Hamlet in Hamtramck
To hoist, or not to hoist by one's own petar?
Panic in Detroit was David Bowie’s gift to Michigan’s riots and Iggy Pop. And there’s a bit of panic in Detroit today.
That’s just the way it is.
So said, in fact, Bruce Hornsby, who concluded that, “That’s not the way it ought to be.”
Prince Hal in Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part One avows an intent to cast off his roguish ways (that’s just the way he is), and reasons he’ll cut all the better a dash in future, for having been such a rogue in the past (though he knows when he says it that that’s not the way he ought to be (the little schemer)):
I’ll so offend, to make offence a skill;
Redeeming time when men think least I will.
Indeed, Hal. Lucky for you, the general public never hears this little soliloquy.
Meanwhile, back in Motown, there’s something rotten in the state of Michigan…
Black marks: Out, out, damned spot.
During my career as a tour guide, one US group I conducted included a married couple, of which the lady had an unusual gait. She walked with her feet widely splayed but made no particular effort to do so: it was how she walked. In her earlier years she had been a professional ballet dancer.
One day I found myself with her and her husband as we meandered somewhere in unparticular. They were visibly oriental of appearance and I, because I am curious to learn about foreign cultures, asked about the lady’s dance career and the couple’s origins: did they hail from Japan? The answer was polite, if short: “No, we are Americans.”
One can understand the sensitivity. Another time, I accompanied a group of Japanese businessmen for the purposes of a due diligence into a Belgian company, with a view to purchasing it. The law firm that engaged me to simply translate into English such documents in the data room as evoked their interest were surprised to overhear me actually giving the Japanese gentlemen insight into what the documents were and their impact and importance (I’m a lawyer too). At one point, I drew a comparison between the legislation in the Kingdom of Belgium and the … I paused, what exactly is Japan? And, before I knew it, I’d completed the sentence with, “… and the Empire of Japan.” The managing director looked up quizzically at me, but said nothing, and then smiled. Again, I’d hit a nerve, and couldn’t be sorry: Japan is an empire, that’s what the encyclopaedia says.
These two momentary experiences in a lifetime that never saw me in Japan at all left me with a stark impression, and indeed one that cannot but evoke admiration in me. I was disgusted to read of the horrors committed against the civilian population in occupied Manila in World War II and, of course, the Battle of Pearl Harbor was dubbed by the US’s president as a day of infamy. Japan has, like Germany, like — we had thought — Russia, moved on from its bad boy image and become a shining example. But their wounds smart.
A colleague of mine when I worked in Germany brought home to me how much of a weight rested on the shoulders of that country’s youth as he had been growing up: guilt for acts for which he was in no way responsible; surrogate guilt for his father’s generation, who had been responsible; and responsibility to work for a new world, in which such outrages would never be repeated. He spoke to me as though I were the one towards whom he had felt shame: Britain had stood upright and honourable, had bent to the task of beating evil, had won through with astonishing perseverance, had shown Germany how wrong it had been.
Britain may have done much right in the fight against fascism in Germany. But it did much wrong in the fight for fascism in the rest of the world, in its sanctimonious exportation of moral rectitude, as it despoiled one-third of the Earth’s surface, backed, not with benevolence and persuasion but with gunboats and subjection of indigenous peoples, while fighting off the other European colonialists just as eager to bag the booty for themselves. I can understand Uwe’s shame: because I feel it myself.
Four people: the Japanese ballet dancer’s husband; a Japanese businessman in a data room; a young German lawyer; and a young Scots lawyer. What have they all in common? They all share an acute awareness of the wrong wrought by their native lands. It’s an awareness that can cause hurt and embarrassment, if others choose to pick on it to torment the conscientious. But a pride in and affiliation to one’s roots, whilst no bad thing, is the better for being tempered with humility at the black marks in one’s native copybook. For, white marks are rarely, if ever, lauded: it is rather the black marks that draw attention and, with that, criticism. And it is those that one must therefore endeavour to eradicate by new example.
Alas, poor Hamtramck: fellows of no infinite jest
There is controversy afoot concerning the decision by the city council of Hamtramck, in the state of Michigan, to refuse to allow the classic rainbow flags of gay pride on public buildings in their city. One might think that it is the city’s free choice to decide what flags get displayed on its own public buildings, although there might be symbols that would be less welcome: for example, to cite our examples, Nazi swastikas, the old imperial flag of Japan and its sunrays, British imperial standards or the pre-majority-rule flag of South Africa (to acknowledge, for a further moment, Bruce Hornsby and the Range). They’d be controversial. But, in Hamtramck, it is not what is displayed that is controversial, it is that which is not displayed: the flag that encapsulates gay freedom and pride. And not displaying a symbol of freedom is quite different from displaying a symbol of repression.
Homosexuality is not proscribed in the state of Michigan, still less in the town of Hamtramck. What has caused a slight uproar is the fact that it was the first local authority district in the US to have a majority Muslim council. And why, precisely, should that make any difference to the town’s decision to hoist or not to hoist the gay pride flag?
Some cries have been heard akin to accusations of turncoatery: the formerly eastern-European-settled town had changed over the years to being one of a more Muslim mix, and the townspeople had — so it seems — encouraged this and supported the rights of Muslims in this urban district just north of the River Detroit. In short, “Gays supported Muslims in their fight for representation, and now they turn coat on gays: treachery!”
Is that right? Gays supported Muslims in their political quest to achieve representation of their people at local council level, and Muslims are now doing … what? In truth, what they’re doing — at least ostensibly — is what they say they are doing: they are obtempering the wishes of the majority in their council area.
The majority that voted a Muslim council in is, not surprisingly, in large part, Muslim. And homosexuality is on the whole a taboo in Muslim communities. I draw no direct parallels, but one is tempted to say that Christian communities might well be offended by Nazi swastikas flying from public buildings; and I imagine that similar sensibilities may be raised by Muslims upon seeing pride flags fluttering from their public flagpoles. Of course, what flies from private flagpoles is up to the flagpole’s owner. And the council happens to own the public ones.
Moreover, the council does not appear to want to banish gays or deny them their rights, it simply prefers not to display the flag. Gays may wish to cry out, “Those who are not with us are against us!” but the council may just as easily retort, “Are those who were previously not against us now not with us?” The Germans say nach der Wahl ist vor der Wahl: after an election is before an election. If Muslims in Hamtramck fail to appease their majority population, then the majority population will presumably vote them out of office at the next election. Isn’t that what elections are for: to decide the will of the majority?
Until that time, Hamtramck’s council is doing what any council would do and what all politicians do anyway: they are pandering to the will of the majority, and, with his mantra of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, Jeremy Bentham will be applauding them from on high, regardless of what religion they practise. Or will he?
The democracy that some Americans so fear might be slipping from them is hoisted high in the air as an ideal here meaning each and everyone must be given a voice. But it is not each and everyone who has a voice: it is the majority. And the majority is how we measure democracy in a democracy. If we offend the majority to please a minority, that is anti-Benthamite, and anti-democratic. But it gets people’s backs up.
If a majority who all agree will tolerate a minority that does not, and the minority demands a voice, even if it be only one person, the majority should grant the minority a voice, if to do so will not impinge on the majority’s rights. It will impinge on their sensibilities, but not their rights. That is a great test for, say, freedom of speech: will exercise of the freedom impinge on another’s rights?
But, when a majority will not tolerate the minority, what voice can the minority then claim? Even though it be only sensibilities that this time militate against the minority’s voice. In Hamtramck, the majority neither tolerate nor do not tolerate the minority. But the council it elected has taken it upon itself to determine that all Muslims, or the majority of Muslims who elected them, do not like gay pride flags and therefore, as a public authority that is representative of a majority comprised of Muslims, it cannot condone the flying of gay flags on public buildings.
And that is by far the most insidious of all positions: for not only does the council deny the minority’s joy at seeing their interests celebrated, but the non-celebration of those interests is a direct consequence, not of electing a Muslim council, but rather of the council deeming the nature of the views held by Muslims in their town: the council is vaunting a majority position that it has not tested, cannot truly know, and is thereby imposing on the townspeople.
Whether it seeks to create some sort of a Muslim enclave in Detroit’s greater conurbation, which rejects US norms in favour of a more Sharia view of society, that I cannot say. But what I can say is that it is imposing a policy about gay flags on public buildings in Hamtramck based on an argument purportedly derived from the whole population of Hamtramck, but it bases that on nothing more than its own feelings.
It’s something that councils do, because, no matter how big a majority they de facto enjoy, it will never be the same majority for every last policy that, once it’s elected, is enacted by the council. So, on one view, Hamtramck simply resembles every other local authority area in the US. But, on another view, it is erring towards resembling Teheran. At least, unless not flying pride flags was indeed a major pillar in their election manifesto.
Bentham’s greatest happiness mantra kind-of depends on the goodwill with which the majority assume a stance that denies the minority’s enjoyment of the celebration of their interests. Because, no matter how much of a majority elects a council, once in office the council in fact represents all of the townsfolk, not just those who voted for them. And, aside from any question of goodwill, any stance that the majority assume ultimately depends quite a lot on whether they even assume that stance, and are not arbitrarily deemed to have assumed it.
Hamtramck’s council may yet be hoist by their own petar.
The show goes on.