CHIRAQ

Recognition

Nancy Gallagher Prize for Best Undergraduate Essay in Middle East Studies, UC Santa Barbara, 2024.

Project Overview

The complete original essay follows. Its central argument, structure, and sources have been preserved. The framing above clarifies the research question, analytical method, and relevance for readers encountering the work through Thirty-Nine's Witness.

Abstract

The portmanteau Chiraq, prominent in hip-hop and rap music, provides a deeper examination into the awareness, imagination, and perpetuation of violence in inner city communities such as Chicago, and in Middle Eastern countries such as Iraq. The construction and perpetuation of violence in these different regions, with different cultures, religions, and identities, stems from the shared capitalist and colonial-carceral nature of policy, legislation, and armed force action at the hands of the United States government. This policy, legislation, and armed force action reinforces the hegemony of the white spatial imaginary and permeates the consciousness of marginalized people, who begin to reinforce the white spatial imaginary with acts of interpersonal violence and crime long after the direct presence of United States action is removed.

Framework: White Spatial Imaginary

Philosopher Charles Mills writes in his book The Racial Contract that the white spatial imaginary tells people of color that "you are what you are in part because you originate from a certain kind of space, and that space has those properties in part because it is inhabited by creatures like yourself" (Mills 42). To understand the white spatial imaginary, imagine a zoo. People of color are treated like show animals, savage and far from humanity. They are constantly surveilled by the zoo staff and fed just enough to keep them from posing a threat. If the zoo staff feels any threat of harm, they have the right to defend themselves. The animals cannot roam as they wish or choose their enclosure. They have no rights. Visitors come to observe the zoo, point to the inhumanity of these animals, watch them for sport, then return to their own lives of freedom and movement. The white spatial imaginary is the active dehumanization of groups of people, so thorough that they begin to believe and reinforce their own dehumanization. It becomes the only reality they know, and the only reality they believe they are destined for.

The United States has constructed these segregated spaces within its own borders and in relation to its borders abroad. It tells its Black and brown residents, "you suffer because you are here; you are not meant to be here." It tells people in other countries, "you suffer because you are not here; you suffer because you could never be here and you could never be us." By studying the construction of racialized spaces within United States borders, we can better understand the tactics of suppression, control, and manipulation that the United States employs to reinforce its global hegemony.

Hip-Hop's Awareness of the White Spatial Imaginary

Hip-hop has long been a space to express social awareness, political sentiment, and lived racial experience, especially for the Black Americans who created the genre. "The music and culture are a response to the tough circumstances of the conditions found in poor communities of color all over America" (Harper and Jackson 114). It is important to consider hip-hop and rap lyrics as an expression of consciousness and awareness. Here, rap and hip-hop act as a platform giving Black people and other people of color a voice in a society that historically denies them a microphone.

Hip-hop is no stranger to referencing Iraq as a hyperbole of violence. Iraq and the Iraqi people are depicted by visual media and news as a land of violence and a people in need of saving. Detroit rapper Big Sean raps in his song, curtly titled "Iraq": "Iraq in this bitch, Iraq [I turn the club to] / Iraq in this bitch / Iraq in this bitch." Bay Area rapper C.M.L. raps in "Speak My Mind": "N****s dressed in all black / cater on my lap how we do it to Iraq." Lyrics like this equate the cultural and social identity of Iraq with violence, while also bringing to light the realities of Black American soldiers who served in Iraq. These are men who witnessed the conditions and lived realities of wartime Iraq, so their conclusion that the state of their neighborhoods resembles Iraq during war is not an outlandish reach but a concept rooted in reality.

The portmanteau Chiraq speaks volumes in and of itself. It is an equation of the wartime conditions and sanctions of Iraq with the state of inner-city Chicago. It suggests a culture of violence, depravity, and economic suppression. Chicago residents and rappers use the term Chiraq to give accounts of their lived realities, and to speak about the violence they have experienced, witnessed, or perpetuated. G Herbo raps on Sexyy Red's "Perfect Match": "Let her hold the switch and now she think she from the 'Raq." Because G Herbo is from Chicago, this line likely refers to Chiraq, though the abbreviation also invites reading Iraq as a placeholder; either way, the line's meaning holds. He alludes to the glamorization and appeal of Chicago as a violent space, where masculinity and desirability become associated with violence. King Von raps in "How I Rock (Tooka Pack)": "Chiraq always ride with chrome / .40 shells gon' crack his dome / No need to stand over him / they know for a fact he gone." Here, Chiraq is equated with a Chicago resident who must always be ready for the threat of violence, or the opportunity of it. In "Live and Die in Chicago," King Louie, credited as the first to use the word Chiraq, raps: "They say you can make it anywhere, if you made it in Chicago / Chiraq / So don't take offense when I speak about murders and bitches, etcetera (movie) / I'm just speakin' Chicago." The song title itself reinforces a white spatial imaginary: through economic or social conditioning, it is not likely that a Chicago resident leaves the city. The lyrics remind the listener what a feat it is simply to survive living in Chicago. Nicki Minaj and G Herbo's song "Chiraq" never explicitly says the portmanteau, yet the whole song deals with experiencing and perpetuating gang violence: "Know a couple n****s that's down to ride / For a homicide when it's drama time / Run up on a n***a with the llamas flyin' / Leave his loved ones all traumatized." Given the sheer quantity of references to violence in songs by Chicago artists, choosing lyrics to analyze here was genuinely difficult. This reinforces the normality of violence in the sphere of public life in poor neighborhoods.

Mechanisms of Control and Suppression

Chicago is a prominent case in examining the suppression of Black improvement, notably because "Chicago was neither a slave society nor a city supportive of the economy of slavery." The coloniality of slavery was not present as a societal structure there the way it was in other cities and states, where slavery had to be actively dismantled. Though in early settlements Black people still feared re-enslavement through kidnapping, the small population of Black Chicagoans were free people. Reed writes: "in a nation committed to maintaining the prosperity that African slavery brought, Chicago represented a 'City of Refuge' to African Americans seeking freedom from bondage and racial subordination."

Iraq stands out when considering United States policy in the Middle East, because it paints a direct picture of what it means to be a US ally and how quickly one can become a US enemy. To be an ally means the uplifting of even the most inhumane acts and absurd policies. To be an enemy means the dissolution of society as it once was, mostly at the expense of the masses.

Othering and Dehumanization

A key mechanism of control and suppression is the "othering" of a group of people or a population within a group. To first justify something as inhumane as chattel slavery as it existed in the United States, the Black person had to be made completely devoid of human potential; they were painted as animalistic in the most literal sense, and perceived as ungrievable and as having unrapeable bodies. Following slavery, the only way to continue justifying this dehumanization of Black people as a whole was to create and uplift a Black elite, portrayed as different from the average Black person: intelligent, handsome, and capable of existing in civilized society. Reed writes about a successful Black businessman from Chicago that it "almost seems an imperative, given the dearth of recreational activities and the scope of Du Sable's entrepreneurial and business accomplishments as a proverbial and yet immensely successful 'other,' being a 'handsome, well-educated Negro'" (Reed 221). By positioning a certain group of Black people as acceptable, and allowing that group to succeed economically and socially, the unsuccessful Black person is positioned as complicit in their own downfall. This is a form of psychological warfare that shifts blame away from governmental policy and corporate exploitation. It is key to portray Black people as complicit in their own suffering in order to justify its continuation.

Because of the lack of geographic proximity to the Middle East, the hegemonic narrative of dehumanization in the United States does not need to include an elite or a group of so-called good Arabs. It relies instead on the identity of Iraqis and Arabs being dehumanized as a whole, first through a process of othering rooted in Orientalism, making the Orient distinct from the Occident and placing the Orient within a frame of uncivilized society. "The Orient was not and is not a free subject of thought or action" (Said 11). This dehumanization is then taken further, as othering progresses into what might be called un-humaning. Arab men are portrayed as animalistic through the "Big Bad Arab" stereotype, while the fragility of Arab women is constructed and exaggerated. "The Oriental woman; she never spoke of herself, she never represented her emotions, presence, or history" (Said 14). Once Arabs and Islam are made to seem uncivilized and inhuman, any harm that befalls their physical bodies and societies is no longer understood as the fault of US policy, but as a consequence of Arabs' and Muslims' own inability to act within a civilized human society.

Overt Violence

The United States has continually been a space of violence for Black people, reinforcing the white spatial imaginary of separation and exclusion. In 1919, Eugene Williams was stoned and drowned after swimming into the informally segregated white section of a Chicago beach. The aftermath was the Chicago race riot of 1919, in which hundreds were injured and thousands of Black people lost their homes to arson. In her study of violence and patent proposals, Cook describes this riot as a "major race riot in reaction to rapid influx of black migrants" (Cook 224), countering the notion that the riot was caused by an isolated incident rather than a larger structural and societal attitude toward Black people in Chicago at the turn of the century. Violence against Black Americans after slavery can best be described as an intimidation tactic, sending the message that the Black community must not become too comfortable, that their lives are held at the whim of the white man. Whether through lynching, police brutality, or the prison industrial complex, Black consciousness has rarely been permitted the feeling of safety or security, always in fear for one's own life or the lives of loved ones.

In terms of colonial carcerality, one need not look further than Abu Ghraib and its subsidiaries when examining the case of Iraq. General Taguba wrote in his review of the troops running Abu Ghraib that "at the Abu Ghraib Confinement Facility (BCCF), numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees" ("U.S. Abuse of Iraqi Detainees" 594). These "sadistic" criminal abuses included waterboarding, sexual assault, urination on prisoners, and pouring phosphoric acid onto prisoners. Violence here is enacted as an exertion of power: it is done because it can be done, and those perpetrating it believe they will face no consequence, given the dehumanization already done to the bodies they are harming.

Economic Suppression

Economic suppression goes hand in hand with psychological and physical violence. "Social instability and political conflict in a country are strongly associated with poor economic outcomes" (Cook 221). One such mechanism in Chicago was redlining, a process in which individuals were denied loans because they lived in an area deemed high risk. The curtailing of economic prospects for Black people in Chicago made mobility nearly impossible, keeping them within the spaces and bounds of the white spatial imaginary. These spaces are continually denied funding, on an individual level through mechanisms like redlining, but also structurally and institutionally, through schools, libraries, and other public programs. There is, of course, always funding for the police department, which illustrates how economic suppression and overt violence remain deeply intertwined. Overt violence also intimidates any attempt at economic progress, as Black people become fearful of retribution. Cook's study shows a direct correlation between missing patents by Black inventors and businessmen and the violence perpetrated against the Black community at a given time. This keeps Black people within the sector of the workforce that is most replaceable, cogs in the machine of exploitative capitalist ventures.

The most extreme and prominent example of the economic suppression of the Iraqi people was UN Sanctions Resolution 661. These sanctions were imposed following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which broke four UN resolutions. Iraq did not experience sanctions when it invaded Iran, as that operation was backed by the United States. As of 2013, Israel had broken forty-five UN resolutions and faced no sanctions, a number that has only increased since October 7, 2023, with still no sanctions imposed. It is clear that the only thing that reliably produces a UN sanctions resolution is direct opposition to United States capitalist and imperialist interests. The "raging hyperinflation" (Hiro 14) caused by these sanctions drove many intellectuals and educated Iraqis into workforces outside the country. The country suffered across every sector: prostitution and domestic violence increased, and food costs rose sharply. Importantly, the economic suppression of Iraq allowed United States corporations to access a critical natural resource: oil. A man interviewed in Dilip Hiro's book Iraq says, "the big Western powers got angry because Saddam Hussein wanted to benefit all Arabs as well as Iraqis from Iraq's oil" (Hiro 19). Economic suppression of one land or people tends to produce the economic progression of the exploiting land or people, as is the nature of capitalism. These sanctions opened decades of economic exploitation, allowing the United States and its corporations to continue extracting profit from Iraq.

Conclusions and Implications

In Orientalism, Edward Said writes that Orientalism is not "representative and expressive of some nefarious 'western' imperialist plot to hold down the Orient" (Said 20). The direct intention may not be to "hold down the Orient," as Said puts it, but the intention lives in the consequence of control and suppression: the hegemonic control over natural resources and the maintenance of an exploitative economic system. As Henry Kissinger reportedly said, "nothing important can come from the South. History has never been produced in the South. [...] What happens in the South is of no importance" (Washington Post). When the Orient, or Black Americans, must be suppressed to increase profit margins and create wealth for the already wealthy, the lives of the people in these spaces become collateral damage. The violence imposed on people subjected to United States imperialist action, whether psychological, economic, or physical, continues to persist past the initial act, resurfacing as interpersonal violence and crime, as documented in hip-hop and rap. ABC News Chicago reported that February 28, 2024 was one of only seven times in the last five years with no shootings or homicides in the city. These acts of recurrent interpersonal violence reinforce, at their core, the implanted consciousness of "the other" as it relates to one's own people, so that the United States need not continually reinforce the white spatial imaginary directly; it reinforces itself. In Iraq, the continuing cycle of violence can be observed in terror groups, military action, and everyday crime. "Burglaries, previously a rare occurrence in Iraq, became commonplace" (Hiro 15). The violence perpetuated by these groups is not beneficial to the masses, but becomes part of daily life as a result of lived and continued trauma. Because the "literary-cultural establishment as a whole has declared the serious study of imperialism and culture off limits" (Said 21), it is important to name and illuminate the colonial-carceral mechanisms through which the United States reinforces its hegemony, both at home and abroad, and to recognize how deeply our struggles are interconnected. This essay only begins to trace how Black people in America and Chicago, and Iraqi people, have suffered at the hands of the United States, its allies, and its corporations.

References

Song References