Nadia Raza
Americans are bombarded with news about the Middle East, but how many opinions are heard from the people there? Brutal warfare, corrupt governments and suffering people are broadcasted but very rarely does the media go inside their world.
Nadia Raza, current doctoral candidate, inspiring professor of sociology and second-generation Pakistani American sheds some light on her experiences in Pakistan and the concerns of her relatives there.
In 1999, Raza went with her mother to Pakistan and she recalls a military uprising under which men with semi-automatic weapons were posted all throughout the city outside restaurants, malls and desert shops. She asked her mother if it made her feel uncomfortable and she simply smiled and said “At least we know who is in charge today.”
“It opened up a window for me to recognize that her experiences were different from most people in the world, the experience of social disturbance and social unrest particularly in the areas of the world that have been colonized,” Raza said.
Since 1947 there have been multiple changes in power in Pakistan. When Raza’s mother, whose name is not disclosed for privacy reasons, was two she lived through a brutal civil war that resulted in the partition of Pakistan from India and the largest human migration in recent history. During this time there was intense military and civil conflict, and having undergone this conflict it was her belief that this kind of military occupation was better than the physically violent conditions of the past.
“The characteristics that shape that culture now is incredible and brutal poverty that you can’t even put in words, that there aren’t even words to describe what people are living in, without the means to survive and create stable environments,” Raza said.
Raza describes her aunt, uncle and cousins who are living in Pakistan as being worried about the same kinds of issues parents and grandparents are worried about in America, such as healthcare, education for their children, and their ability to conduct normal lives in light of recent critical reports by Americans speculating on the possibly perfidious nature of the people and politics of Pakistan following the death of Osama bin Laden.
“In this historical moment there aren’t too many sides of the story that are represented in Pakistan as in favor of democracy which has been every experience I’ve ever had there,” Raza said.
After a 10-year war with the Middle East tension overseas remains strong and the people there are still facing the same problems they faced before it started.
“Do I think military involvement in Pakistan is a good thing? No,” said David Martinez documentary filmmaker who did projects in Iraq and collaborated with Raza to show films for her classes.
Limited class mobility restricts people in poverty stricken areas like Pakistan from being able to overcome their shortages. “The majority of the world is pretty much frozen where they are,” Martinez said.
For Raza, growing up in California was a split experience. At school she was Nadia, the typical outgoing, fun and athletic girl. But at home she was part of a culture that no one else understood; where her parents followed Muslim traditions and relatives who visited from Pakistan shared their experiences of the culture, and the gruesome poverty they saw there.
Her mother immigrated to America at the age of 24 from Pakistan, where she had been a professor of microbiology, with only $50 in her pocket. Raza’s eyes hint that her mother is close to her heart. She describes her as a fiery woman and unprofessed feminist. Her father, who was also from Pakistan, immigrated to the states from Germany after having worked as an engineer for an airline. Her parent’s first jobs in the U.S. were bussing tables and working at drive-ins.
“It’s a classic immigrant story where they arrived here with very little and pulled together, with what resources they had everything they could. They put my brother and I through school,” said Raza.
Raza was raised with values of compassion. During religious holidays her parents would open their house and cook for three days inviting people from the community to come and eat because they knew what it was like to not have money to eat well. One of the five pillars of Islam is to give a portion of the money you make each year to those who are in need.
Raza visited family in Pakistan often with her mother and was very close with a particular cousin near her age. Her cousin went to college in London to later return to Pakistan and become a mother, a much different decision than what Raza chose. These contrary constructions of lifestyle represent how two people raised with parallel family values can be completely altered by the pressures of their surroundings, and their individual conceptions.
“Exposure to ideas and information clearly are different because of my hybrid identity. I was able to walk through two worlds that are, especially today, constructed in opposition to each other,” Raza said.
Lending special insight, Raza feels some of the forefront issues facing in the perceived racial divide with the middle east is the conception of “us and them” mentalities rather than “both-and” or “either or”.
“I do want to go back there, of course it’s dangerous, but more than anything it’s very difficult to untangle my life enough to be able to go. I definitely will,” Raza said.
The path that led to working as a sociology instructor was academically and interpersonally stimulating. Raza felt she wasn’t equipped with an understanding and way of communicating to others about her bi-cultural experience. Taking her first classes in sociology at Orange County Community College opened her eyes to avenues of self-expression and dynamic insight.
“I lacked a language to talk about culture to talk about tradition, modernization and about horrific poverty like I saw in Pakistan,” Raza said.
Raza strongly believes personally and politically in the movement of community colleges, envisioning them as the last act of democracy.
“I loved my community college experience. I had the freedom to choose the classes I wanted to take and to develop my own sense of self in relationship to the world,” Raza said.
She has taught at Humboldt State University, where she received her masters in Sociology, and at the College of the Redwoods and University of Oregon. Now she instructs classes in sociology and ethnic studies at LCC.
She wanted to live in a college town where she could ride horses, as she has a few times a week since she was seven. Last weekend she participated in a 50 mile endurance horse race.
“Riding horses has been the most consistent thread throughout my life to counterbalance a very intellectually heavy life,” she said.
When she broke her arm riding horses it took about three `months recovery on the couch but it brought her closer to her mix breed dog Chana, that she saved from a shelter after having been shot with a shotgun.
“She was healing and I was healing, and that was really special,” Raza said.
“I really like how enthusiastic she is about what she teaches,” said student Disney Fischer from her Social Deviance course.
One of the reasons she is so passionate about teaching at this level is because it allows a diverse collection of students from varying stages in their lives to come together and share ideas.
“I get to continue to learn from my students and continue to grow in an environment that is structured around that,” Raza said.
At the end of the term Raza is going to South Africa for a documentary called “Rediscovering the Scientist” with a friend who has an interview with Desmond Tutu. Two of her cousins, one who is a lawyer defending people in death row cases, and another who is an art teacher in California are coming along.
