US/UK's Special Relationship: The Culture of Torture in Abu Ghraib and Lynching Photographs

US/ UK's Special Relationship: The Culture of Torture in Abu Ghraib and Lynching Photographs Hazel Carby N o matter where you are in the United States, since two Boeing 767 commercial jets were transformed into high octane weapons and flown through a cerulean blue sky into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, it is difficult , if not impossible, to avoid seeing evocations of the American flag. Flags are everywhere, not only in their cloth version flying from poles and windows but in paper or plastic stuck on anything that can be consumed or worn, anything that moves or grows: even gardens are not immune from being carefully cultivated in patriotic colors. I have begun to feel that I live permanently under the shadow of the flag even if streaks of red, white and blue are just in my peripheral vision or appearing in my computer screen as a ghostly reflection from the street as I sit, writing, in the corner window of my favorite coffee shop. At some point, maybe just before or maybe just after the invasion of Iraq, I noticed that flags were beginning to appear in pairs: the Stars and Stripes and the Union Jack were twinned on bumper stickers , benches and backsides. As restaurants deleted trench fries from their menus and replaced them with "freedom fries," it seemed as if Britain was becoming disengaged from its association with Europe in the ^ Spectators at the lynching of Jesse Washington. May 16, 1916. Waco, Texas. Gelatin silver print. Real Photo postcard. 5 1/ 2X3 1/2 in. American mind. Who knows where this will end? Maybe some senator will propose that the United Kingdom be dragged across the Atlantic, moored off Long Island and inducted as the fifty-first state. When I saw Love Actually for the first time in our local multiplex theatre, I laughed wholeheartedly and verbally expressed my satisfaction and approval when Hugh Grant told Billy Bob Thornton to take his obnoxious self, his national arrogance, and his government's political inflexibility back across the Atlantic (of course, these are sentiments that I imaginatively projected into the scene). My enthusiasm for sending the haughty Yank packing was met by surprised stares, frowns of disapproval, and then angry mutterings from those around me. I slid as far down as I could go in my seat for the rest of the performance and snuck out of the nearest emergency exit as soon as the credits rolled. However, contrary to this movie experience, it has been a few good months to be a Brit, even a black Brit, in the U.S. of A. My accent attracts strangers who initiate conversations about their, or their families', historic ties to the United Kingdom, or to Ireland, or they relate stories about their experiences when stationed in Britain during World War II, or they just reminisce about rainy holidays in London. People I have never met welcome me as a "comrade in arms" but, when they hear my intractable opposition to the war, the tone of these friendly overtures changes and people Fall 2006 N k a «61 walk away from me slowly, as if reluctant to believe a Brit could feel this way. They glance back over their shoulders and ask with their eyes if I am just kidding. I am not kidding. They are bitterly disappointed. I dread these occasions. I feel as if I am supposed to be the local representative of the "special relationship " between the United States and the United Kingdom, but instead, I am daily reduced to the level of a traitor, who has betrayed not one but two nations. Recently, all of these encounters are pretty civil; last year, my protest activities with other British women provoked direct and very aggressive threats of serious bodily harm. Much has been written about the special relationship between Britain and the United States on the level of high politics and diplomacy, but rather less has been written about the presumed existence of a shared common culture — a culture that has, since the American Civil War, been actively cultivated and promoted as a way of cementing that "special relationship." In this...