Hamlet

“Give every man thine ear, but few thy voice; take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.” Hamlet

Hamlet refers to a small rural settlement and, of course, is the title of one of William Shakespeare’s greatest plays. Because its hero was indecisive, which prevents Hamlet from acting until it’s too late, the word has been used to categorize those, such as 1952 and 1956 Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, who procrastinated, in Stevenson’s case, about throwing his hat in the ring. Historian Lance Trusty described early Munster, Indiana, as a hamlet during the 1860s with a general store opened by Jacob Munster with a postal station in back and serving as a gathering place for local farmers.  At bridge Naomi Goodman told me that Lance’s widow Jan is taking her granddaughter, who loves theater, to London and Stratford-upon-Avon to attend numerous plays.

 above, Jimbo, Riley Ash, Charlie, Kody Frasure; below, Savanna Sayiov, Tom Rea, Carre Allen

Oregon-Davis math teacher David Pinkham brought eight high school students to Charlie Halberstadt’s duplicate bridge game at Banta Center in Valparaiso. Most started playing about five months ago as part of a club Pinkham originated and seemed to enjoy themselves – or at least didn’t appear stressed out.  Charlie was initially worried many regulars wouldn’t be there because of a monthly women’s “Assembly” taking place at the same time; but he had enough for eight and a half tables, which enabled the four students pairs to play East-West, switching tables every three hands while the North-South pairs remained stationary.  Most were seniors except for Riley Ash, who was without her glasses, which had been busted, she said, during a game at Bible camp. Shvanna Sayiov plans to attend Miles Community College in Montana; her goal is to take part on rodeos.  Charlie and I finished second to Chuck Tomes and Dee Browne among the nine North-South pairs. After the final round former Portage math teacher Chuck Tomes stated, “Since I have the loudest voice, let me thank the Oregon-Davis students for enlivening the game.”  He received a round of applause from everyone. 

 depot in Hamlet, pre-1911

I had heard of the Oregon-Davis Bobcatas because of my interest in high school basketball but not Hamlet, Indiana, the town where it is located. Like Munster, Hamlet’s origins date back to the 1860s when John Hamlet established a post office.  Located in Starke County south of Valparaiso, the town of Hamlet had 800 residents according to the 2010 census.  In 2014 Oregon-Davis won the girls IHSAA state championship seven years after the Bobcats captured the boys title.

One reason I wanted to play in Valpo was to give the new Shavings to Rick Friedman (above) and Ed Hollander, whom students in Steve McShane’s class had interviewed for an oral history project. Barb Walczak’s Newsletter recently profiled Rick, an ophthalmologist for 40 years who learned bridge while in medical school but then took a break for nearly a half-century although, as he told Barb, he kept up by reading the bridge newspaper column.

At dinner Toni and I were talking about the recent images of a black hole, a phenomenon unknown when I was in school and until now never detected. Albert Einstein paved the way with the assertion that gravity was a warping of spacetime but initially was dismayed by German physicist Karl Schwarzchild’s prediction that when mass becomes too dense, it collapses into a black hole. Photographer Kyle Telechan wrote:“Scientists with the Event Horizon telescope have produced an image of a  black hole, or if we are being pedantic, the shadow of a black hole surrounded by particles in the accretion disk, some moving as fast as the speed of light.Totally ignoring how cool it is that we were able to get an image of a freaking black hole, how incredible is it that they were able to predict, correctly, what it would look like based on our understanding of black holes, without ever seeing one?It might be blurry, but it's the first of its kind. Can you imagine the images that'll be captured in our lifetimes?”

 Daniel Webster letter emancipating Paul Jennings; below, Webster

I finished “A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons.” Jennings finally achieved his freedom from Dolley Madison in 1847 after going to work for Massachusetts Senator (and two-time Secretary of State) Daniel Webster, who had purchased him the year before for $120.  Branding slavery “a great moral, social, and political evil,”Webster had previously helped others attain their freedom.  During the 1840s both Webster and former First lady Dolley Madison threw lavish parties in the nation’s capital that nearly bankrupted them.  In an effort to save the Union, Webster, known as “The great Expounder and Defender of the Constitution,” supported the Compromise of 1850, which abolished the slave trade in Washington, DC, but strengthened the Fugitive Slave Act.  Abolitionists branded it the “Bloodhound Law,” and it tarnished Webster’s reputation.  For 14 years until his retirement Jennings worked at the pension office of the Interior Department, earning between $400 and $720 annually.  He died eight years later.

 Terry Kegebein and granddaughter

At Hobert Lanes after two terrible games I rolled a 180, as the Engineers salvaged a game from Frank’s Gang.  After a 170, Terry Kegebein quipped, “Another 60 pounds, and I’d have bowled my weight.”  Opponent Mike Reed, wearing a shirt reading “My mind is in the gutter,”took good-natured ribbing after he actually threw a ball in the gutter in an otherwise outstanding game. When he claimed to have exceeded his weight of 168 pounds, some teammates were disbelieving; but he is in good shape with no pot belly and noted that he has to keep his weight down due to high blood pressure.

 Archives holdings moved for renovation

Anne Balay is en route to St. Louis, where she has a new home and hopes to teach at a local college while beginning research on a third book about sex workers. Steve McShane updated Ron Cohen and me on the latest change of plans regarding what to do with Archives files while workers install new heating and air conditioning: “We had movers in yesterday, taking out all kinds of collections and materials from the CRA and moving them down the hallway to 2 “staging” rooms.   Phase 1 will begin in earnest on Monday, as contractors invade to tear down ceilings and remove lighting from this first half of the Archives:  reading room, large cage, and corner storage/work room.”  Still remaining in the main room are bookcases containing yearbooks and books about the Calumet Region, including Anne Balay’s pathbreaking accounts of LGBT steelworkers and long-haul truckers.

above, Anne's tattoo; below, Toni, Becca, Angie

We were all set to see James shine in the Portage H.S. senior musical, but a small fire that damaged the curtain caused its postponement.  Bummer! The previous evening Becca has honored at a ceremony for outstanding students.  Tomorrow Becca has a solo in Chesterton's talent show.

In the opening chapter of Saidiya Hartman’s “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments” is this portrait of a turn-of-a- twentieth-century "ghetto girl" living in Africa Town, the Negro quarters of Philadelphia or New York:

 You can find her in the group of beautiful thugs and too fastgirls congregating on the corner and humming the latest rag, or lingering in front of Wanamaker’s and gazing lustfully at a fine pair of shoes displayed like jewels behind a plate-glass window.  Watch her in the alley passing a pitcher of beer back and forth with her friends, brash and lovely in a low-cut dress and silk ribbons; look in awe as she hangs halfway out of a tenement window, taking in the drama of the block and defying gravity’s downward pull.  Step onto any of the paths that cross the sprawling city and you’ll encounter her as she roams. Outsiders call the streets and alleys that comprise her world the slum.  For her, it is just the place where she stays.

Bent on using fear of immigrants as a primary campaign issue in 2020, Trump recently declared that the United States is filled up and doesn’t need any more newcomers, especially from south of the border.  Earlier he had expressed a preference for Norwegians over those from “shithole countries.”  The Washington Postrevealed that on two separate occasions the White House suggested migrants seeking asylum be bussed to sanctuary cities such as San Francisco, part of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Congressional district, in retaliation for Democrats’ opposition to his draconian policies. When the idea was floated, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials responded that it was not feasible on several grounds.  Perhaps that is one reason Trump, at the advice of diabolical Stephan Miller, ordered a shake-up of top DHS leaders, beginning with Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. I predicted that the President, as Shakespeare once wrote in Hamlet,that he will be“hoisted on his own petard.”

 below, defeat of Spanish Armada

In the New YorkerJohn Lanchester reviewed Philipp Blom’s “Nature’s Mutiny: How the Little Ice Age of the Long Seventeenth Century Transformed and Shaped the Present.”  I learned that for 300 million years the earth was entirely covered in ice and that 34 million years ago, the opposite was true and, in Lanchester’s words, “crocodiles swam in a fresh-water lake we know as the North Pole, and palm trees grew in Antarctica.”  For 110 years beginning in 1570, the temperature dropped almost 4 degrees Fahrenheit, which produced crop failures, disrupted feudalism, caused the Ming dynasty to fall, and contributed to such events as the defeat of the Spanish Armada (due to an unprecedented Arctic hurricane) and the 1666 London fire ( during an ultra-dry summer after a bitterly cold winter).  As Lanchester concluded, “Climate change changes everything.”

Living Mirage

“Don’t tell me I lost a step

Criss-crossed in the wrong direction”

         “Missed Connection,” The Head and the Heart

 above, Joshua Tree National Park; below, The Head and the Heart

Joshua Tree; photo by Amanda Marie Board

Chelsea Sue and Amanda Marie

WXRT has been playing a couple tracks from the upcoming Head and the Heart CD “Living Mirage, including “Missed Connection” and “Honeybee,” written by Jon Russell at Joshua Tree National Park where I took 98-year-old Midge on our last jaunt together. Perhaps the album title emanates from a mirage or optical illusion Russell encountered while walking through the wondrous park. “Honeybee,” both a love song (rare these days) and a confessional, contains this verse:

But here we are 

After all the misses and confessions

To the scars

That we never really owned as ours

Alissa called to say she and Josh are coming down from Michigan two weekends in a row, to see James in the Portage senior play and the following Friday to attend the Dave Davies concert with me at Hobart’s refurbished Art Theatre.  I told her I was listening to Weezer’s Teal album that contains “Africa,” “Take On me,” and “Happy Together,” all of which we heard Weezer perform a couple weeks ago.  She’s been playing The Head and the Heart, whom we saw last year at 20 Monroe in Grand Rapids.

scenes from Appointment with Danger, Original Gangstas

In Mary Beth Blake’s VU Sociology class for the final time as students discussed their recent trip to Gary, I found myself straining to hear what they had to say. In the main they were soft-spoken, but if I were still teaching, I’d need a hearing aid.  One young woman from the Region used the phrase “Scary Gary” to describe her preconceptions but admitted that it did not seem so frightening as she had thought.  They were pleased with how much time Mayor Karen freeman-Wilson spent with them, as well as Tyrell Anderson of the Decay Devils at Gary’s long abandoned Union Station. Mary Beth started class showing a scene from “Appointment with Danger” (1951) that took place there.  I mentioned that Peter Aglinskas has a monthly Film Noir series at VU for those who enjoy crime movies of that genre. I brought up “Original Gangstas” (1996) starring James Brown, Pam Grier, and former Gary and Kansas City Chiefs football star Fred “The Hammer” Williamson, that has a scene inside the ruins of Union Station.  I mentioned how little home rule the city of Gary enjoys, hampering mayors and that past projects they touted such as the airport and Genesis Center (Richard Hatcher), casinos (Thomas Barnes), and RailCat Stadium (Scott King) failed to generate satellite shops, restaurants, and stores.

At Chancellor Bill Lowe’s suggestion I interviewed Joe Medellin, a human resources executive at Arcelo Mittal in East Chicago and member of the Chancellor’s advisory board.  Because of the upheaval on the third floor of the library, home of the Calumet Regional Archives, Samantha Gauer filmed us on the Instructional Resource Center’s set.   Born in 1951, Joe grew up on Massachusetts Street across from IUN’s new Arts and Sciences Building; his mother Carmen still lives there.  His father, who has passed away, worked in U.S. Steel’s tin mill for 30 years. Joe attended Franklin Elementary, Bailly Middle School (when black students were first bussed in), and Lew Wallace, where he was a star pitcher.  Obtaining a partial baseball scholarship to Valparaiso University (tuition was just $3,500 a year), he majored in Business Administration and worked at U.S. Steel for $2.75 an hour to help pay for college.  He attended IUN his senior year, as VU accepted the credit).  In the mid-1980s Joe earned an MBA at IUN and recalls Economics professor Leslie Singer as brilliant but nearly impossible to keep up with when lecturing.  Nearing retirement, Joe hopes to do volunteer work for the Special Olympics and the Calumet Regional Archives.  He is responsible for our obtaining the massive Inland Steel collection.

 Pope Francis throwing wreath into sea to honor drowning victims at Lampedusa, 2013

Ron Cohen gave me a bunch of New York Reviewsthat he had was done with.  The January 17 issue contained an article by Francesco Cantu, whose book “The Line Becomes a River” I’ve been reading titled “Has Any of Us Wept?” After describing the effect on families and children that Trump’s inhumane border policies have caused, he broadened the scope to the immigration crisis in the Mediterranean.  He brought up a 2013 visit by Pope Francis to Lampedusa, a small Italian island just 70 miles from Tunisia that is a central destination for migrants, 20,000 of whom have perished trying to cross the sea. Cantu described a homily Pope Francis delivered there:

  He referred to migrants not as undifferentiated “others” but as family, saying: “These brothers and sisters of ours were trying to escape difficult situations to find some serenity and peace; they were looking for a better place for themselves and their families, but instead they found death.”

  Standing on an altar assembled from remnants of wooden refugee boats, Pope Francis looked out over the port of Lampedusa and asked his audience, “Has any one of us grieved for the death of these brothers and sisters?  Has any one of us wept?”  In asking his listeners to consider who is responsible for this loss of life he describes “the globalization of indifference” through which our societies have become numb to the suffering of others.

New York Review evidently runs a Personals contest and printed these two runners-up:

DUBLIN, (IRELAND)

L. Cohen is dead so I’m free

Femme, Irish, just gone 63

Cool, classy, and svelte

My ice just might melt

For gentlemen callers like thee

Second runner-up was less lyrical:

HOT BLOODED BLONDE with brains longs for equally lonely heat seeking missile. Educated, analyzed, eccentric 71year-old NYC widow looking for male counterpart.

Here is the contest winner:

MY SON TOLD ME that certain butterflies drink the tears of turtles.  It was a metaphor for dating in Maine. (Post-masculine straight male, 50.  Midwestern nice. Yes to banter, yoga in non-yoga clothes, hapless hope)

Routines

“The nicest thing about fussy people is, they have their little routines,” Anne Tyler, “A Patchwork Planet”

I don’t consider myself a fussy person but do have a normal weekday routine that includes getting dressed, putting coffee on, fixing grapefruit slices and juice, retrieving the Post-Triband Times, having cereal (usually Rice Krispies) and bacon or Kielbasa, and fixing a half-sandwich and veggies for lunch at IU Northwest, where I’d eat with Mike Olszanski on Wednesdays and leave early Tuesday for a nap before bridge.  Routine also means unexceptional, such as a routine fly ball.

Saturdays I’d normally to take James bowling at Inman’s and beforehand cook kielbasa and pancakes (with chocolate bits for him, blueberries for me).  Afterwards, we’d have lunch at Culver’s, using newspaper coupons Toni found for us.  Last week, however, he had play practice, and this weekend is competing in a tournament in Indy.  In the car I usually listen to WXRT’s “Saturday Morning Flashback” show, this week featuring the year 1973, when the Watergate scandal caused Nixon to say plaintively, “I am not a crook.”  Hearing “Ramblin’ Man” and “Dark Side of the Moon” reminded me of getting high listening to the Allman Brothers at Larry Kaufman’s and Pink Floyd at Al Sterken’s. “Long Train Running” was on my favorite Doobie Brothers album, “The Captain and Me,” which Milan Andrejevich would put on for me at his parties.  Many 1973 songs contained long instrumentals jam, such as Steely Dan’s “Bodhisattva.” In Buddhism the word bodhisattva refers to one who delays reaching nirvana in order to help suffering beings.

In Mary Kate Blake’s Urban Sociology class to discuss Gary’s recent history, I passed out  the new edition of “Gary: A Pictorial History” showing photos of Tyrell Anderson and the Decay Devils, whom they will meet at Union Station on their tour Friday.  Then I exhibited the front page Post-Tribstory about Bill Pelke’s Monday IUN appearance, featuring photos of Bill with Paula Cooper and a photo of “Nana” Ruth. They had read about the murder in Glen Park of Pelke’s grandmother at the hands of four Lew Wallace ninth graders including Cooper, initially sentenced to death, and how it contributed to white flight. A student asked whether Richard Hatcher’s election in 1967 caused whites to move to the suburbs.  I discussed contributing factors that took place before Hatcher assumed office, such as passage of an omnibus civil rights ordinance and federally-mandated bussing of black students to Glen Park schools. I described scare tactics unscrupulous realtors used to induce rapid turnover in “changing” neighborhoods.  When I discussed middle class black flight, someone asked if I felt they were abandoning their people.  I replied that families shouldn’t feel guilty about doing what’s best for themselves and that many retain connections with their old neighborhoods and churches.  A Mexican international student asked how long it took to put together Steel Shavingsissues and was incredulous when I answered yearly.  He had not yet found any area authentic Region Mexican restaurants but seemed unfamiliar with East Chicago.  I recommended Casa Blanca, where Lorenzo Arrredondo recently took me.  I told him about “Maria’s Journey” and when he asked the spelling of Arredondo, promised to give him a copy Monday.

At the library I picked up the Weezer album containing covers of their favorite Oldies, including “Africa,” “Take On Me,” and “Billy Jean,” among others. Even though I’m already reading three other books, I couldn’t resist Saidiya Hartman’s “Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval,” about young black women living in New York and Philadelphia at the turn of the twentieth century who found Victorian standards of behavior irrelevant to their lives.  Hartman wrote: 

 Few, then or now, recognized young black women as sexual modernists, free lovers, radicals, and anarchists, or realized that the flapper was a pale imitation of the ghetto girl.

 The wild idea that animates this book is that young black women were radical thinkers who tirelessly imagined other ways to live and never failed to consider how the world might be otherwise.

Having done lots of walking, I must have grunted loud enough going down IUN’s John Will Anderson Library steps for a student to turn around.  Driving down Broadway, I noticed English professor George Bodmer lugging what appeared to be items from his office as he nears retirement. I felt a pang of regret that this once close friend no longer speaks to me over a university matter that occurred several years ago.  Despite his cantankerous disposition, I’ve missed having lunch with him. He was never boring.

 Gary NAACP leader Jeanette Strong in 1963 Fair Housing protest, virtual museum photo from Calumet Regional Archives

On the front page of the Post-Trib was an article about scholars from Ball State starting a virtual museum about Hoosier civil rights history.  Recipients of a $50,000 grant from the Interior Department, the Ball State team includes professors of history, anthropology, and archaeology and a team of grad students.  Reporter Nancy Webster wrote that representatives met with Steve McShane and me at the Calumet Regional Archives and David Hess at Gary Public Library.  They will be holding a forum in East Chicago in order to solicit community input.  I alerted Lake County clerk Lorenzo Arredondo since his family deserves being featured as in the documentary “Hoosiers: A New History of Indiana” based on the book by historian James Madison.

 Sam, parents, and Sam, Jr.

 

Patrick Chase emailed a couple dozen photos of grandfather Carl, who built a golf course on the grounds of American Bridge, and Patrick’s father Sam, who as a student opposed the 1927 Emerson School Strike.  He recalled his father saying that he and others opposed to the walk-out – perhaps Principal E.A. Spalding or even Superintendent William A. Wirt -  got on Emerson’s roof to speak to the rebellious students, urging them to stay in school.    

Trump supporters love to use the word “snowflake” against the President’s detractors, ridiculing their alleged hypersensitivity toward political incorrectness.  Charles Palahniuk’s “Fight Club” (1996) may have coined the pejorative term when a character says, “You are not special, you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.” On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Mika Brzezinski, defending Joe Biden against those who have taken issue with his admittedly “tactile” campaign style, claimed not to be a snowflake and would welcome Biden with a big hug.  Fox commentators who ignore Trump’s truly abhorrent behavior have begun calling Biden “Creepy Uncle Joe” after Trump mouthpiece Kellyanne Conway criticized his “creepy” behavior.

                                                

above, Mika Brzezinski; below, Freddie Gray

What a bummer was the final episode of the HBO documentary about convicted felon Adnan Syed, who has spent 20 years in prison for a murder he may not have committed – allegedly strangling a fellow high school student, Korean-American Hae Min Lee, and burying the body in Baltimore’s Leakin Park.  On a related note, a recent New York TimesSunday magazine article entitled “The Tragedy of Baltimore: How an American City Falls Apart” traces the uptick of violent crime (309 homicides in 2018 alone) since the death of 25 year-old Freddie Grey while in police custody.  Stung by criticism and upset over new procedures that restrict their freedom, Baltimore’s men in blue drastically reduced their police presence in high crime neighborhoods.  At a community forum Renee McCray spoke of visiting Baltimore’s tourist-friendly Inner Harbor.  She recalled:

 The lighting was so bright.  People had scooters. They had bikes.  They had babies in strollers.  And I said: What city is this?  This is not Baltimore City.  Because if you go up Martin Luther King Boulevard we’re all bolted in our homes, we’re locked down.  All any of us want is equal protection.

 Lonnie at Kentucky and in West Side uniform

Reporter Chase Goodbread, researching a feature story on University of Kentucky cornerback Lonnie Johnson, Jr., projected to be a first round draft choice, wanted background information on his hometown of Gary.  A two-way star at West Side, in addition to his defensive skills Lonnie rushed and caught passes for over a thousand yards.  Coming from a close-knit steelworker family, Johnson helped West Side win the 2014 state track and field championship, winning the long jump and the 4x100 relay.  What Goodbread knew about Gary came from Wikipedia and a two-day visit that included interviewing his grandmother and parents Nora and Lonnie.  I told Goodbread about Gary’s proud high school football tradition that produced Hall of Fame coach Hank Stram and such NFL players as George Taliaferro, Les Bingaman, Alex Karras, and Fred “The Hammer” Williamson.  During the past half-century basketball has attracted most local athletes, as Gary schools can no longer field gridiron teams that can compete with Region suburban powerhouses with squads 3 or 4 times that of West Side or Roosevelt.  Gary’s public schools have suffered from the state’s funding of charter schools.  Goodbread told me that Nora Johnson had been a track star and praised Mayor Richard Hatcher’s support for youth sports programs.  At his request I mailed him “Gary’s First Hundred Years.”

Mrs. Garrison, Mr. Slave & Big Gay Al

IUN hosted Indiana University’s annual Women’s and Gender Studies Research Conference.  Noticing that Kaden Alexander was presenting a paper on queer stereotypes in the satirical Comedy Central adult cartoon “South Park,” I decided to attend.  He was great, not reading his paper like most undergraduates and speaking in a loud, clear voice about something that obviously interested him.  The enthusiasm was contagious and his observations enlightening.  He spoke about ornery Mr. Garrison who transitions into Mrs. Garrison and receives a “fancy new vagina” as well as breasts but then is remorseful because she doesn’t ovulate or become pregnant like a “real woman.” In a clip Mr. Slave and Big Gay Al (one a body builder, the other a “bear”) ridicule Mrs. Garrison and call her a fag.  I sat next to David Parnell, whose student Emily McLean spoke on religion and LGBTQ identity.  During Q and A I asked Em Beard, who had referred to Simone de Beauvoir in her talk “Defining Gender,” about the use of “lesbian” becoming less common compared to “queer.” The latter, she replied, is more inclusive.  SPEA lecturer Jacqueline Huey lamented the insinuation that “lesbian” was an old-fashioned concept.  Even the honorific Ms. is giving way to Mx. among many millennials.

At lunch I received hugs from former IUN professor Lori Monalbano, presently a counselor at IU South, and IU South Bend Gender Studies professor April Lidinsky, who, like me, testified on Anne Balay’s behalf when she was unjustly denied tenure and promotion.  Kaden Alexander introduced me to his wife Terry, who was wearing a Lambda Delta Xi shirt.  Rather than call the organization a fraternity or sorority, she used the word diaternity. Terry told me that it replaced the LGBTQ group Connectionz disbanded and has ten members of various gender identifications and a campus adviser, Beth Tyler.  It’s only the second such chapter in the country, the Alpha chapter being at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania.  A former Valparaiso University student, Terry knew Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette, whom I’ll be in an oral history session with in Salt Lake City in October.

                   Danish women after Niqab banned 

Keynote speaker Sherene Razack, who teaches at UCLA and whose many books include “Looking White People in the Eye,” spoke on the topic “The Racial/Spatial Politics of Banning the Muslim Niqab.”  While I’m opposed in general to government bans on certain types of clothing, Razack condemned Canadian prohibitions against their use by police, teachers or women testifying in court.  Not sure I agree, but I guess the state should not prevent it if those doing the hiring are aware of that beforehand.  In the court case the woman had shown her face when applying for a driver’s license but didn’t wish to confront defendants on trial for raping her. When someone mentioned Niqabs being symbols of oppression and indicator of the plight of women in Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia, Razack claimed that as a feminist she had little good to say about Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women but equated Niqab bans with western cultural imperialism.