in 2013, and the Third International Conference on Tibetan Language, hosted in New York, USA in 2012 (For short ICTL).  I was only able to attend one, but I heard back from many people who attended both.  

First of all, the IATS conference was located in Mongolia.  This served as a neutral location so Tibetans from India and from Tibet could attend.  It is also a less expensive location, which again serves to make it feasible to Tibetans on Chinese or Indian salaries.  Furthermore, the Mongolian government is very generous with visas.  In fact, the conference was largely, if not overwhelmingly, Tibetan and there should have been even more from Tibet! The biggest issue preventing scholars from Tibet from attending was none other than the Chinese government's refusal to issue passports or exit permits.  Apparently, some panels were missing half or more of their speakers, who last minute were denied exit from China.

ICTL was located in New York, much more expensive and far more difficult to get a Visa. I personally know one highly esteemed Tibetan writer who got all of his documents from the Chinese and was then denied a visa by the US consulate. To make matters worse, when he tried (through friends in America) to contact ICTL organizers to get an additional call or letter to support his claim that he was attending a conference, they were virtually impossible to reach.  I am sure this choice of location proved prohibitive to many.  

However, to ICTL's credit, they had spontaneous translation with radio headphones! All talks and the following question/answer sessions were simultaneously translated into English, Tibetan and Chinese.  As a result, no Tibetan scholars felt unwelcome due to language barriers. This is a huge issue in virtually every Tibetan studies conference, where speeches must be given in English or another European language, thereby prohibiting many of the most highly qualified Tibetan scholars from attending or speaking.  IATS, a far larger conference was also at a lower budget location. They did not have simultaneous radio translation, but speakers had the option to present in Tibetan, as well as English and a few other languages.  I was surprised that Chinese was not included, considering that many Tibetan scholars in Tibet learn to present in Chinese, in part to overcome dialectical barriers, and I feel this was a great failure on the part of IATS.  None the less, many panels were conducted in English and Tibetan and it was the responsibility of the non-Tibetan attendees to be sufficiently conversant in Tibetan.  There were several cases where Non-Tibetan attendees were asked to reiterate a point in Tibetan, and therefore had to re-state their conclusions in Tibetan!  During the opening speeches, translations were projected on a screen next to the speaker.

At both conferences, Tibetan scholars from Tibet, India, Nepal and residing across the world, were in attendance and formed a substantial portion, if not the majority of speakers.  A far cry from virtually every other symposium or conference!  What could possibly cause this difference? Well, both organizations have many Tibetans in decision making positions.  IATS even has a Tibetan scholar who was just elected as its president.

Is it this rare to have Tibetans as decision makers in Academia?  And as long as they aren't there, are conferences going to continue hosting the same few scholars in a sea of non-Tibetan faces?  Is this what academia is all about?

Of course it is.  It's about white scholars sitting in their offices telling everyone else that they know about the non-whites.  And until that changes, until academic colonialism is finished, until we stand up against it, there will not be a fair chance for Tibetans in scholarship.

Sacrifices on the Altar of Academia

I am so pissed off about this that I'm having trouble even clarifying exactly what I'm angry about. It's just so encompassing.

While looking or some help on an independent research project that dealt with people inside of Tibet, I was given the name of a professor at my university. We'll call her Ms. R.  Ms. R. has worked frequently as a researcher in an occupied region that is frequently a war zone. Kidnappings, torture, bombings and shootings are very commonplace. Since I was specifically looking for someone who would understand the sensitivities of dealing with a place like Tibet and working with people inside of Tibet, she seemed like a good bet.

We talked for a while to discuss my goals and I brought up, at the very beginning, that I don't want to be a university professor. My goal is not in academia. (If you can't tell from the rest of this blog, we here at OT have some issues with how academia deals with Tibet.) As our conversation continued and she heard about my own political experiences in Tibet and Tibetan communities in exile, she kept putting pressure on me to publish a book based on my research and experiences.  I explained that:

1. I had no interest in being in academia, as I had already told her several times
2. If I published, I would very likely be preventing myself from going back to Tibet and doing any meaningful work in Tibet.
3. (And by far the most important): Try as I might, I cannot guarantee the anonymity of my sources.

It's one thing to do a research project for a school on a non-political topic, it's another to publish research and experiences as part of a book dealing with Tibetan politics.

She kept putting the pressure on: how I needed to publicize the normalization of terror and fear in Tibet, the intimate aspects of life that the Chinese government were effecting, all of these issues which she felt I could write a good book about.  When I tried to explain that I was concerned for the safety of my friends in Tibet, her response floored me:

"By publishing this, you will get the word out and bring attention! It will do so much good!"

Really? Stop for a moment. How many people, outside of academia, read academic publications? Yeah, there are some, but not a heck of a lot. Is it going to make a difference? And even if it does, do I have the right to decide on behalf of the people I know in Tibet that their safety is an acceptable risk? Absolutely not.

But it really sickens me, the idea that when academics publish something, they are helping. Yeah, they are putting out information, which will generally be used in a self-affirming circle of more research and more publications by people sitting in nice, ergonomically designed chairs in offices in the ivory towers of universities. It's a paper to make your name look good on your CV.  Does it actually help anyone?  I'm pretty damn skeptical of that. If I, or anyone, has the ability to travel in Tibet and actually do meaningful work with communities to try and provide some benefit, should I throw this all away because "that would make a great paper"? And even more, does any academic have the right to decide on behalf of their sources that this publication is for the "greater good", and justifies the sources being sacrificed on the altar of academia?

She told me her stories of her time in her research location like a classic western explorer: glorifying all she saw and wrote, justifying it by peppering it with stories of drinking tea with families and how the community let her talk to them. This was then followed by harrowing tales of police kidnappings and tortures of local people, of of which she was able to escape after a few hours of questioning and a plane ride to a neutral country.  What about her "friends" who invited her over for tea? Did they escape that fate? Does she really think that this book that she has published, that is for sale through an academic press for more than a hundred dollars, is being ready by people who will actually do something?  Who will protect her contacts on the ground?

The Success of Tibetans: Choeying Kyi's Bronze

This past summer, during the London Olympics, something very unusual happened:

Tibetans, the world over, cheered as a competitor wearing the People's Republic of China uniform raced for, and eventually won, a bronze metal.

Another unusual event occurred as well.

Chinese, the world over, cheered as a Tibetan competitor raced for, and eventually won, a bronze metal.

Why? Because for the first time ever, a Tibetan competed in the olympics.  Unsurprisingly, she was competing under the Chinese flag. I say 'unsurprisingly' because statistically, with roughly 150,000 Tibetans in exile and 6,000,000 Tibetans in Tibet, there is a larger pool of potential athletes to choose from Inside of Tibet and therefore under Chinese domain should they wish to compete in the olympics.

Tibetans, almost uniformly, were thrilled to finally see a Tibetan face in the olympics.  Choeying Kyi, a young woman from a nomadic family in Amdo, not only was able to compete in the women's 20 km racewalk, she took home the bronze metal.  She wasn't just the first Tibetan competitor in the Olympic Games, she was the first ever Tibetan medalist.

Along the track, Tibetan flags waved alongside Chinese ones, and banners written in both Tibetan and Chinese urged Choeying Kyi to win.

Of course, there were those who felt uncomfortable cheering on an athlete under the Chinese flag and understandably so.  I am sure that there are many Tibetan athletes who might be of olympic quality but wouldn't feel comfortable competing as a representative from China.

But there was a far more vocal group as well, primarily consisting of Western "supporters" who plastered the word "COLLABORATOR" over the photos of Choeying Kyi winning the race and campaigned and wrote on how she was a traitor, how she should have stood up for Tibet and protested or defected.

I ask these people: what do you think would have happened to her family if she had done this?  It's easy to say that, but would you risk your family?  You don't have to!

I use Choeying Kyi as an example, because she was one of the first Tibetans under a Chinese passport to make a big name in the international media in recent years.  However, I consider this just another symptom of a greater problem that I've seen among so-called "supporters." And it is the idea that Tibetans cannot be successful unless they are collaborators, the idea that Tibetans can never be truly Tibetan without being protestors.

But that request boils down to this: Asking that Tibetans in Tibet risk their lives and safety, their families' lives, for the sake of politics. Asking Tibetans to forfeit the right to just try to live a normal life. Asking Tibetans to forfeit the right to try and be successful, just because they would have to play within China's rules.  Who will they condemn next? The composers who must submit their music to 'copyright offices' where they are judged by censors?  The singers who's concerts and music videos must be published on a state run television? The Tibetan film directors who have no choice but to play their films on state run television stations because no others exist?

It's fine if you don't want to cheer Choeying Kyi on, but she isn't putting Tibetans in jail, she isn't making propaganda speeches about how Tibetans are So Happy Under the Great Motherland. She's living a dream under the restrictions that have been imposed on her.

So don't cheer for her if you don't want to, but how can people declare her and by extension any Tibetan who chooses to pursue success over mediocrity and safety over extreme danger for the sake of a political battle they don't know if they can win, a "collaborator"?

Doing Things Right

Recently I've seen this article being passed around, "An Open Letter to Self-Identified Allies to [Marginalized Group]"  With the last post being about how I couldn't even express how many things were wrong, this article had overwhelmed me with all that was right.  So rather than summarize it, I'll just post the first point of the letter and I hope you will all read and pass this great open letter on!

Remember that your identity as an “ally” is contingent upon the maintenance of the status quo.

In other words, your identity as an “ally” has its basis in the continued oppression of marginalized groups. In the possible future reality of a just world, your identity as an “ally” would be obsolete. Work toward putting yourself out of a “job.” An effective ally’s goal should be toward obsolescence.

Where to even start

A reader sent us the following facebook conversation.  It's honestly hard to even start with what's wrong with this.  For privacy, we've covered all names, but B is the only Tibetan in the conversation.

What really gets to me here goes back to one of our age-old points: entitlement.  The writer points out how much they've done for Tibetans as if they expect some sort of reward or immunity from responses to their criticisms of Tibetan communities.  Remember, people, if you're doing this do get something, you're doing it for the wrong reasons.

The C responds.  Mass generalizations about tibetans as "childlike and egotistical" followed "Tibetans are in a negative karmic cycle". Well, that's some victim blaming! The whole comment is victim blaming.

But wait guys. That's not all:

A's comment: Threatened?  Come on. The statement was that there would be backlash. Let's be honest, any time anyone writes something critical there is backlash.  And considering A's comments as this post continues, the backlash of her supposed critiques is probably deserved.  C continues with Tibetans now being "Fascist and authoritarian".

Now B, a Tibetan woman based in the west, comes into the conversation, calling C out on his degrading generalizations about the Tibetan community.  She also seems to be very gently asking A to reconsider her critiques for the same reasons.  I want to note the gentleness, because it reminded me of a comment we got from a Tibetan reader a long time ago. The reader mentioned how lots of Tibetans felt pressured to be overly nice and polite to foreign "supporters" and avoid criticizing them.  I can't speak to B's intention here, so I don't know if that's what's going on, but it definitely reminded me of that comment. B Then is forced to point out another major racist pattern: when one, non-white, person does something, the whole group gets blamed.  B goes on to call C out on his ignorant bullshit and self-purported rationality.

Now A joins on the faux-Buddhist, victim blaming bandwagon.  And yes! My bingo card is filling right up! Quoting important Tibetan figures out of context!  I wonder what Jamyang Norbu would say to being referenced like this...

C's apology is even worse.  Like any good fake apology, we get the "Sorry...but" and then goes on to call B's response a "typical Tibetan ethnocentric hyper-defensive response..." but seems to be absolving himself by saying "it could be argued" (Weasel words, anyone?)  And then, no not all tibetans are bad "but what if half"...really?  And this is coming from someone who lives in Tibetan communities and claims to love Tibetans.  I don't even.... Seriously. I'm having trouble with words.

B, the only Tibetan in the conversation I want to emphasize  again brings up the important point that it's not that Tibetans are bad, it's that one Tibetan did something.

C: Fundamentalist fascistic Tibetans?  Man. I have to wonder what was under that "see more" link.

Finally:

C, you are the master of the backhanded compliment. Once again, how Tibetans are "far from great thinkers".  Wow.  So they're jerks, lying assholes, fundamentalist fascists, but they're mostly OK even though they are kind of stupid?  Tell me, C, how is it you hold them in such high regard?  That statement just reeks of self importance.

Seriously. I can't even analyze this. I'm done.