Rushdie’s and Jordan’s common interest in
Solving Racial Tensions
Rushdie’s concern
with South African people joining the ghettos is similar to Jordan’s concern
for her son’s financial security to receive an education that Reagan wishes to
take away. They are both well-founded
fears that are understandable for anyone in a higher position of either wisdom
or power, respectively, has for those who have to make choices. In the beginning of Jordan’s narrative essay
about racial prejudice, the narrator who is Jordan, criticizes a white woman
for her political stance that supports Reagan’s plan to cut student loans from
the government spending. Then, Jordan takes
offence to her stance since Reagan’s policy would directly affect her son’s
financial well-being, even though it’s from tax payer money. In Rushdie’s essay, “Imaginary Homelands,” he
sees conflict in South Africa arising out of a narrowing of one’s cultural
viewpoint on others. Jordan faces a
similar turmoil from racial ignorance and prejudice in her own country, the
United States much like how Rushdie has made it a point to make it aware to his
audience where art comes from, which is from reenacting the past.
In Rushdie’s essay, he mentions an
“unmentionable country” that’s “across the border” in order to prove his point
about the connection between art and heritage (Rushdie, pg. 9). As a transnationalist, Rushdie severely
criticizes prejudice and ignorance much like how Jordan does. But more importantly to him, as a
transnationalist author who likes to philosophize on what is art, he does more
with theorizing where art comes from than does Jordan. With Jordan, she thinks story telling is
what’s necessary to get the point across though the point is silent. For Rushdie, for a novel to be a successful
novel, especially if one is a transnationalist such as himself, one must see
into one’s past. He essentially believes
novels are reenactments of the past, to some extent too, whether it’s happening
in one’s imagination or an actual visit to one’s first homeland, like when he
visited the Taj Mahal in India and what it did to inspire his writing (Rushdie,
pg. 11). To analyze Jordan’s essay, “Report
from the Bahamas,” she writes about her own past, too, like Rushdie. She goes about it differently however.
Jordan focuses
primarily on religious teachings, which are universal in their importance,
whereas Rushdie is more philosophical in his way of going about his point. In her uniquely formatted essay, she cites
examples of injustice that have caused her to feel emotionally crushed. She even asks, philosophically, “[if my
friend] abandons me to ’my’ problems of race, then why should I support ‘her’ problems
of housewifely oblivion?” This is when she discovers that her friend’s husband
has alcoholism and beats her, constantly (Jordan, pg. 44). About
that quote, her diction is another allusion to the New Testament of a famous
quote by Jesus Christ. Furthermore, she
uses that to further her questioning racial prejudice and injustice: “Unity on
the basis of sexual oppression is something natural, then why do we women, the
majority people on the planet, still have a problem?” (Jordan, pg. 46). She uses this question to further her claim
that if we get along, we will mutually help one another, which is the
fundamental basis for one of Rushdie’s examples as a teacher. This teaching could be summed up with this
quote: “it may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all
emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity” (Rushdie, pg. 12). Both arguments share the yearning for
commonalities between people, that by finding similarities rather than differences,
one can connect more easily and naturally.
Jordan shares a
similarity between her and Rushdie in that they share a concern for South
Africa, though it’s for two different concerns—one is Jordan’s concern for the
liberation of South Africa in the manifestation of campus groups and political
activeness, the other is Rushdie’s concern for the continual interest in South
Africa’s population of gangs, which can lead to violence. Jordan explicitly states, “I knew both of
them because I had organized a campus group to aid the liberation struggles of Southern
Africa” (Jordan, pg. 48). Again, as
Rushdie had suggested as a source of inspiration to writing and being active
(looking into one’s past), Jordan looks into her past as a women’s rights
supporter in her attempt to understand her friend’s suffering: “She needed
protection. It was a security
crisis. She needed refuge for battered
wives and personal therapy and legal counsel.
She needed a friend” (Jordan, pg. 48).
Though she does not explicitly state it, she has a strong belief in
women’s rights. Also, this is something
that Rushdie doesn’t mention, though he would support Jordan’s friend
similarly.
Both Rushdie and
Jordan share many commonalities as transnationalist authors, as I suppose most
true emigrant artist would be able to truly empathize with. Both share a similar theme in their
reenactments of the past: that of racial injustice, ignorance by the masses, or
simply the choosing of the masses to ignore issues based upon damaging
principles. They encounter many ethical
dilemmas and respond appropriately, as anyone without a hateful personality
would be unwilling to do. For instance,
when faced with the choice to ignore her calling-for-help friend, Cathy, Jordan
decides to help her instead. Rushdie,
likewise though more philosophically, says that “redescribing a world is the
necessary first step towards changing it” in a peaceful way (Rushdie, pg. 14). Both authors have a certain method for
changing the world like preventing people from joining the ghettos in South
Africa as Rushdie does. They believe
authors/writers/artists have the power to use their past to be the driving
impetus for change, in a nonviolent and helpful way. Rushdie uses a counterexample to show how one
can be unhelpful and even cause wars if one does not stay true to mutual
understanding and mutual helping: the civil war. And
Jordan uses current issues as a way to push her point.
