:Vocalo.org

From the NY Times: BEARD BAN RULED UNFAIR TO BLACKS By TAMAR LEWIN Published: November 3, 1993 In the latest upset to an employer's prohibition against beards, a Federal appeals court in St. Louis has ruled that Domino's Pizza must waive its ban for black employees who have a common and sometimes painful skin ailment. Many employers, particularly law-enforcement agencies, have unbending rules against beards, and those rules have been a sporadic subject of civil rights litigation for almost 20 years. Black men, who are by far the most frequent sufferers of the skin ailment, pseudofolliculitis barbae, or PFB, say the ban unfairly restricts their employment opportunities. The events that led to the Domino's ruling began 10 years ago, when Langston J. Bradley of Omaha, who is black, got a part-time job as a delivery driver for the pizza maker while working full time as an investigator for the Nebraska equal employment opportunity office. Mr. Bradley said he had worked at Domino's only a few weeks before he was told that he must shave the beard he had begun or he would lose his job. 'A Matter of Principle' "I thought it was discriminatory, because it cuts down chances for black men to do that kind of work if there is a rule against beards," Mr. Bradley, now 45 and working at a Frito-Lay factory, said in a telephone interview yesterday. "Also, I had been through the military, where I had gotten a shaving waiver, so I knew that was possible. And I knew having a beard would not impact on my ability to do the job. It's a matter of principle for me." PFB is caused when tightly curled beard hairs, sharpened by shaving, curve back and re-enter the skin, producing inflammation, bumps and infections. Although estimates vary, medical authorities say that the ailment afflicts perhaps half of the black men who shave and that about half of all those afflicted have conditions serious enough that they should not shave at all. Mr. Bradley filed suit on grounds that the company's rule discriminated against black men and thus violated Federal civil rights law. He was joined by the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Citing its own surveys, Domino's argued that many customers would have a negative reaction to bearded deliverymen, and last year a Federal district judge ruled in the company's favor. The judge found that Domino's had legitimate business reasons for banning beards and that in any case Mr. Bradley's skin condition was not so severe that he needed to avoid shaving. But in a little-noticed decision on Oct. 19, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, ruled unanimously that Domino's must relax its rule to accommodate those with PFB. "Domino's is free to establish any grooming and dress standards it wishes," said the decision, written by Judge Pasco M. Bowman 2d and joined by Judges Roger L. Wollman and Frank J. Magill. "We hold only that reasonable accommodation must be made for members of the protected class who suffer from PFB. We note that the burden of a narrow medical exception for African-American males who cannot shave because of PFB appears minimal." Addressing the company's argument that there was a business necessity to ban beards, the court said, "The existence of a beard on the face of a deliveryman does not affect in any manner Domino's ability to make or deliver pizzas to their customers." Domino's Is Appealing Soren Jensen, a lawyer for Domino's, said yesterday that the company had appealed the ruling by asking for a rehearing by the full appeals court. In a previous round of the litigation, the appeals court had agreed with the district judge that Mr. Bradley's particular condition was not severe and had dropped him from the case. But the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission continued with the suit as a general challenge to the company's policy. The Domino's case has traveled a tortuous path through the Federal courts, moving first from the district court to the appeals court, then back to the district court and then, after the Supreme Court had declined to hear a motion on it, back to the appeals court. In the course of those years, there have been radical shifts in the standards governing Federal civil rights litigation. In the 1970's, after a Virginia grocery clerk with PFB lost his job because he had refused to shave, a Federal appeals court rejected his claim of racial discrimination, and the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal. But in the last four years, a Federal court in Tennessee has found that a no-beard policy discriminated against a police officer. In a similar case, an officer who had been dismissed from the University of Maryland police because of his beard won back pay. In 1990, a survey by The New York Times of 40 state and municipal police departments around the country found that all but three generally prohibited employees from growing beards. Twelve of the 40 departments did not allow any medical exceptions, and nine others said that although they would allow medical exceptions, bearded officers were reassigned from the street to desk duties.

From http://www.tobaron.com:

arab lady working at the cafe says:

How long you grow it.

I smile and say....um...i havent shaved in about 4 years.

arab lady: is beautiful. i see you, i see....(she gestures a full long shape from the smile to the heart)

people here, they no like the beard, i see you, i have... Respeeeeeeect. (she puffs out her chest and sticks out her chin)...We grow up with this,

me: yes, the natural beard.

she: is beautiful. people here, they no know how to see the beard. Is a lot of work!

me: no, i just wash it, i wash ( scurbbing motions over head, face) just like anything else :)

arab lady: people here no keep clean. (huge smile and nod to my face) Is beautiful I love it.

----------------------------------

RRRRRRRRealllllllneSSSSSSS!!!!!!!

[Jun. 8th, 2007|06:13 pm]
[Tags: 'community', 'race', beard, chimera, gendered behaviour, image, lgbt, love, nyc, race, relationships]

BL. from POCC has personally invited me to the Love Ball.

he said i should compete for butch queen realness.
when they see that beard!!!!! Oh Girrrrlll, realnesssss!!!!! That is REALNESS.
he also thinks i should join a House.

---------------------------------------

[Oct. 10th, 2007|05:29 pm]
[Tags: beard, border, boundaries, comedy, fear of a bearded planet, travel, women, work]

"See this?" he insisted, lifting up his beard to pull it upwards accross his face, revealing a shock of white hairs streaming out from behind the curtain.
"Israel."

They grinned and nodded with recognition of a shared note: bittersweet humour, and the passing of age.

"See this ?" tilting forward the crown of her, raven-black. She pulled open the part of her hair, to reveal a small circle of white roots, at that place where four bones met.
"Palestine."

--------------------------------------

tramp_o_line) wrote,
@ 2007-11-21 18:41:00

Entry tags:
'race', children, diaspora, family, fear of a bearded planet, nyc, organization
fear of a bearded planet 2.0/ a constant theme of travel and trade

maybe i should start a new journal for this project.
i think i ought to keep an annotated tally for all of the incidents of arabs thinking I'm an arab, and white people thinking i'm a 'terrorist'.

happened again last night, egyptian man thought i was from iran or turkey. No pun intended, I get Turkey a lot.

he asked where are you from, i said canada, he said, no where are you really from?

i'm really from canada. :D

we both laughed. This time we didnt speak about religion.

we talked about his kids, and how his friends have all moved to canada saying its nicer and better than here, people are nicer, life is cheaper. His daughter wants to continue with her french, here at school they teach her spanish, she tries to keep the french on her own by reading, and her parents speak to her in arabic at home.
"My son, he dont care, he like to play videogames." So daughter speaks/thinks in 4 languages, the nafta plus package -- perhaps she wants to be a diplomat? he says she would love to be a doctor, like her uncle. he would move the family to canada, like his friends have done, he says --but he is not skilled.

edit:
thinking about skills, access and privilege; where I am from and where I am really from. My fathers father was a labourer, who immigrated to canada and worked for 5 years to bring his wife over. 12? 15? years later, he died of a heart attack while shoveling the snow. My father was 9 yrs old, his brother was 12 (?).
my fathers mother was illterate and a widow, not fluent in english. she somehow managed to work and own (with male business partners whom I vaguely remember hearing she was mistreated by)
a lunchonette, where i think she cooked, and then a tavern full of drunken fist-fighting irish men, into which she wasnt allowed to enter. My father dropped out of school to be a beatnik actor, but she wouldnt let him sell his textbooks. I have vivid memories of that, as pantomimed by my father, in her language. Even though she couldnt read, she insisted the books were hers, not his -- it was her opportunity he was throwing away.

the town where my mother was born no longer exists. my mothers father belonged to some kind of grain co-op somewhere btwn what is now Poland/Lithuania. i think this had more to do with jews having to rely on each other for business opportunities, as i clearly remember my grandfather hated anything to do with socialists. The grandmother had been in love with a man who was murdered by robbers on a road, how she came to be connected with my grandfather i dont know. they were able to raise the money to pay the head tax to come to canada by selling their share of the business and their house to (?), a jew who clearly wanted to help them to leave -- he had no need of two houses. His inlaws said if they had known this was in his plans, going to live in the wilderness (ie canada) they never would have let their daughter marry him. Of the few jews granted visas, he was allowed to come to canada if he agreed to be a farmer, and the family was deposited --after a harrowing journey and sea voyage with lots of antisemtism and violence along the way-- in the northern tundra of manitoba. my mother has shared some of the details with me at different points in our relationship/as i have grown older. She is still of a culture that doesnt talk about it in public, and so i dont either. I think my mother has run away from that place for much of her life. She grew up to become the most urban, graceful A-list sophisticate, the perfect hostess, charmante, glamourus with humility...and my father was always a macho bruiser kind of guy, with a male hysteric/sentimental side, and commitment to community service as an act of social justice.

they made their own lives, with a lot of luck and no background or connections to facilitate anything. the cultural expectation has changed. I did not grow up to surpass their social milieu (become a doctor-lawyer-weathy business person-girl with wedding/husband/2kids to name after grandparents.)....what is my role here, and what is my relationship to this lineage.

Have I thrown away my grandmother's books?

--------------------------------------------------

comforting the mourner

[Oct. 8th, 2007|04:18 am]
[Tags: fear of a bearded planet, divine providence, men, men in cars, nyc]

a person can find themself in a variety of states of mourning, depending on their orientation and relationship to loss.

tonight I shared a taxi with a man who, soon after he extended his hand and name to me, told me that his friend and mentor, his 'boss in a way' had survived a very serious car accident yesterday. he is worried he will not be able to be there for him when he sees him. There has been a lost of structurural damage to the body, including fractures to the face.

at no point did i stop to realise that this happens to me, almost every day, that a man will confide a deep emotion to me. i realised it only after i was at least 20 min away from the conversation, as i am typing it now.

i explained to him that my family has been intimately involved in the same field of business as him and his mentor. the industry, chemistry and economics of these materials is something he could study and learn, but the love and passion for it is something noone could teach him. I told him clearly he is already a loving and passionate person, for the way he speaks of his mentor, and the love and concern he has for him .

at no point did i step back to notice that men are not supposed to talk this way.

i agreed with him, seeing anyone who is surviving physical trauma is hard, it is hard to look at that. but it is even harder to look out from an injured body, and see that someone is looking at you that way.

that was, i admit, an indulgent moment for me.

i told him that clearly the love he has for his teacher is something the teacher feels and enjoys, there is a symbiosis, a balance, to a mentorship. his friend needs him to listen with and attend with the same depth of focus as he always had, whether its kidding around, or learning and working. his boss cherishes him for that, and he has to remember that in his position he gives his boss a beautiful gift, which means as much to the boss as his mentorship does for this man.

as i type i realise i have forgotten his name, i think i have forgotten the name of almost every person i have had these anoymus exchanges with -- I know which name I use for myself, and theirs is somehow heard equally as pseudonym.

he was very worried he wouldnt be able to handle seeing his boss injured. i reminded himself that to be there for his friend , he has to take care of himself, in order to have it together. he was desperately clinging to the idea that things had to be as they were before, inspite of how his boss might look. as he said it out loud though, he recognised he was asking his mentor to be more than human.

I think I help him.

-----------------------------------------------------

tramp_o_line wrote,
@ 2007-10-08 11:44:00

Entry tags:
diaspora, fear of a bearded planet, men, nyc, privilege, race, toronto

passing as muslim

over the past month I have had countless encounters with muslim men who think I am muslim.

I am now signed (deleuze) with elements which bring familiarity, comfort and inspiration to a muslim man.

the conversation often has this pattern:

we meet, on a subway platform, a taxi, on the street -- public or semi-public spaces.

they assume I am a muslim

they start a conversation with me

i return a salutation in arabic

the conversation continues (where can i shop for ramadan, how was your day today, where are you from)

i explain i am from (here) and i like to learn to say polite things to people in as many languages as possible, and I am a jew. (not necc. in that order)

in ny in the past, they might tell me at this point (we are cousins, we want peace, etc) Now more often I hear we are brothers. This is usually after they beagn by calling me brother.

in toronto they have been from somalia, pakistan, turkey(more later when i remember...there was a woman from afganistan)
in ny from yemen, cant remember where else...sometimes the conversation doesnt get that far if its just at the cash in a shop and we are not alone.

they have guessed me to be from jordan, palestine, israel, lebanon, turkey or an american convert.
noone has asked if i am a muslim from eastern europe/central asia.

each of these conversations is an opportunity to be a white guilt-ridden rescuer
while representing nations, races, ancestors and ideals...i turn myself inside out checking checking checking myself for my racisms...i try to be empathic while not letting myself get swept away by oceans of ancestry.
I do not interrupt: I let them tell me what they want to say. We are usually in agreement, sometimes I have offered that it is easy for us to have this conversation here, in the comfort of our north american context (which is often a class biased one in which they are in a service industry; cab driver, cashier) while we are not fighting over land here -- noone has the right to tear down your house.

*

the older yeminite man i met on the Q from brighton beach early sept.
told me about living together with jews in yemen before the british.
about arabs and jews nursing each others babies, and living in the same house. we talked for about 40 min, i cried. we held hands.

*

muhammed from somalia in a taxi on spadina to shawns /carlton told me I looked like 'the real jew, the authentic jew' (i.e. middle eastern, indigenous to the conflicted region.) he insisted that to be a real muslim he hs to love all the prophets, 'and 99% of them, i belive they came from israel!'
later in shannons jeep he pulled up along side and reintroduced himself as 'your #1 muslim friend!' we had a laugh because i hadnt met him in profile and so didnt immediately recognise him. We played catchup on the road, me hanging out of the back of shannons open jeep and him leaning out the window of his taxi.

*

i shared a cigarette waiting for the bus late at night coming back from york u. he offered me the cigarette out of his own mouth.

we talked about how he wants to return to turkey after he graduates, its the only place in the world he would ever want to live. we sat together on the bus, tentatively at first, and then on the subway as well. I could tell people were listening to us on the subway. he confided in me that he loves to read koran but he is then inspired to become religious, and he knows he cannot be religious, so he stops reading. we talked about religion and love. he is an engineer; i offered that religion is an organizational system, a way to manage the terrestrial plain with a sense of humility, hygene, reverence as aspects of holistic health. some people are so deeply in love, they want everyone to know, so they will wear special clothing to show their committment to the relationship and the depth of their love. I understand this and respect it. (we were at that time two secularly dressed men of abrahamic faiths, who had earlier shared a cigarette.) But then some people go too far, they try to control the one that they love, and change its shape and appearance to suit them , for example, if someone says, I'm going to show the world how much I love you, I'm going to blow myself up.

If anyone else told you, i think we should all fast for a whole month, and only eat once a day, at night. what meaning would it have without a system of meaning imposed onto it? we talked about france and the laws against wearing kippah/hijab, etc. I encouraged him to have a healthy relationship to his koran, that it's his: it belongs to him. He doesnt have to go to extremes to enjoy the relationship.
He knows who he is, he is a sensitive person who feels joy and love, who respects the culture of his family. he has every right to enjoy and be inspired by koran and praying. he was very moved by what i was saying, our conversation reminded him he has options. he asked me for my email, and i gave it to him.

that conversation: bus stop, bus, subway...an hour at least. i was so drained afterwards. I couldn't believe I had just given spiritual counciling to a muslim. does this happen? yes, I guess it does.

*

i have promised myself i will write down these episodes, but its so draining when it happens i dont always have the discipline to write it out -- i have a bad habit of telling a few friends and then its gone.

i am an ally in struggle against oppression, with a changing relationship to race, and shifting privileges...how this is engaged is live, every day.

for three decades i was experienced as a white woman.
now i am something else.

From http://www.tobaron.com: arab lady working at the cafe says: How long you grow it. I smile and say....um...i havent shaved in about 4 years. arab lady: is beautiful. i see you, i see....(she gestures a full long shape from the smile to the heart) people here, they no like the beard, i see you, i have... Respeeeeeeect. (she puffs out her chest and sticks out her chin)...We grow up with this, me: yes, the natural beard. she: is beautiful. people here, they no know how to see the beard. Is a lot of work! me: no, i just wash it, i wash ( scurbbing motions over head, face) just like anything else :) arab lady: people here no keep clean. (huge smile and nod to my face) Is beautiful I love it. ---------------------------------- RRRRRRRRealllllllneSSSSSSS!!!!!!! [Jun. 8th, 2007|06:13 pm] [Tags: 'community', 'race', beard, chimera, gendered behaviour, image, lgbt, love, nyc, race, relationships] BL. from POCC has personally invited me to the Love Ball. he said i should compete for butch queen realness. when they see that beard!!!!! Oh Girrrrlll, realnesssss!!!!! That is REALNESS. he also thinks i should join a House. --------------------------------------- [Oct. 10th, 2007|05:29 pm] [Tags: beard, border, boundaries, comedy, fear of a bearded planet, travel, women, work] "See this?" he insisted, lifting up his beard to pull it upwards accross his face, revealing a shock of white hairs streaming out from behind the curtain. "Israel." They grinned and nodded with recognition of a shared note: bittersweet humour, and the passing of age. "See this ?" tilting forward the crown of her, raven-black. She pulled open the part of her hair, to reveal a small circle of white roots, at that place where four bones met. "Palestine." -------------------------------------- tramp_o_line) wrote, @ 2007-11-21 18:41:00 Entry tags: 'race', children, diaspora, family, fear of a bearded planet, nyc, organization fear of a bearded planet 2.0/ a constant theme of travel and trade maybe i should start a new journal for this project. i think i ought to keep an annotated tally for all of the incidents of arabs thinking I'm an arab, and white people thinking i'm a 'terrorist'. happened again last night, egyptian man thought i was from iran or turkey. No pun intended, I get Turkey a lot. he asked where are you from, i said canada, he said, no where are you really from? i'm really from canada. :D we both laughed. This time we didnt speak about religion. we talked about his kids, and how his friends have all moved to canada saying its nicer and better than here, people are nicer, life is cheaper. His daughter wants to continue with her french, here at school they teach her spanish, she tries to keep the french on her own by reading, and her parents speak to her in arabic at home. "My son, he dont care, he like to play videogames." So daughter speaks/thinks in 4 languages, the nafta plus package -- perhaps she wants to be a diplomat? he says she would love to be a doctor, like her uncle. he would move the family to canada, like his friends have done, he says --but he is not skilled. edit: thinking about skills, access and privilege; where I am from and where I am really from. My fathers father was a labourer, who immigrated to canada and worked for 5 years to bring his wife over. 12? 15? years later, he died of a heart attack while shoveling the snow. My father was 9 yrs old, his brother was 12 (?). my fathers mother was illterate and a widow, not fluent in english. she somehow managed to work and own (with male business partners whom I vaguely remember hearing she was mistreated by) a lunchonette, where i think she cooked, and then a tavern full of drunken fist-fighting irish men, into which she wasnt allowed to enter. My father dropped out of school to be a beatnik actor, but she wouldnt let him sell his textbooks. I have vivid memories of that, as pantomimed by my father, in her language. Even though she couldnt read, she insisted the books were hers, not his -- it was her opportunity he was throwing away. the town where my mother was born no longer exists. my mothers father belonged to some kind of grain co-op somewhere btwn what is now Poland/Lithuania. i think this had more to do with jews having to rely on each other for business opportunities, as i clearly remember my grandfather hated anything to do with socialists. The grandmother had been in love with a man who was murdered by robbers on a road, how she came to be connected with my grandfather i dont know. they were able to raise the money to pay the head tax to come to canada by selling their share of the business and their house to (?), a jew who clearly wanted to help them to leave -- he had no need of two houses. His inlaws said if they had known this was in his plans, going to live in the wilderness (ie canada) they never would have let their daughter marry him. Of the few jews granted visas, he was allowed to come to canada if he agreed to be a farmer, and the family was deposited --after a harrowing journey and sea voyage with lots of antisemtism and violence along the way-- in the northern tundra of manitoba. my mother has shared some of the details with me at different points in our relationship/as i have grown older. She is still of a culture that doesnt talk about it in public, and so i dont either. I think my mother has run away from that place for much of her life. She grew up to become the most urban, graceful A-list sophisticate, the perfect hostess, charmante, glamourus with humility...and my father was always a macho bruiser kind of guy, with a male hysteric/sentimental side, and commitment to community service as an act of social justice. they made their own lives, with a lot of luck and no background or connections to facilitate anything. the cultural expectation has changed. I did not grow up to surpass their social milieu (become a doctor-lawyer-weathy business person-girl with wedding/husband/2kids to name after grandparents.)....what is my role here, and what is my relationship to this lineage. Have I thrown away my grandmother's books? -------------------------------------------------- comforting the mourner [Oct. 8th, 2007|04:18 am] [Tags: fear of a bearded planet, divine providence, men, men in cars, nyc] a person can find themself in a variety of states of mourning, depending on their orientation and relationship to loss. tonight I shared a taxi with a man who, soon after he extended his hand and name to me, told me that his friend and mentor, his 'boss in a way' had survived a very serious car accident yesterday. he is worried he will not be able to be there for him when he sees him. There has been a lost of structurural damage to the body, including fractures to the face. at no point did i stop to realise that this happens to me, almost every day, that a man will confide a deep emotion to me. i realised it only after i was at least 20 min away from the conversation, as i am typing it now. i explained to him that my family has been intimately involved in the same field of business as him and his mentor. the industry, chemistry and economics of these materials is something he could study and learn, but the love and passion for it is something noone could teach him. I told him clearly he is already a loving and passionate person, for the way he speaks of his mentor, and the love and concern he has for him . at no point did i step back to notice that men are not supposed to talk this way. i agreed with him, seeing anyone who is surviving physical trauma is hard, it is hard to look at that. but it is even harder to look out from an injured body, and see that someone is looking at you that way. that was, i admit, an indulgent moment for me. i told him that clearly the love he has for his teacher is something the teacher feels and enjoys, there is a symbiosis, a balance, to a mentorship. his friend needs him to listen with and attend with the same depth of focus as he always had, whether its kidding around, or learning and working. his boss cherishes him for that, and he has to remember that in his position he gives his boss a beautiful gift, which means as much to the boss as his mentorship does for this man. as i type i realise i have forgotten his name, i think i have forgotten the name of almost every person i have had these anoymus exchanges with -- I know which name I use for myself, and theirs is somehow heard equally as pseudonym. he was very worried he wouldnt be able to handle seeing his boss injured. i reminded himself that to be there for his friend , he has to take care of himself, in order to have it together. he was desperately clinging to the idea that things had to be as they were before, inspite of how his boss might look. as he said it out loud though, he recognised he was asking his mentor to be more than human. I think I help him. ----------------------------------------------------- tramp_o_line wrote, @ 2007-10-08 11:44:00 Entry tags: diaspora, fear of a bearded planet, men, nyc, privilege, race, toronto passing as muslim over the past month I have had countless encounters with muslim men who think I am muslim. I am now signed (deleuze) with elements which bring familiarity, comfort and inspiration to a muslim man. the conversation often has this pattern: we meet, on a subway platform, a taxi, on the street -- public or semi-public spaces. they assume I am a muslim they start a conversation with me i return a salutation in arabic the conversation continues (where can i shop for ramadan, how was your day today, where are you from) i explain i am from (here) and i like to learn to say polite things to people in as many languages as possible, and I am a jew. (not necc. in that order) in ny in the past, they might tell me at this point (we are cousins, we want peace, etc) Now more often I hear we are brothers. This is usually after they beagn by calling me brother. in toronto they have been from somalia, pakistan, turkey(more later when i remember...there was a woman from afganistan) in ny from yemen, cant remember where else...sometimes the conversation doesnt get that far if its just at the cash in a shop and we are not alone. they have guessed me to be from jordan, palestine, israel, lebanon, turkey or an american convert. noone has asked if i am a muslim from eastern europe/central asia. each of these conversations is an opportunity to be a white guilt-ridden rescuer while representing nations, races, ancestors and ideals...i turn myself inside out checking checking checking myself for my racisms...i try to be empathic while not letting myself get swept away by oceans of ancestry. I do not interrupt: I let them tell me what they want to say. We are usually in agreement, sometimes I have offered that it is easy for us to have this conversation here, in the comfort of our north american context (which is often a class biased one in which they are in a service industry; cab driver, cashier) while we are not fighting over land here -- noone has the right to tear down your house. * the older yeminite man i met on the Q from brighton beach early sept. told me about living together with jews in yemen before the british. about arabs and jews nursing each others babies, and living in the same house. we talked for about 40 min, i cried. we held hands. * muhammed from somalia in a taxi on spadina to shawns /carlton told me I looked like 'the real jew, the authentic jew' (i.e. middle eastern, indigenous to the conflicted region.) he insisted that to be a real muslim he hs to love all the prophets, 'and 99% of them, i belive they came from israel!' later in shannons jeep he pulled up along side and reintroduced himself as 'your #1 muslim friend!' we had a laugh because i hadnt met him in profile and so didnt immediately recognise him. We played catchup on the road, me hanging out of the back of shannons open jeep and him leaning out the window of his taxi. * i shared a cigarette waiting for the bus late at night coming back from york u. he offered me the cigarette out of his own mouth. we talked about how he wants to return to turkey after he graduates, its the only place in the world he would ever want to live. we sat together on the bus, tentatively at first, and then on the subway as well. I could tell people were listening to us on the subway. he confided in me that he loves to read koran but he is then inspired to become religious, and he knows he cannot be religious, so he stops reading. we talked about religion and love. he is an engineer; i offered that religion is an organizational system, a way to manage the terrestrial plain with a sense of humility, hygene, reverence as aspects of holistic health. some people are so deeply in love, they want everyone to know, so they will wear special clothing to show their committment to the relationship and the depth of their love. I understand this and respect it. (we were at that time two secularly dressed men of abrahamic faiths, who had earlier shared a cigarette.) But then some people go too far, they try to control the one that they love, and change its shape and appearance to suit them , for example, if someone says, I'm going to show the world how much I love you, I'm going to blow myself up. If anyone else told you, i think we should all fast for a whole month, and only eat once a day, at night. what meaning would it have without a system of meaning imposed onto it? we talked about france and the laws against wearing kippah/hijab, etc. I encouraged him to have a healthy relationship to his koran, that it's his: it belongs to him. He doesnt have to go to extremes to enjoy the relationship. He knows who he is, he is a sensitive person who feels joy and love, who respects the culture of his family. he has every right to enjoy and be inspired by koran and praying. he was very moved by what i was saying, our conversation reminded him he has options. he asked me for my email, and i gave it to him. that conversation: bus stop, bus, subway...an hour at least. i was so drained afterwards. I couldn't believe I had just given spiritual counciling to a muslim. does this happen? yes, I guess it does. * i have promised myself i will write down these episodes, but its so draining when it happens i dont always have the discipline to write it out -- i have a bad habit of telling a few friends and then its gone. i am an ally in struggle against oppression, with a changing relationship to race, and shifting privileges...how this is engaged is live, every day. for three decades i was experienced as a white woman. now i am something else.