To Those Defending Alleged Marks & Spencer Religious Exemptions

Edited to ensure clarity on the fact that the incident with an M&S cashier was an isolated incident rather than a reflection of M&S overall policy.

As a former Muslim who has spent significant amounts of time in the Muslim-dominated parts of London, I have been following the recent Marks & Spencer kerfuffle with great interest. The short version is that it was claimed that Muslim M&S employees are allegedly exempted from ringing up customer purchases that include pork and alcohol. Said cashiers could ask that customers making such purchases join another line to be rung up by a presumably non-Muslim cashier. Thankfully, the incident was at a single store and not a reflection of overall M&S policy.

Despite the fact that the story wasn’t quite accurate in terms of M&S policy, the discussion around the matter had a lot of people defending religious exemptions to job duties. I don’t believe that such an accommodation would be at all reasonable because when one signs up to be a cashier at a store, one is signing up to potentially ring up any of the items sold at the stores, not just the ones that follow one’s personal religious dietary restrictions or other beliefs. Furthermore, if Muslim employees were permitted to redirect customers based on their personal beliefs but other employees aren’t also allowed to refuse to ring up purchases that are against their personal views, it would indicate the privileging of religious views.

flickr-4229304249-original

That aside, there is a theological flaw in the defense of the alleged objections of the Muslim employees. Simply refusing to handle pork or alcohol hardly changes the fact that all M&S salaries are paid, at least in part, thanks to the sales of haraam items. As one of Muhammad’s sayings goes, “When Allah forbids a thing, He also forbids its price,” meaning that any money gained by the selling of a forbidden thing is considered forbidden money. Should M&S be obligated to ensure that only the profits from halaal items will go towards paying Muslim employees?

M&S has apologized and clarified its position since the story broke. Even so, ensuring that Muslim M&S employees work in the bakery or clothing departments instead of as cashiers doesn’t exactly solve the problem with haraam money making its way into their paychecks.

Had this issue been more than just a single incident, it would have been a classic case of religious folks performing their religious beliefs where convenient (and, I might add, very public) but ignoring the restrictions that they find to be too inconvenient. If they choose to follow their religion in that fashion, they are by all means welcome to do so. However, it’s rather disingenuous to cite religious restrictions as a reason to not do part of your job yet happily cash paychecks that include funds that your religion says are tainted. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. Regardless, the defense of such behavior and the support of religious privilege surrounding the matter is highly troubling.

To Those Defending Alleged Marks & Spencer Religious Exemptions
{advertisement}

Hot Sauce Over Humanity: On Sriracha

Recently, the Internet has been abuzz about the possibility of a shortage of Sriracha, aka Rooster or Cock sauce. Most pieces, even from publications and blogs whose pieces I normally at least somewhat like, relegate what the residents’ complaints are to a parenthetical (literally) reference. It turns out that something truly, sincerely horrible is being glossed over by the breezy, won’t-someone-think-of-the-hot-sauce coverage.

The Oatmeal’s jokes about how gosh-darn delicious it would be to breathe air saturated by the spicy odor notwithstanding, the latest increase in Sriracha production has seriously adversely affected the health of the people living near the factory.

Via CNN’s Eatocracy

According to the complaint filed with Los Angeles Superior Court by the city of Irwindale, the stench of cooking peppers isn’t just unpleasant – it’s painful. Watery eyes, stinging throats and headaches are par for the course, say city officials who have been fielding complaints since the Huy Fong factory kicked up its season’s pepper production.

This isn’t an annoying, spicy odor — I’d call this capsaicin poisoning. If you’re lucky enough to have never experienced what it’s like to have capsaicin directly affect a mucus membrane, I have some stories.

different types of peppers

During his Marine training, a friend of mine get maced, a fairly common practice in military and law enforcement. The next day, he was tased. He later received a Purple Heart for getting shot in the clavicle in Iraq. He has told me that he would rather get shot in the clavicle again or tased ten times in a row than maced another time.

A few years ago, I was slicing a pepper when I hit just the right (wrong?) angle with my knife. A gush of serrano juice went straight into my eye. The pain rendered me senseless. I ran around my apartment, writhing and screaming in agony. 30 minutes in the shower and a whole bar of tea-tree oil soap later, my eye looked like it had been punched and felt like it had been repeatedly stabbed. I’ve had multiple surgeries on my diseased knee and, as a nulliparous woman, have had an IUD inserted into me without any anaesthetic — and getting pepper juice to the eye was far more painful than any of those procedures.

People are being harmed by the by-product created by the processing of a condiment — a condiment, not even some kind of essential nutritional staple — and the best most of the coverage has done about it is make oh-so-hilarious puns, jokes, and references to the matter and wring collective hands over the lack of hot sauce.

Why do we care more about hot sauce than people? The answer may lie in some very telling coverage of the matter via Youngist (emphasis mine).

According to the 2010 United States Census, about 90% of Irwindale’s 1,400 person population is of Hispanic or Latino origin, and about 95% is of color. The median household income of Irwindale in 2009 was about $55,000, which was close to the California median. However, during the same year, the median per capita income for Irwindale was at about $17,500, while California’s median per capita income was close to $44,000.

Everything from sub-standard housing conditions to poor urban air quality to reliance on walking and public transit to employment in outdoor or factory work means that the economically disadvantaged are far more exposed to environmental hazards. That the poor, especially those of color, experience the worst of pollution is a well-studied, well-established, uncontroversial phenomenon covered by the American Lung Association and studied by Yale.

sriracha in front of a soy saue pot and ketchup bottle
One condiment among many.

It really isn’t much to ask that the Sriracha factory raise its community health and safety standards to match its increase in production. If the company is truly growing in popularity, it will need to continue to revise such standards in the coming years. For now, it’s not really that hard to look for alternatives (Google and your local Asian market are your friends).

What is hard? Looking at your priorities and seeing that they, however inadvertently, are classist and racist to the point of dehumanization.

Hot Sauce Over Humanity: On Sriracha

That David Bowie Movie Was Fiction: The Labyrinth of Choice

I spent a decent portion of my teenage years watching two movies on repeat: Labyrinth, that ridiculously 1980s Jim Henson + David Bowie concoction (complete with fan theories written about at Mad Art Lab), and Fight Club. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what that says about me. What I wanted to focus on was what the movie says about consciousness and reality.

Spoiler Alert for a movie that’s older than I am: Sarah, the protagonist, brings down the Goblin King’s entire concocted kingdom by simply and confidently declaring to him, “You have no power over me.”

It’s an appealing message, to be sure, especially since she says what she does as a very young woman to an obviously, fantastically powerful older man. Taking charge, being independent, kicking butt and taking names — all empowering-seeming messages. Sisters are doing it for themselves and all.

After high school, I expanded my movie tastes and didn’t think much about Labyrinth, let alone its ending, until I started hearing variations on the message coming from rather curious sources in specific circumstances. Namely, when I post about assholes leaving misogynistic comments, or a fellow blogger talks about gender-based discrimination, or a friend posts about experiences with racism, a certain type of person will rush to tell her some variation of the line.

privileges

The sort of person to claim that power can only be given and never taken, that you only receive what you ask for, that nothing can be done to you without your consent is, all too often, white, as well as usually male. I mention this not to preclude members of other ethnicities and/or genders from guilt (as they are capable of it, too), but to point out that those speaking the loudest about agency are those who face the least in the way of the more inescapable forms of structural inequality. In other words, they are the types who are capable of exercising the most agency and often seem to not understand that others do not have that freedom.

The parallels to the line in Labyrinth struck me recently because someone on a friend’s thread insisted, in a response to a post about racism, that “I have no power over you, unless you give it me.”

Did I “give power” to those who called 14-year-old headscarved me “fucking Arab murderer terrorist” and spat at me on the street during those terrifying weeks following 9-11? Or those drunk, armed-to-the-teeth men who followed my cousin’s best friend on the freeway, and, upon arrest, claimed that they were fighting terrorism? Years later, did I “give power” to the multiple employers who denied me employment or fired me due to my “exotic” name, larger body, and textured hair?

TheSecretOfPrivilege.final

All along, has it been marginalized groups’ fault for “giving the power” to people who didn’t even need to speak to us before discriminating against us in a way that made our lives worse? I think we know the answer to that. No, no, and no. The Secret is bullshit, and this kind of thinking is a version of it.

Those who face institutionalized, widespread forms of oppression don’t get to choose for bigotry to not have power over them. It does. Right now. Full-stop. It harms them every day. We are born in a world with structural and cultural inequality built into it. Statements from alleged non-bigots that are so obsessed with the romantic idea that equality already exists that they ignore reality don’t help. Insisting that individuals have the power to stop such treatment using sheer force of will excuses those who perpetuate oppression.

Why speak of oppression if it opens the door to the bigot support system that is the well-meaning denialist? Though I can’t give or take certain forms of power within society, I do have the power to speak of oppression. As for those people who insist to me that I somehow courted it? Your platitudes have no power over me.

That David Bowie Movie Was Fiction: The Labyrinth of Choice