Seeing this headline reminds me of something I have been thinking but not articulating for a long time. Why is it that a region of the world so historically interconnected as is the Meditteranean winds up either being divided in half (Europe and the Other), subsumed within areas called variously EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Asia), or split three ways among Europe, North Africa and the Middle East?
The answer, it increasingly seems to me, is a combination of fear and prejudice.As bad off as the financial picture has been in Greece, Portugal and other southern European countries, they are never referred to by anything other than Europe. What if we started referring in a headling like this to the "Quiet Corner" of the Mediterranean? Think for a moment why that seems odd. Palestine is as much a part of the Mediterranean as it is a part of the Mideast, no? So why do we choose one over the other? Imagine the mental shift that would occur. It's as though we started calling the Confederacy in North America simply part of the United States again?
The answer, it increasingly seems to me, is a combination of fear and prejudice.As bad off as the financial picture has been in Greece, Portugal and other southern European countries, they are never referred to by anything other than Europe. What if we started referring in a headling like this to the "Quiet Corner" of the Mediterranean? Think for a moment why that seems odd. Palestine is as much a part of the Mediterranean as it is a part of the Mideast, no? So why do we choose one over the other? Imagine the mental shift that would occur. It's as though we started calling the Confederacy in North America simply part of the United States again?
No comments:
Post a Comment