Today in class we discussed and started formulating our research proposals. We started some brainstorming activities since last week, one of the activities included writing pairs of opposite words. Some of the one I came up with were pretty straight forward like left and right, Individual and Society, Connection and Disconnection. But I realized that many of the words that I came up with were terms that was up to interpretation: Hero & Villain, Good & Bad, Patriot & Traitor. This really sparked me to think about how we view America, The savior or the oppressor of freedom. The Poems of Guantanamo reflected the human side of the detainees through the bibliography and the poems themselves. The poems did not suggest that they were innocent, but it showed that they are humans too. Somehow, even with those that are guilty, when we see the human side of people, it changes our view.
Human characteristics include empathy, emotions, kindness, sorrow, weakness and even anger. Like how we all connected through our body in Spahr’s This Connection of Everyone with Lungs, we all share the mind and soul of being human. We all have different beliefs, but we’re all people of the same earth. However, many factions of Western media and political view dehumanizes some people as so called “terrorist”. These people are often portrayed as non-human, cold-blooded and evil. It would be extremely hard to create fear or hate against terrorist if they were seen as human beings just like us. Dehumanization is evident not only with portraying terrorism, but also with portraying Non-White people during the Colonial era. French imperial theorist Jules Harmand devised the notion that “expansion by conquest, however necessary, seems especially unjust and disturbing to the conscience of democracies”, therefore, the conquered people have to be seen as savages in order to justify colonialism as liberation of these people.
A recent film called “Camp X-Ray” tells the story of a young female prison officer befriending one of the prisoners of Guantanamo. Having guard Camp X-Ray for a while, she realized that Guantanamo wasn’t as black and white as she thought it was. Her commanding officer in the movie told her to not call them prisoners, but as detainees.