#toffeemaky

Applications from the following groups are strongly encouraged: persons with physical or psychological disabilities, Indigenous people, racialized people, people who identify as LGBTQ2+, and neurodiverse people.

Don’t get me wrong, I am in favor of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) statements and policies – as long as they are actually implemented, that is. As a woman, I sometimes even partially profit from them. But while they might as well promote beautiful rainbow diversity, they are complicit in the individualism of late capitalism. The individualism which, mind you, is not necessarily terrible for everyone everywhere (I, for one, am quite comfortable in it, if only for lack of experience with anything else) but which is certainly problematic to say the least, and contradicts most of what might be subsumed under the broad term of left-wing politics (Marxist or not).

Let me explain.

I am sure that there are many lists of different types of discrimination but since this is not an academic paper, I have created my own:

1. Individualistic discrimination.

2. Societal/systemic discrimination.

3. Legal discrimination.

Individualistic Discrimination

DEI statements like the above only touch upon the first one. I have come across many such declarations so I can give you an example of the context I am talking about. I just finished my PhD in philosophy and I am looking for postdoc positions, any assistant professor positions and the like. Someone like me who has completed a PhD in philosophy is very likely privileged in being able to fit into three norms: 1. Their intellectual abilities (both innate and learned) are in the niche balance between conformity (to fit into the educational system) and exceptionality (to be able to earn their degree). 2. Even if they don’t have enough money to pay for their education right away, they have enough money to pay with their time. 3. They (and often their immediate environment) value education enough to pursue it at all and – specifically in the case of philosophy and related disciplines – value education not so much as a means to a good life but rather as an end in itself.

Now suppose a black transgender lesbian with high-functioning ADHD gets a PhD in philosophy and applies for a postdoc in the humanities. Of course she will get it because 1. the institution is excited to signal its own diversity and 2. the chances are that she is smarter than the average applicant because she probably did have to work harder than me for the degree. What will she get and what can she hope for? 1. She might like the statement because she is finally explicitly included. 2. She can hope to get into a safe environment, that is, an environment bereft of the individualistic discrimination listed above: she is likely to encounter colleagues whose racism, ableism, transphobia, and homophobia are close to non-existent. This is not a small thing! But there is absolutely zero attention given to the other two types of discrimination.

Societal Discrimination

One doesn’t need to go far to see the absurdity of the DEI statements and policies in the context of societal oppression. A good example is the recent scandal of police forces destroying homeless encampents in Edmonton at -40° (Celsius or Fahrenheit, as the popular Albertan exercise in met(eo)rology goes): Not only is there no housing for homeless people out of whom 60% are of the Indigenous origin, but the authorities decided to dismantle their tent camps on the coldest day in fifty years (without enough space in shelters), destroyed their belongings, and arrested some of them, including Brandi Morin, an Indigenous journalist reporting on unhoused communities and police interventions against them. Some photos from the incident show show an Indigenous leader raising a ceremonial feather above his head, in a pitiful attempt to appeal to compassion within the “diversity” paradigm.

source: https://twitter.com/Songstress28

The more DEI policies are deployed, the more they are exposed as hopeless. And I am not just referring to university scholarships for Indigenous people, Indigenous Studies courses within any conceivable discipline or the need to have the Indigenous philosophy specialization on your resumé (whether you are Indigenous yourself or not), I mean also systemic measures that should actually be quite nice but end up being woefully inadequate, such as covered dental healthcare for the Indigenous population. Centuries of official legal discrimination in the past have led to some groups of people being on the other side of the law almost by default. Individuals not being racist will not change anything about that, even if it were theoretically the case of every single person.

Legal Discrimination

This is very unfortunate, you might say. We just need more time for the generational trauma to get resolved. Yet there is the third type of discrimination that is happening all over the world: discrimination on the ground of non-citizenship.* Of course, I cannot compare the situation of my fellow immigrants and myself – all of us university graduates – with refugees, people begging for refugee status or even people in the category described above. Still, it is comical how often (albeit not always) pretty DEI statements explicitly exclude foreign nationals without the permanent residency status. “We are unable to sponsor H1-B Visa’s at this time.” “Preference will be given to candidates who are Canadian and permanent residents.” I don’t have a solution. I understand that the system would collapse if anyone could work anywhere (maybe one more reason to try though). All I am saying is that at the end of the day, all the inclusive policies are extremely exclusive.

Legal discrimination gives rise to the societal one. Finally, this is not about me and my expat friends – we will figure something out. My closing thought goes to all refugees, displaced immigrants, and stateless people: How do we expect them and their children to abide by the same law that places them on its outside?

“Ooooh, what a cute acceeeeent! Where are you from?” Proboha, už zas! I heard it for the hundredth time, this time when I pointed out to someone that there was no toilet paper in the washroom (this word makes me a proper Canadian, doesn’t it?) stall they were heading to. It’s not racist, since I am passable as a White Canadian (that group of immigrants that have the privilege to be called simply “Canadian” without any additional adjective) but only after having lived in Edmonton for a few years did I realize how annoying that seemingly innocent question “Where are you from?” can be.

V češtině se ani neptáme, odkud člověk pochází. Neexistuje skoro nikdo, kdo by mluvil funkční češtinou a nebyl z Česka. Samozřejmě, zrovna já jsem jednoho takového člověka znala. Ale nikdo se ho neptal – jen v jiných jazycích, kterých uměl několik.

I am not singled out as soon as I enter the room, in which I am lucky. But I am as soon as I open my mouth. Europe is different. It is not true that everyone in Europe speaks more than one language, not even at universities. At my French university, many people only speak French and for foreigners, French plays the same role as English in Western Canada: another language is out of the question. The difference however is that in France, it is a meticulously maintained choice. Everyone knows that there is the language “That Must Not Be Named” out there which no-one is allowed to use.

« Est-ce qu'il serait possible que j'écrive mon essai en anglais ? » « Non. On est en France, on écrit en français ! »

That's why in France, even German I used more than English. All foreign guest speakers are expected to either speak broken French or be interpreted from their native language (and English speakers are not invited that often). No-one uses English, it’s not an option. But it is a cultural-political decision, not (only) ignorance.

In Germany, on the other hand, everyone uses English and most scholars are able to transform their speech or lecture from German to English at very short notice, when they learn that there may be someone – be it only one person – who is not fluent in German.

„Ich werde auf Englisch sprechen, damit es alle verstehen. Alle. Wenn es Englisch ist, verstehen es „alle“. Das heißt, in Deutschland.

The Czech academia is somewhere in between. In the humanities in general and in philosophy in particular, there is a certain prejudice against English. English is not a philosophical language, English is a tool. And there are many people who are not entirely comfortable using it.

„Proč tu máte na seznamu četby Marxe v angličtině?“ „Protože jsem o něm psala závěrečnou práci anglicky.“ „Na doktorátu se ovšem očekává, že budete číst v originále.“ „Jistě, já čtu německy.“

(Špatně, a rozhodně ne filosofii. Ale že se nikdo neptal, proč mám na seznamu Heideggera česky …)

But what all these three countries – and by extrapolation all of Europe – have in common is that multiple languages are always there as an option. They are there actually or virtually. Even if many people don’t know a language other than their own, everyone knows someone who can speak at least two. There are foreign movies everywhere – either subtitled or dubbed –, there are books that are debated whether they have been translated yet, there are relatives living abroad, studying at foreign universities, refugees from Ukraine, and exploited seasonal workers from Eastern Europe in Germany who need to learn at least a few words in German.

In Canada, it is different. I have never seen such a concentration of highly educated people who only speak English. The French they are supposed to learn is a joke – I speak my tenth language, which I waste my time with at Duolingo, better than many people who had French in school. 本当ですか？ As a (recent) immigrant, you become a source of admiration but also some kind of rare animal, that people want to see, hear, and touch. “Oh, Prague! I always wanted to visit!” What I find most interesting however, is not that so few people can speak another language (I know many in Europe as well) but the lack of what I call “linguistic imagination.” For example, after a lecture I gave at a philosophy club for seniors, a woman told me that she found it fascinating to watch me mentally translate. Or someone (a second-generation immigrant, btw) once asked me whether I translate in my head or if I form my thoughts in English right away. Well. As anyone who is at least partially fluent in a second language knows, “translating in one’s head” is a very specific and challenging skill that people study for years: it is called live interpreting. And as anyone who has ever tried to translate for their relatives or friends in a restaurant also knows, switching between languages is actually the hardest part of being bilingual. Typically, you don’t live in two (or three or four) languages at once. When you switch between languages, you switch between codes, worlds, lives, people, sometimes even emotions – and you don’t do it lightly or easily.

Immigrants often tend to group together, and not (only) because we may feel that we are not fully accepted in local communities. It is rather because we have a special wisdom, a special skill. When I told my Brazilian friend that my language doesn’t differentiate between the words “foot” and “leg” (nor between “hand” and “arm”), she found it amusing but fully acceptable. But when she later told her Canadian and American friends, they actually checked it on Google and then contacted me again to ask if it was true for real. English speaking people don’t know that the language grid that we put on the world is different. I, on the contrary, can estimate grammatical and lexical peculiarities of languages I don’t even know myself, just by the way their speakers speak English: Persian doesn’t have genders, which is why Iranians mix “she” and “he” so much; people can easily figure out that Czech doesn’t have articles because that’s my most common mistake; a very fluent English speaker originally from Austria confuses “borrow” and “lend,” so I know that the words are the same in German, just like in Czech; I can use “refuse,” “deny,” and “reject” correctly but I always have to think which odmítnout it is, the same with “apparently” and “obviously” which are the same in Czech and a couple of times I managed to offend some people when I meant the former but said the latter.

Yes, we do have a skill but also a handicap because even though we do not translate, we put the grid on our native language (if we only have one which is my case), not on the world itself, at least for many years. Like when I cook Czech meals and I cannot find all the ingredients in a grocery store, I simply leave them out, and instead of enriching the recipe with something local, it becomes poorer. As a bilingual friend of mine once told me, the bird always sits in the tree, not in the oak or birch, in both Czech and French, the languages she knows fluently.

Here is the story: A post from the other blog I have got me into the Philosophy and Non-Monogamies conference in Los Angeles. Not quite Los Angeles, but close to Los Angeles: Claremont, one of the many suburban towns glued to the huge city.

I don’t like traveling much. And now, that’s is a way less radical statement than it sounds because what I mean by that, is that I usually like the destination itself (like most people) but hate the process of getting there (again, like most people). Whether or not one likes traveling is usually simple math: Do they love being at the desired place more than they hate relocating? And I don’t. At least not usually. Traveling for me has been an imperative, a way to get money, basically a job, networking, CV points. Over the years of what I would call extensive traveling, my preferred idea of vacation has become hanging in and around Prague, laughing at people who complain about the 30+ degree weather. Anyway, what I hate even more than traveling is winter in Edmonton, and since we fully dived into minus 20 in early November, a week in (almost) L.A. seemed great. I was getting ready for my presentation, but then quite by accident I came across a special ESTA* rule. If you only need ESTA to enter the US, you can stay for 90 days but if you want to renew your 90 days, you are supposed to leave the continent. The rule actually kind of makes sense: they don’t want you to live in the US for three months and then “bounce” to Canada or Mexico to restart those 90 days. The problem however was that this applied to me as well. Because technically, I “bounced” to Canada for six months. I was pretty sure they wouldn’t let me in. After all the interrogation last time, I didn’t believe I could pull it off. If you are a resident of Canada, you can go to the US as you please but the visitor status (although perfectly legal) doesn’t count as residency. For crossing to the US and back, I needed to be in a sort of limbo because I actually had to be without a status to be allowed participation in International Experience Canada (my most recent attempt to stay in the country**) but at the same time, I needed a status to be allowed to enter the US. So I prepared two sets of documents: one to convince the US border officers that I was basically almost Canadian, the other one to show the Canadian border patrol agents that I had no ties in Canada and that my hanging out in their country for the last three years was merely accidental.

I was packing – not packing, because I was sure I would need to call MM to pick me up right after he turned on his computer at work. Oh well, thought I, as I tried to calm down (which I am notoriously bad at), they probably won’t deport me, good thing the border is already in Edmonton. We woke up around 4:00, it was pitch black, about -20C, and I was in the worst mood ever. We were also running a little late, which frankly I hardly cared about at that point. I went through all the annoying airport security (are really all Canadians alright with taking their shoes off, walking around in socks, and then putting the shoes back on???) and straight to the border. As I approached the border checkpoint, I put on my best smile (people think it doesn’t work, well, couldn’t hurt, thought I), and tried to figure out which border agent I was going to get, hoping for the smiling one. Didn’t happen – mine was more like I-have-to-protect-the-United-States-of-America kind of guy.

“Where do you live?”

“In Canada,” said I, getting ready for all the questioning.

“What are you going to do in the US?”

“Going to a conference,” said I, wondering to what extent a conference on non-monogamy was a good reason.

“Are you bringing any fruit?”

“No.” I had noting to eat and I was starving. Most of my friends know I don’t like fruit but at that moment, I would have killed for an apple.

“Have a great day.”

Wow. That’s it. I am going to L.A.

“گفتم,”said MM laconically, when I called him, still pumped on adrenaline.

* ESTA is the American visa waiver program for citizens of some privileged countries, European Union countries included. It means that you can stay in the US without a visa for 90 days in a row.

On the way back to Edmonton from L.A., we ran into the problem I described here. But that was nothing compared to the previous crossing, not only because American border guards are notoriously more painful than the Canadian ones, but also because of the general unfairness of the world. Let me tell you a story.

In Edmonton lives an odd couple1), a woman from the Czech Republic – a country no one knows much about2) – and a man from Iran – a country everyone knows too much about3) – who decided to take a short trip to L.A. Contrary to their usual habit, they arrived at the airport very early but while the woman MJ expected questions, the man MM didn't really. Still in Edmonton, they made their way to what was the actual US border and the border guard checked her fingerprints because of course, they had them, since she had been to the USA fourteen years before.

(A few years ago, I read an article about system identities, which means that despite the prevailing feeling of anonymity, it is virtually impossible to be anonymous these days, unless perhaps you stayed in the same town your whole life. Your unique bodily characteristics are imprinted into the world's body databases and you can only get a new identity if the system itself cooperates and allows you to do so. So those fingerprints that MJ had entered into the database at the American Embassy in Prague of course matched the ones she showed to a random officer in Edmonton. That worked well, a youngish white woman from the EU going to L.A. for the weekend is a very benign phenomenon after all.)4)

But then it was MM's turn. As the officer was studying his Canadian passport, MM was making a face. It is a very “manly” thing to do and it can also be his thing – being cocky, you know – but you shouldn't really blame him: after having lived with an Iranian passport he was tired of being treated like a terrorist and this shouldn't be happening.

“How old were you when you left Iran?”

“Umm … twenty three.”

“Where did you do your military service?”

“I didn't. I bought myself out.”

“So you had rich parents …”

“Not really …”

“And how can you prove that?”

“I have a card but it is at home.”

“I need to see the card.”

At that point MM knew where the questions were coming from but MJ was completely confused. Apparently it had something to do with the IRGC. She should probably know by now but she had been always so disinterested in politics … They were taken to the room of shame and deportations and told to wait. So they waited. She was trying to comfort MM who kept telling her he was fine (he would admit later he wasn't which she knew anyway) visibly not appreciating her concerns. “He just wants me to miss my flight, I know it.” He recalled a similar situation many years before when he hadn't yet had Canadian citizenship.

MJ was stressed as usual but at the same time wanted to understand so she started reading: Due to the collapse of the Iran Nuclear Deal under Trump's reign in 2019, further sanctions were imposed on Iran and as a bonus, the IRGC, a branch of the military that had been formed during the 1979 revolution, was declared a terrorist organization. If you are unlucky enough to be a male Iranian citizen, you have to serve in the military and are randomly conscripted into the Iranian Army (ارتش), Police Forces (فراجا), or IRGC (سپاه). If you're lucky enough to have served in either of the first two (or bought it as part of a special program) then you're usually okay, well as okay as an Iranian can be. But you have to prove it.

“I need to see the card. But I think a photo would be sufficient.”

MM searched in vain for the photo in his phone, then he remembered that his father might have it. So he started calling to Tehran.

“You guys know that conscription is completely random.”

“We know that but this is the rule. There are stories about a man face-timing with his dying father because he couldn't go to see him …” The officer became talkative and somewhat nice. He meant the stories like this. 

While MM was still trying to find a picture of the card in his phone and waiting for his father to call back, the officer began questioning MJ:

“What is your status in Canada? Why do you have a Canadian address in your ESTA application? Are you employed at the university?” But you know, this is not a story about her and she knew she would be fine. She may have made a few mistakes in her ESTA application but … these things are never a big deal. She was more worried about the prospect of spending three days in L.A. alone, without a car, at least this time MM had indicated her Airbnb account when booking …  

“So what is going to happen now? I won't make it home in time.”

“Well … I tend to believe you …”

At that moment MM's father called to say he had found the photo. A supposed “IRGC expert” from another desk came to look at it, you know, the card written entirely in Persian, and they let them both go. Just in time to catch the plane.

Happy end, right? Not for everyone. I have a friend who was punished by being drafted into the IRGC for being an artist and queer. He basically cleaned toilets for two years. Recently he was supposed to attend a conference in New Orleans but couldn't go. There were rumors that the rules for involuntarily draftees might get eased but it hasn't happened and doesn't seem to be happening anytime soon.

1) I heard that there is another Czech-Iranian couple in Edmonton but this has not been confirmed to date.

2) Whenever she hears from someone “Wow, what a cute acceeeent! Where are you froooom?” (which happens at least once a week) she asks them to guess. Because yeah, what the hell. They usually guess Russia or, for the last few months, Ukraine. In one of the next posts, I will tell you why you should never ask people where they are from, at least not during the first hour of conversation. No, not even in Canada. Not even white people.

3) Not really. But everyone thinks they know enough.

4) A chapter from A. Aneesh. Neutral Accent: How Language, Labor, and Life Become Global. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015.

When I was coming back from a short trip in the US, my partner and I decided to proceed through the customs separately because we didn't want to get too much attention like when crossing the opposite direction before (about that next time). It was the third time I had come to Canada for “tourism”, meaning six months of “tourism” in Edmonton and if you have any idea about the city, you know how completely nonsensical this is. But oddly enough, it was not until this third time that I ran into any problems. I mean, not problems exactly, but the border guards had some understandable suspicions. You have no legal right to enter any country unless you are its citizen so even though I am not not allowed into Edmonton for six months of “tourism”, the people at the border may just decide that it's too weird. That was exactly the case so after I admitted my real reason for coming to Canada (namely that I was waiting for permanent residency which I may never get anyway), they just wanted to double-check the information. But it was Sunday midnight and I really wanted to go home, so it was very annoying to say the least. I am forever grateful to the Canadian border guards in Edmonton for always being quite nice which makes everything less stressful. They don't make you feel that you are at their mercy (which you are though) and I think they even apologized for keeping me longer.

Interestingly, it never occurred to me, not even for a second, that they might actually deny me entry into the country. And yet I was stressed, resentful, angry even (albeit only privately). How could I ever imagine the fear of people who are forced to sacrifice everything for a chance to save their lives and then are harassed, incarcerated, and sent “home” by a random border guard?

I wrote this post on the plane three weeks ago when I was feeling really down. I was tired and scared. I am publishing it now as a tribute to the feelings I no longer have.

october 9

I cannot believe I did this: I am on my way to live in Edmonton. A little more than two years ago when I had been in Edmonton for two weeks, I wrote down some ideas about how I envisioned my future, that is my return to Prague. It still hurts now when I remember how much I was looking forward to it. I was very happy in Edmonton but my thoughts kept going to the reunion with my partner. He was the source of my life to the point that I couldn't see that we were both probably already happier when physically separated. But I didn't realize it back then, so I was happy but I also looked forward to coming back. And then exactly a year later in Edmonton, within a second, I was not happy anymore. And staying in Edmonton for another seven months suddenly became a matter of survival.

The last time I went to Edmonton, about two years ago, my partner didn't go to the airport with me. Somehow I am still upset about it. And he promised me that he would come to the airport when I would come back which obviously didn't happen. I lived with that promise for a year and then tried to forget it, tried to imagine how to tell my parents that my life plans had failed, that my attempts to live an alternative relationship with a genius had failed. I had become so accustomed to my Canadian life, clinging to it so desperately that all the scenarios of my “talk with mt parents” were in my head in English. I kept starting over, but I always switched back into English.