On Brene Brown and Islamophobia
White icons continue to disappoint. This time, it’s Brene Brown, who is revealing the depth of Islamophobia in Western hearts and minds, including those who have seemingly built their empires on empathy and vulnerability.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed. Brene Brown talks so beautifully about overcoming shame to be open and vulnerable to others, that I had hoped she would take the right side of history. Yes, I was disappointed. But I wasn’t surprised. I read her blog with a quiet resignation that has felt all too familiar as a Brown Muslim woman living in the west, who has been (and continues to be) disappointed by the silence of her alma mater and teachers and mentors she has looked up to for years.
If I’m being honest that quiet resignation is the feeling that hurt me the most. Last year, a white ally told me not to trust other white women. I protested indignantly. I told her as a woman of color and an educator, I had to hope that people change. But as more and more white (and let’s face it white adjacent) peers talk about Barbie and Superbowl and Taylor Swift, while staying silent/neutral about Palestine as they undergo a genocide, I feel my hope for white leaders diminishing every day.
That doesn’t mean there’s no hope. I see the fire from my Black and Brown and Muslim community. I see my BIPOC peers take their collective rage and grief and rise up. As do I, trembling and shaking, but speaking up nonetheless. I will probably get backlash for this post, but when an icon says something wrong, you provide a counterpoint, so that people are not led astray. Here’s my analysis on why Brene Brown’s blog on the ongoing genocide in Gaza is extremely harmful.
She calls it the Israel – Hamas war: It’s not a war, it’s genocide. The war indicates that there is power on both sides, and as we can see from the staggering death toll in Gaza, Palestine does not have the power to go to “war” with Israel. Israel is the oppressor, Palestine is the oppressed.
“Deeply connected to the Jewish community” – I’m really glad she’s connected to the Jewish community. However, shouldn’t she take the time to connect to the Muslim community as well to understand their thoughts?
She calls Hamas a terrorist organization, but fails to do the same for the Israeli military who has not only killed 28K people, but targeted children, journalists and hospitals. Side note: is terrorism a label only reserved for Brown and Muslim people? Note, how Hamas is a terrorist organization, but Netanyahu is a “authoritarian leader”.
She talks about October 7, but not the brutal occupation of Israel since 1967, or the Nakba or its apartheid government.
She admits that her current beliefs are based on her experiences in a panel in 2007 – effectively centering herself instead of the voices of the Palestinian people (in this case the most marginalized) and Palestinian experts on its history and oppression.
She references “several governments in the Middle East” who are benefiting from the violence, without mentioning the benefits that the US is reaping and the fact that it is Western powers like the US, UK that have destabilized that region. There is no mention of the fact that it is Europe that was responsible for Holocaust, not Middle East!
She ends with: “When we look away from the pain of people, we diminish their humanity and our own.” Well, Brene Brown I hate to break it to you, but looks like you diminished your own humanity because you looked away from the genocide of the Palestinian people and their pain of over 75 years of being displaced from their own homeland.
