Tibet Beyond Black and White: Racial Formations and Transnational Collusions Christina
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Tibet Beyond Black and White: Racial Formations and Transnational Collusions Christina Michelle Kleisath A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Washington 2012 Reading Committee: Stevan Harrell, Chair David Allen Jonathan Warren Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Department of Anthropology University of Washington Abstract Tibet Beyond Black and White: Racial Formations and Transnational Collusions Christina Michelle Kleisath Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Stevan Harrell, Professor of Anthropology Department of Anthropology This doctoral project utilizes tools shaped by feminist theorists, critical race theorists, and anthropologists to trace the transnational circuits of power and privilege at work in relationships that form in and around Tibet. With a key focus on race and whiteness, this project investigates the history and current manifestations of white racial formations as they relate to Tibet from three interconnected ideological contexts: the United States, The People’s Republic of China, and Tibet in exile. In exploring the issue of whiteness in Tibet, I endeavor to expand conversations about Tibet beyond the figurative “black and white” framework of Tibetan versus Han Chinese. I also hope to complicate the issue of whiteness beyond the “Black and White” binary that often constricts discussions of race. This dissertation is formed around a simple argument: that whiteness matters in Tibet, and that to understand how it matters, we must pay careful attention to sociohistorical racial projects from a variety of diverse contexts. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1: Introduction 1 A Ritual to Read to Each Other 1 The U.S. as Empire 8 Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy 10 A Theory of Racial Formation 11 2: Methodology and Methods 18 Racism and Anthropology 18 Methodology of the Oppressed 21 The Methodology Exemplified 28 Paula Moya’s Realist Identity 31 White Realist Identity 35 Field Methods 36 1. Interviews 36 2. Surveys 39 3. Participant Observation 40 Critical Discourse Analysis 42 3: Stop Saying Western, Start Saying White 45 Transforming the Dominant Vocabulary of Tibet Studies 45 What is White? 46 Why Don’t We Talk about Whiteness in Scholarship on Tibet? 49 The Curious Case of the Word “Western” 51 Literature Analysis 53 Who is “Seen” as Western? 53 Uneven Racialization 56 Erasure: Part One 61 Erasure: Part Two 65 Closing Thoughts 67 4: Whiteness and “The Tibet Question”: A Case Study 70 Angry Snow Lions and Naïve Dragons 72 The Third Party in Contemporary Tibet 79 Pro-Tibet or Anti-Chinese? 82 Challenging the “Western” Variable in The Tibet Question 84 Closing Thoughts 90 5: Whiteness in China Studies 93 Tibet as “Internal” or Non-Existent 93 China Studies and Orientalism 94 Surviving Orientalism 96 The Politics of White Skin in China Studies 102 Critical Han Studies and Post-Race Orientalism 108 Closing Thoughts 115 6: Whiteness and Racial Formation in the Context of P.R. China 117 Transnational Collusions: a Textbook Case 118 Race and China in Chinese History 123 Dikötter and His Critics 128 Who was Kung Fu Fighting? 131 Race and China’s Fifty Six Minority Ethnicities/Nationalities 134 Transnational Collusions Revisited 145 7: Manifestations of White Supremacy in China and Tibet 148 Racialized Images of Non-Asian People of Color 149 Racialized Images of White People 154 White Supremacy and Han Dominance 163 8: Whiteness and Racial Formation in the Context of Tibet 172 Historical and Present Day Tibetan Critiques of White Supremacy 174 The Meaning of 180 ི་$ལ་བ། The Strategic Embrace of White Supremacy 185 Advocating or Taking Advantage? 188 9: Conclusion 196 List of Works Cited 199 1: Introduction A Ritual to Read to Each Other If you don't know the kind of person I am and I don't know the kind of person you are a pattern that others made may prevail in the world and following the wrong god home we may miss our star. For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dyke. And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail, but if one wanders the circus won't find the park, I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty to know what occurs but not recognize the fact. And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all who talk: though we could fool each other, we should consider— lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark. For it is important that awake people be awake, or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep; the signals we give—yes or no, or maybe— should be clear: the darkness around us is deep. William Stafford 1 This dissertation project begins with a stream of memories: moments which asserted themselves as clear signals that a fragile sequence had been broken. The elephants had wandered, and a breaking line had discouraged some of us into sleep. An e-mail, a paycheck, a doctor’s visit, a story, and a question. The e-mail arrived in March of 2009. It was from a young white American woman preparing for a Masters in Health Sciences program in international health, looking for an organization in which she could complete a required 3-6 month internship. She wrote to me in regards to the four years (2003-2007) I had spent working with Tibetan women in 1 Ziling) in the Tibetan region of Amdo,(西 ཟི་ལིང ( 宁市,青海省,中国2) to form Shem, a non-governmental women’s organization whose mission is to “Empower Tibetan women through small scale development.” Her e-mail queried: Do you have any thoughts on whether there might be any possibility for me to work with Shem? I'm sure it would be an amazing learning experience for me and hopefully I would be able to make some valuable contributions to the communities and work at Shem (email to author, March 12, 2009). At first glance, the e-mail appeared quite benign, a simple request for information that I might normally reply to without much thought. When I received the request, I had been working on a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Washington— 6,025 miles away from Shem women’s group—for two years, and I was in no position to answer any request regarding the organization’s needs for interns. I drafted a response: “Dear Friend, you must be mistaken, for I no longer work in Ziling, please redirect your request to the Shem Staff in Tibet”, but before I could hit 1Zi-ling Using Turrell Wylie’s transliteration system for Tibetan (1959). 2 Xining, Qinghai, People’s Republic of China 2 the send button, I remembered all of the foreign donors, aid workers, government representatives and Samaritans who had come through during my stay there. ཟི་ལིང They often wanted to hear about Shem and often requested a private dinner with me, exclusive of my Tibetan colleagues. I remembered one U.S. donor’s comment that he wouldn’t trust our organization if it didn’t have a “Westerner” like me behind it, and my American colleague’s assertion that an NGO without a “Westerner” at its helm was doomed to failure. I deleted my draft, and the young woman’s query sat unanswered. Perhaps this particular e-mail was merely a case of misinformation, or the result of an outdated organizational website. Regardless, the e-mail was part of a larger communication pattern that I could not ignore: Why was my power and knowledge constantly overestimated while that of my Tibetan colleagues constantly under-acknowledged and underestimated? What made me, and not my Tibetan colleagues, an “expert” on development in Tibet? The longer this e-mail sat in my inbox, the more it disturbed me. Lhamotso and Lhamo, the Tibetan women with whom I co-founded the organization, had been leading the organization for some time. They had worked at the organization since its inception, overseeing more than 60 development projects, hiring new staff, and managing the sizeable annual budget for more than three years. I had made significant contributions to the organization at its founding, but by almost any standard of measurement, the executive director Lhamotso was the expert on the organization. She and the other Shem directors were much better positioned to answer questions about the organization’s needs for volunteers. Nevertheless, I continued to receive e-mails calling on my expertise on a monthly basis. 3 While working as Shem’s co-founder and director from 2005-2007, I had become comfortable with the “expert status” conferred to me on a number of topics that I was now qualified to speak on, to, and about; topics ranging from Tibetan women’s rights to development policy in the Third World. My status as an “expert” on the workings of Shem made some sense to me when I was in After all, I ཟི་ལིང. had co-founded the organization, and was working there on a daily basis. This understanding of myself was shored up by affirmations on all sides. Local people and expatriates congratulated me on my work, looked up to me, and asked for my advice. I woke up most mornings with a feeling of deep satisfaction. I was doing “good work”, which was widely appreciated. My knowledge and efforts were taken seriously, and I was fighting for a just cause. What was there to question? Shortly after I arrived back home to the United States, disquieting memories began to assert themselves into my rosy recollections of my years in I woke ཟི་ལིང.