matcha originated in China about 1200 years ago, açaí has been consumed by Indigenous communities in the Amazon for centuries, and Dubai chocolate was invented by combining chocolate with knafeh, an 1100 year old SWANA snack.
western (usually white but seemingly not in this case) people love to call nonwhite foods suddenly becoming popular in western mainstream culture "industry plants" as if they haven't always existed.
this is orientalism.
psa to all white people: if you start your conversation with “i’m sorry for being white” “as someone lighter than paper” “white people are terrible i will be the first to tell you” or anything similar i will not ❌ 🙅♂️ be listening to the rest of your sentence. your performative self-flagellation solves nothing and i refuse to validate your racial victim complex 😔 😡
if a person of color says something is racist then it probably is
if a queer person says something is queerphobic then it probably is
if a disabled person says something is ableist then it probably is
if a jewish person says something is antisemitic then it probably is
if a muslim person says something is islamophobic then it probably is
listen to minorities instead of deciding for yourself what's bigoted
edit: to people saying there's nuance to this, you're correct, but please make your own post. this is about listening to minorities, not questioning their biases.
The simple act of holding a camera in my homeland of Western Sahara can be a crime. When Sahrawi film-makers and journalists attempt to document everyday life under Moroccan occupation, they can often end up in prison cells. For the Moroccan regime, a camera in the hands of a Sahrawi threatens its official narrative that Western Sahara is part of Morocco. In contrast, when celebrated international names in the film industry wish to capture an ideal picture for an epic journey, and decide that our land is exotic enough to shoot the desired scenes, they are welcomed, escorted and granted access by the same authorities that usually deny us that right. [...] Nolan’s choice to film in an occupied territory highlights the extractivist practices embedded in the western film industry. Western cinema has often been complicit in mining stories and immaterial culture from the global south at a scale no smaller than the material resources mined by the western colonial industrial complex. International film crews parachute in, shoot our faces, clothing, dunes and material culture, then fly off. For them, it seems we are simply decorative elements for their sets and back in New York, London or Paris, they gain prestige, box-office returns and awards. For Nolan’s Dakhla shoot, he appears to have neither sought our consent nor considered the ethics of in effect helping to prop up and legitimise Morocco’s occupation, thus making the space even more unsafe for Sahrawis living under it. He is actively participating in a state-sponsored PR campaign designed to legitimise an illegal occupation.
2026/07/16
Anonymous asked:
I have a question around linguistics within dialogue: my story is set in the early crusades with a character list that include European Christians, Middle Eastern Muslims, and Middle Eastern Christians. As - particularly during this time period - characters coming from different backgrounds would have different linguistical styles, I’m trying to avoid my Middle Eastern characters using expressions that are clearly of English origin, note which characters are speaking which language where necessary, and include transliterated Arabic words/phrases when appropriate. (Your ‘how to convey arabic language in a specific dialect is being spoken without lengthy descriptions of how words/specific letters are pronounced?’ answer was really helpful here, thank you!) However as a non-Arabic, English speaker I’m also wary of ‘over-peppering’ these Arabic idioms to the extent that the Europeans’ dialogue comes across as ‘standard’ and the Middle Eastern characters’ as ‘exotic’ (I’m conscious that overly formal and ornate language has been a pretty orientalist trope in the past, which I’m trying to avoid). Would you have any recommended rules of thumb on how to keep a good balance, or anything to be wary of/outright avoid here? Thank you so much for any advice you can share!
Love this. I’d try the placeholder method (just made this up.) Honestly, the best thing to do is just write the story first using whatever English expressions come naturally — even if you know they’re super modern or wouldn’t make sense in the time period and setting (like “a dime a dozen” or “barking up the wrong tree”). Don’t stress about making everything historically or culturally perfect right away. That’ll stall the writing process. These non-suitable phrases become ‘placeholders’ to switch out later.
So keep track of those lines (you can highlight them or jot the the page/line # down somewhere), and then later on, if you know someone who speaks Arabic or is familiar with the culture, ask them to help swap in more fitting phrases, and do a sensitivity read overall. They might not translate word-for-word, but they can help you find alternatives that still match the vibe or emotion of certain idioms. They can also find spots for Arabic idioms that you wouldn’t have expected.
I found this list from Reddit user AgileCzar about gulf dialect idioms from a decade ago:
I would never have thought to do any of these, but they’re really fun! Scouring the internet for options and figuring out where these go is a total second-pass sort of edit. You don’t want to put pressure on yourself to get it all right on the first draft. It's a lot easier to fix language stuff when you already have the story down.
I do this in scripts a lot when I know something needs to be in Spanish or Arabic, but I’m not clear on the exact wording because finishing the story is more important at that moment.
Good Luck and Happy Writing!
-Melanie 🌻
(Note: this ask has been reviewed and approved by a MENA WWC mod)
