This week's Al Jazeera video brought several things into focus for us. For hundreds of years, the practice of Orientalism has allowed us to interact with Eastern cultures without losing the upper-hand. The term “Oriental,” has become interchangeable for an array of cultures that remain mystical, barbaric, and morally inferior to the West. Images and storylines of the Oriental terrorist have slightly shifted over the years—from the Japanese during WWII, on to the North Koreans in the 1950s, and the Viet Cong in the 1960s and 70s—but they haven’t disappeared. Indeed, today’s terrorist trope is that of the radical Muslim jihadist, who also comes from an “other world” of the Far East—the “Arab world.”
As Westerners, it’s easy to hear the critiques of the Al Jazeera video and immediately step into a defensive role. It’s easy because as young, white, middle-class Americans, Josh and I may never know what it feels like to truly live on the margins of society—to be cast aside as others, of lesser value. In fact, had we not spent three years living as a minority in Vietnam and traveling throughout Southeast Asia, we would have virtually no concept of what it really feels like to be an "other." And yet, despite being foreign immigrants, we were given a tremendous opportunity in Vietnam—to teach English—simply because of the color of our skin and our heritage.
As Westerners, we were paid more than five times the average monthly salary of a local teacher in Vietnam. This was a brutal fact that we could not escape. And it made us question, over and over again, who decided these things.