Eboo Patel and Isis King

Two great names, right? I wish my name was cool... I guess not a lot of people are named Harrison. One of my acquaintances recently asked what my first name was. I guess she thought I just went by my last name like a big ol' bro. Hmmm....

This was actually when I was leaving... The room was packed.
Probably half the people left during the Q&A.

Anyway, Friday afternoon I attended the YMCA's Friday Forum with guest speaker Eboo Patel. He talked on interfaith cooperation in the attempt to combat prejudice and anti-Muslim sentiment. It was very good.

Eboo was a U of I grad from the Chicago suburbs. He said that growing up in the burbs taught him to try to do everything to be white. But once he came to college he could embrace his Indian culture. But while he was here in the 90s most people were talking about race, ethnic, sexual, and gender identity but not religious identity. He recalled a story where a Muslim friend didn't play around with his food and when asked about it he responded that in his faith food was life and you don't mess around with life. Everybody gave awkward silence while if he said he was from a certain class or country everyone would have opened up with welcoming arms and encouragement.

He also gave us the quote by Michael Walzer, "Fundamentalists rush in where liberals fear to tread." On September 10, 2001 no one was talking about Islam. On September 12, 2001 everyone was talking about Islam and how it was a religion full of terrorists who want to kill all non-Muslims. Eboo mentioned how these religious extremists gave America and poor version of "Islam 101" because religion was something everybody ignored talking about.

And finally, I resonated with Eboo's thoughts on the recent presidential race and an attack on Mitt Romney's Mormon faith. "Things pass as ok if they're against Mormons, Catholics, and Evangelical Christians." I see this all the time. Blasting Christianity is kind of a norm while blasting Judaism is a hate crime. (Although many times it is a hate crime... not trying to equate saying 'I don't believe this' to hate speech).

Odd selfie as I was walking out...

But all of this came together in my mind to relate it to my own identities. Eboo asked, "What if I stopped trying to be so white and actually liked the name Eboo or Indian food and music?" But I relate that to my own identity. "What if I took pride in being white?" I don't believe being white is supreme, but I do like a lot of 'white' things. What if I said that I love hamburgers, and felt a cultural connection to them? This idea has been in the back of my mind a lot more recently (as is apparent in my work). There have been some things said to me basically saying, "White people are xyz. Because white people are a majority they don't need resources and don't really have a 'culture.'" Eh, this is a story for a longer time... but basically I related that experience to Eboo's talk. That's all I'm going to say on that at this time.

Thennnnn.... Tonight I went and saw Isis King who was a contestant on cycles 11 and 17 of America's Next Top Model. She was fun.


She talked a lot about her life experiences and then a bit about her transition from male to woman. Then she talked about ANTM and I gayed out a bit. I don't remember those cycles... but I remember hearing about her.

I think what I liked most about her was the way she handled questions. There were some people in the audience who seemed to just tell anecdotes and Isis handled it well. She turned it around and made their anecdote serve her cause about trans issues and such. She also had some good things to say about how every trans* person has a different end to their journey. Some people want genital reassignment surgery, some just want hormones, some want none that, they just want to be called the gender they identify with. That differed from the Trans movie we saw a few months back.



One thing I didn't like though was how many "secrets of life" Isis seemed to have for us. Like.... seriously every little anecdote ended with a "and this is how to live to be a better person." Some of them I agreed with but some seemed quite generalizing and naive. But that's what these kinds of events are for, to teach us how to live life.... right?

Oh well, she looked fabulous and I can only assume Gino would be her best friend.

I swiped these photos from the sponsoring group's Facebook.