Hannah and Colleen describe how they observed different skin colors and nationalities are treated and valued in Northern Iraq. How were our black teammates treated? Asian-looking ones? Is there a difference between how men and women of color are treated? We answer these questions and more!

Learn more on our website at www.ServantGroup.org or contact us at hannah@servantgroup.org.

Here's a rough transcript!

Hannah: Welcome to "Between Iraq and a Hard Place". I'm Hannah!

Colleen: And I'm Colleen.

Hannah: And we're going to tell you about our life in Iraq.

Colleen: It's going to be fun.

Hannah: I hope so.

Colleen: Hannah, have you ever Googled racism in Kurdistan?

Hannah: I never Googled racism anywhere. Not in Kurdistan. Not in America. I've never Googled racism, Colleen.

Colleen: I don't mean Googled racism in Kurdistan, like while you were physically there, I met Googled about racism in Kurdistan.

Hannah: No, again, never Googled about racism at all.

Colleen: OK.

Hannah: Regardless of where or where I'm asking about. But racism is not in foreign countries, Colleen. It's purely an American problem. Everyone knows this.

Colleen: Right. So in preparation for this episode…

Hannah: Which is going to be lighthearted and fun, I can already tell.

Colleen: Exactly. I did Google about racism in Kurdistan and most of the original topics, most of the titles of the links that you get are about people being racist towards Kurds.

Hannah: Sure. Real problem.

Colleen: But the the racism and the things that we experienced or the things that we saw in Kurdistan generally weren't racism towards Kurds.

Hannah: Right. Because the Kurds were the majority there.

Colleen: Right.

Hannah: Yeah.

Colleen: So I don't want to necessarily say that racism against Kurds doesn't happen.

Hannah: Sure.

Colleen: But it's probably not what we're going to focus on today.

Hannah: Again, because we are white women who lived in Kurdistan. We have a specific perspective.

Colleen: Yes.

Hannah: And that is all we can really speak to is our own perspective and the things that we saw… and apparently the things that we Googled.

Colleen: Yeah, along those lines as well. Being white women in Kurdistan did put us in a category of racial privilege that was obvious to me living there.

Hannah: Oh yeah, hundred percent.

Colleen: And also, unfortunately, unable to be separated from the sexism.

Hannah: Right.

Colleen: The advantages and disadvantages of both, whether you're male or female and also your race, ethnicity, skin color, hair.

Hannah: Hair color, eye color.

Colleen: Oh, man. All of it

Hannah: Circumference.

Colleen: When we talk about racism, we're also going to end up talking some about gender roles and how racism plays by different rules for men or women.

Hannah: Sure. In a in a society that's very divided between male roles and female roles, it's only… it should be expected that racism also plays by those rules.

Colleen: So the first experience I ran into with Kurds. Experiencing a different racial background other than myself was I traveled over with a group that was doing a basketball camp and included in that group were several African-American men. They were definitely stereotyped as basketball players.

Hannah: Sure.

Colleen: Even the man who was not a basketball player but a pastor, the rumors around the bazaar were even that one of them was Michael Jordan, like that he had come to Kurdistan. People asked him for his signature.

Hannah: And do you think this is slightly off? It's not off topic, but it's a little a bit of a rabbit trail. Do you think that racism on that level about black people, particularly from the US, has more to do with Middle Easterner's consumption of Western media?

Colleen: I think that's a huge, huge factor, yes.

Hannah: Because there's not really a history like when we think about racism between white and black people, particularly in the US, we think, you know, it's based in slavery in the South, especially having grown up in the south. That's like a part of the framework. Right. And that's not the case there. Particularly with African American or black Americans.

Colleen: Right. I think you're right. I think it has a large amount to do with media and how that's, for a lot of people, the only experience they've had with people who look that way, right, is what they've seen on Western television, specifically sports, right?

Hannah: Yeah, I know most of my students either assumed all black Americans were either basketball players, rappers or gangsters. There was no those were the three thing.

Colleen: Those were the only things. But in this case, I think it also specifically applies to men.

Hannah: Right. Yeah, I was going to say specifically men

Colleen: Because for women, there's a whole different category, I guess.

Hannah: A set of stereotypes.

Colleen: A whole different set of stereotypes.

Hannah: Right, because women can't be basketball players or rappers or gangsters, I guess.

Colleen: Right. So what else can they be?

Hannah: I feel like answering that question is going to get me in trouble, no matter what I say. Doctors and lawyers, Colleen. Doctors and lawyers.

Colleen: Well, one of your teammates…

Hannah: Yeah. Was a lawyer and an African-American woman. And she was not treated well, by any means.

Colleen: That, too, is just a really difference across both gender and race.

Hannah: Right.

Colleen: And I think worked into all of this. And we'll talk maybe some about some other ethnicities as well, but is a distinct preference for light hair and light skin even within the Kurdish ethnicity.

Hannah: Right.

Colleen: And you can tell that based on the number of skin lightening soaps, hair bleaches, and the number of people who would compliment me on my fair hair and skin and ask me, you know, what color I used to dye my hair.

Hannah: Right. I had many primarily female students who did not want to be out in the sun because they don't want to get dark.

Colleen: Right.

Hannah: Like at all. And not like I'm going to apply sunscreen. It was I'm going to stay inside or if I'm outside, I need to be in the shade not because it's hot, but because I don't want my skin to get any darker.

Colleen: I think the other place I saw it show up was how many photo taking places. Even the passport guy would lighten everybody's photos, including mine.

Hannah: Right. Which when you're already like we're not just like white women, we're pale Scandinavian white women, and we don't need to be lightened anymore.

Colleen: No, but yes, we're very white, pale women. And some of my passport photos or ID photos, I glowed because they had lightened me to the point where I looked unnaturally pale.

Hannah: We were just eyes and lips.

Colleen: Yep.

Hannah: Yeah.

Colleen: So there's definitely a preference for that. Right.

Hannah: Or even I got my hair cut and colored while I was there, and was insistent that I was going to go like a darker red. I have blonde, fairly light colored hair, naturally. But they were like, why would you want to do your hair darker? You want to be like caramel colored hair like Beyoncé. And I was like, no, I don't. I would like to have red hair, like red haired people.

Colleen: So most of the other black women that I met in Kurdistan were actually not from the US. They were from Ethiopia and Nigeria. And I think those might have been the only two places I actually met people from. There were quite a few Ethiopian women there as nannies or housekeepers. And so did your roommate ever run into being assumed that that's what she was?

Hannah: Not that she ever mentioned to me. I know she had a run in with the taxi driver who tried to pick her up because he thought that she was a "woman of the night" and she had words for him. She handled it so well. I was so impressed. There also is that idea that if they're not a housekeeper or a nanny, they're a prostitute, which is unfortunate like, that that's the interaction with African women that most Middle Easterners have had. It's in those capacities. I don't think that's coming from the media. I think that's coming from cultural practice.

Colleen: Yeah, there is a sense that people, generally speaking with a darker skin color are going to be second class citizens, right? And the one place with the men that I know that came into play was with the Bangladeshi men who had been brought in at some level as a form of human trafficking, labor.

Hannah: Right, under false pretenses.

Colleen: Under false pretenses that were given jobs, sweeping streets and doing construction. And a lot of them work "dirty jobs".

Hannah: A lot of them work at the airport as baggage handlers too.

Colleen: Oh really?

Hannah: I noticed that.

Colleen: And that, yeah, they're definitely looked down upon as people you wouldn't want to interact with or..

Hannah: Treat like a human?

Colleen: Treat like a human. Exactly. And of course, like with all of these categories, certainly not every Kurdish person is going to think this or believe this or treat people that way.

Hannah: Right. We don't want to also stereotype Kurds.

Colleen: Right. Right. It's just the things that we saw happen and the way we saw people treated. Again, from our experience. And we would have conversations with our students about things like this. And in many ways, some of them became advocates against this kind of behavior in their society.

Director John!: And hey there, this is John Nelson, the director of Central Group International. I just wanted to encourage you to consider going to Iraq as a teacher. If you do, I can guarantee that at least one life will be changed.

Hannah: I some more, kind of a wave of Cambodian or East Asian women specifically, coming in while I was there. I don't know if it was like there was a wave of Bangladeshis and then that got shut down. And so then these Cambodian East Asian women came in, I don't know. But again, they were given the the housekeeping kind of jobs, housekeeping nanny jobs.

Colleen: I think in Suly it was more women from the Philippines than like Cambodia or other areas. But yeah. So Asian appearance also has definite stereotypes. And I would say, again, it's very gendered because the Southeast Asian women have that similar second class citizen, nanny, housekeeper, maybe prostitute kind of category that they're put in, whereas men, specifically Chinese men, are businessmen. They're the traders. They're the people who bring in and trade massive amounts of goods, all of the doorknobs and all of the pipes and all of the screws and the fittings and the…

Hannah: water heater coils.

Colleen: Yeah, all of those things that make up buildings and appliances and everything. All of that comes through trade with China.

Hannah: Yeah. Yeah. We had some friends. I know two different couples that were Korean. And the men were highly respected, well-loved in their communities, considered very smart, and I think their wives, when they were with them, were also treated well. But if the wives went out on their own to do anything, not so much. We also had a teammate who is American, but of Japanese heritage. And she had an incident where she was in a restaurant with her team, you know, being treated equally. Some of that team had had kids and the waitstaff refused to serve her because they figured she was the nanny. And so if she asked for something or tried to order. They just completely ignored her. And she had to get her white American teammates to order for her. And I think I think they called the the wait staff out on that. And we're like, she's not a nanny. She is one of us. She's also a teacher. Like behave, do better than you're doing.

Colleen: But you know, that assumption, if they had treated her like the rest of the team and then, you know, been yelled at because the people paying didn't like that she wasn't being treated as a second class citizen, like so sticky.

Hannah: Yeah, it was not great. For anyone involved in that. And but she was well loved by her students.

Colleen: Right.

Hannah: And well respected within like and I think that's the thing is that in the the context of where she is known as a person, she was treated equally with everyone else.

Colleen: Yeah.

Hannah: But it's when she steps outside of that where people don't know her and they just assume she was not treated so well. So again, it's not all Kurds treat all Asian men or women this way, but they're operating within the cultural context that they understand.

Colleen: And the expectations.

Hannah: Right.

Colleen: Another category of internationals in Kurdistan are the South Americans.

Hannah: Yes. Which they fall in a weird category.

Colleen: They do. They do. The men, I think, get a similar stereotype actually, as the African-American men, as being football or soccer players.

Hannah: Which almost all of them were were, or at least they do play a lot of football.

Colleen: So there is a certain amount of truth to the stereotype, at least for the experience that we both had. Yeah, but that too comes through all of their consumption of sports and soccer just always that's like the best and most important sport to watch, of course.

Hannah: So yeah. And I feel I think a lot of, at least a lot of the I mostly knew Brazilians and a couple of El Salvadorians, they all spoke really excellent Arabic. And so I think a lot of times they were kind of passed as, oh, they're Arab.

Colleen: Huh?

Hannah: Not necessarily Hispanic or South American.

Colleen: I don't know that the ones around me spoke much Arabic, but their Kurdish was really good. And yeah, their appearance is similar enough to Kurds that I think they don't stand out a lot. And so they, they, they blend in a bit more and are less, I think treated less differently in some ways because of that. Whereas, I you and I had people follow us around in the grocery store because there's no hiding.

Hannah: Right. There's no hiding. I did a road trip with a car full of Brazilian and Argentinian guys for a soccer program and that every single checkpoint we would show our passports and they they turned it into a game and we're like, who's better at football, Brazil or Argentina? Because they're like big football rivals. And so it was kind of fun. But then it was also the like, And what are you, a white girl, doing with these men?

Colleen: Who are all undoubtedly soccer professionals?

Hannah: Right. Who are you? The Wrangler? What is happening? And I was like, Americans are best and they all laugh. Which is fair.

Colleen: The other type of racism that probably is the most talked about, because it's the most common to happen in Kurdistan is the Kurd / Arab racism, which I don't really want to get into a lot, because it's really complicated and sticky and there's a lot of history to it and a lot of longstanding grudges, but I didn't feel like we could talk about racism in Kurdistan without at least mentioning that that is also a thing.

Hannah: Right.

Colleen: And often displays itself not in as much as somebody's appearance, but in, like, people's names. Yes. And that was the feature of it that I found really fascinating, is that someone could maybe look Kurd or Arab or a mix or neither. But the way they're going to be treated is based on whether or not they have a Kurdish or an Arab sounding name.

Hannah: Right.

Colleen: Which is just fascinating to me.

Hannah: It is, especially because typically in Islamic cultures, you're going to get a lot of Muhammads and Alis and those I mean, those types of names. But Kurds don't really name… I mean, you might run across the Muhammad Kurdish Muhammad every once in a while, but not Ali and not Ahmed or Ahmed.

Colleen: I mean, I ran into a few of those as well. But also, yeah, they're just not nearly as common as among our Arab friends.

Hannah: There's a lot more, Dlshad, a lot more very strongly Kurdish. Havan. Very strongly Kurdish names.

Colleen: Another kind of local racism that we ran across is anti-Turk sentimentality.

Hannah: Kurds don't like Turks. Not at all.

Colleen: To the point where I remember we ran across, we had one student who on a regular basis would talk about how much he hated the Turks and how, you know, he just wanted to kill all the Turks. And we're obviously trying to calm some of that down. But then one day he came to school and was like, I was talking to my parents about how much I hated the Turks. And I found out my grandfather was Turkish.

Hannah: Burn!

Colleen: He's like, I don't know what to do with that.

Hannah: Like an identity crisis.

Colleen: Maybe think twice about who you're going to hate.

Hannah: Yes. Yes. And I mean, to be fair, Turks also don't like Kurds.

Colleen: Oh, yeah, it's mutual.

Hannah: It's a two way street for sure. I mean, I also had students who really hated Saudis.

Colleen: Oh, I don't think I ever ran into that one.

Hannah: More because they had this idea that Saudis were, well, super oppressive and also snobby.

Colleen: Hmm. OK.

Hannah: And so it wasn't it was more of a punching up than a punching down situation. I think Kurds and Turks are just punching at each other. Yeah. Ultimately, I did think it was cool, though. We had a lot of Syrian people come in towards the end of my time. And Kurds love Syrians.

Colleen: Yeah. They somehow don't fit into the same category as Turks or even the Syrians are Arab.

Hannah: Right.

Colleen: They're not the southern Iraqi Arabs. And so they don't hold the same place .

Hannah: And I think it comes from when there was a lot of persecution of the Kurds, a lot of them fled to Syria and the Syrians took them in and said, yeah, you can come stay here and we'll take care of you. And so when the reverse was happening and everything was falling apart in Syria, Kurds were like, come on, it's time to repay our debt to you, essentially. And again, well, not all Syrians were treated well by all Kurds. The majority attitude was, yeah, bring the Syrians in. But then when the Yazidi came in, and that's more religious than racial, necessarily. But there was a big mindset of Yazidi are dirty and terrible. And we don't want them here. It's like but they're like they're Kurdish.

Colleen: So complex.

Hannah: It's so complicated.

Colleen: Yeah.

Hannah: I don't think we can solve it Colleen.

Colleen: I don't think so either.

Hannah: I mean, we haven't been able to solve racism in our own country, so I don't think there's much hope for us solving it elsewhere.

Colleen: But if you are going to take a trip to Kurdistan, these are the kinds of things that maybe you should be aware of.

Hannah: Right.

Colleen: That you may have to push back against if you are of one of these ethnicities you may have to deal with on some level, even as a white person. Standing up for your teammates if need be, or, you know, dealing with the stares and the following in the privilege that comes from skin color.

Hannah: Yeah, and it's not I think it's one of those things that most Kurds and I think this is changing a little bit now, but most Kurds wouldn't have put the racism label on it. They would have just been like, Yeah, that's just the way that it is.

Colleen: Right. Yeah.

Hannah: There is starting to become more of an awareness of it. I think the Kurd / Arab and antagonism is probably not going away anytime soon. But like you said, you had some students that were advocating for minority internationals that were brought in. I know the Korean community in Dohuk has done a lot to change stereotypes about East Asians.

Colleen: Yeah. And I think some of it. Yeah, maybe partly solved by some exposure because each of these groups that we're talking about, like there are very few people of different races in Kurdistan. It's very homogenously Middle Eastern, although that is not really homogenous. It's very diverse in and of itself. But as far as like medium skin tone.

Hannah: Dark hair, dark eyes.

Colleen: Yeah, yeah.

Hannah: All those things. And yeah, I think it is starting to change with NGO workers coming in and a lot more, a lot more openness to, to other countries and other cultures as well. Yeah, it's interesting. And it's the thing that doesn't get talked about, like nobody likes to talk about the ugly parts of culture, even even in our own culture.

Colleen: Doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about them, though.

Hannah: Yeah, I think it's I think it's good to shed light on the dark, the dark places just as much as the bright places. There it is, racism. And I don't think we're going to get in too much trouble for it???

Colleen: You know, we might.

Hannah: It's true.

Colleen: Call us out if we're idiots.

Hannah: Yeah. If we got something wrong or we missed something, please let us know. We want to learn. And this is not an area we're experts in, by any means.

Colleen: Nope.

Hannah: Our cumulative years are not thousands, maybe tens. We have tens of years of experience, so let us know, especially if you have been to the Middle East and experienced that in Middle Eastern culture, positively or negatively. We'd love to hear those stories.

Colleen: Yeah. We'd love to hear from you. You can find us at Servant Group International on Face book or Instagram, and you should check out our blog and complete transcripts over at ServantGroup.org.

Hannah: And it's really helpful for us if you share our podcast or leave a review on whatever platform you listen to this podcast on. It helps us know that people are listening and you can let us know what you want to hear next.

Both: Thanks for listening.

Hannah: You would start to disappear, you start to look like the… woman, that's like a… Yeah, it's a weird doctor who reference. What's her name? She's just the face and the skin stretched.

Colleen: Oh, Cassandra.

Hannah: Cassandra yeah. We were like Cassandra from Doctor Who. I'ma edit that out.

Colleen: Probably a good idea.