Excessive focus on Jewish issues vs Black issues at Alas?
| March 2nd, 2009In comments, Destinee wrote:
As a black woman, I am befuddled by the excessive focus on Jewish issues at Alas this past month.
Given that it was black people who built America as slaves, black people who had to fight for desegregation and civil rights less than 50 years ago, black people who continue to face hardships in housing/education/worklife, etc, given all of that, why is there no focus on black issues at Alas?
I am not saying as a Jewish person, you do not experience discrimination; I am saying that as a Jewish person who is more likely to pass as white than as any other racial background, you have it much easier than a black woman like myself who struggles each day because of the color of my skin.
Thanks for commenting, Destinee.
I don’t recall if you’ve posted on “Alas” before, so I’m not sure if you’re a longtime reader or not. Since “Alas” began, there have been 581 posts in the “racism” category,1 and 68 posts in the “antisemitism” category. I’m not saying that 581 posts is “enough,” and of course not all those posts are substantive, but I don’t think anyone who’s been following “Alas” for long would say that we write more about Jewish issues than black issues.
I am personally committed to continuing to write anti-racist posts on “Alas,” and I know other “Alas” posters are, too.
It is true that there have been an unusually high number of posts about Jewish issues in the last month or two.
That said, I don’t share the approach to blogging that your critique suggests, and I make no apology for the recent surge of posts about Jewish issues. With all due respect, it’s wrong for a non-Jew (assuming you’re not Jewish) to criticize Jewish bloggers2 for an “excessive” focus on Jewish issues. It’s not up to you, as a non-Jew, to tell Jews the appropriate amount of focus on Jewish issues.
If the US government concentrated more on antisemitism than racism, that would be wrong — because, like you, I think that POC in the US have more urgent issues than Jews in the US do, and the government is obliged to represent all of us.3 Large news organizations, whose mission is to cover news as a whole, have a similar obligation to make sure their coverage reflects the demographics and real needs of society as a whole.
But “Alas” is a blog, not a news organization or a government agency. And what we blog about is determined by what the “Alas” writers are passionate about blogging about, and also what our schedules are like.
As it happens, there’s usually much more blogging about race issues than Jewish issues on “Alas.” But if we mostly posted about Jewish issues, that would be fine. No blog is obligated to focus on issue X rather than issue Y just because many people — usually people unaffected by issue X — consider issue Y more important.
In the end, framing the question as “excessive” focus on Jewish issues versus insufficient focus on Black issues is a bad approach. It wrongly implies that there is such a thing as “excessive’ focus on Jewish issues for an individual blog, and it wrongly implies that there’s a competition for attention between Black issues and Jewish issues.
But for what it’s worth (and maybe that’s not much), “Alas” has always included posts attacking racism and white privilege, and it always will.
- Not all of those 581 posts are focused on Black issues specifically, but many of them are. (back)
- Not all bloggers on “Alas” are Jewish, but nearly all “Alas” posts about Jewish issues have been written by Jewish bloggers (back)
- It doesn’t represent all of us, but it is obligated to. It just ignores that obligation too often. (back)
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:42 pm
This is downright offensive. Would it somehow magically be made better if she was a black and Jewish?
If I were to suggest that Jews were somehow different from other humans and couldn’t be empathized with by non-Jews, it would be deemed derogatory (and rightly so.) Therefore, if I can empathize with Jews, then I might just be able to understand Jewish issues, albeit through my own filter - but that’s also what every human, Jewish and non-Jewish, contends with every day. You can’t tell me that all Jewish people have the same experience - some level of filtering is going on regardless of religion/culture.
Telling a fellow human what they can or cannot comment on due to an ascribed status is ridiculous.
This comment was written by Simple Truth.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:54 pm
SimpleTruth,
Do you actually disagree with the following proposition: It’s not up to you, as a non-Jew, to tell Jews the appropriate amount of focus on Jewish issues. ?
You really think that someone who is not Jewish, and especially who is not coming to the discussion with a show of empathy for Jews’ experiences, should be telling Jews that they are overly focused on Jewish issues?
I have lots of empathy for all kinds of people who are different from me. I don’t think that my empathy suffices that I can claim to understand so well what’s going on with those people, that I can tell them where there’s a line of “you’re just talking about X too much.” I can suggest that in a particular situation, they might be too quick to see something that probably isn’t there, and even that they might need to step back and work on perspective, but I certainly am not going to say “And it’s wrong for you to be thinking and writing about that to the degree that you do.”
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:02 pm
It has been my experience, particularly in progressive circles, that among all the minorities who face discrimination and oppression in this country, it is almost always Black people who take the position that Destinee took in her comment, that somehow when Jews start talking about antisemitism and other Jewish concerns, we are somehow taking attention away from the time and energy that ought to be spent talking about the very, very real issues of racism and oppression and discrimination that African-American face in this country. Now, before I go any further, let me say this, I am not interested in suddenly turning this into a conversation focused on antisemitism in the Black community. It’s there; we all know it’s there; and it is the business of Black people themselves to own it and take responsibility for it. What I am interested in asking is:
1. If other Jewish people share this experience of mine;
2. If Black people (or other people of color, for that matter) have the experience that it is Jewish people who mostly interrupt their discussions and conversations about racism or sexism or etc. to insist that what they ought to be talking about is antisemitism (and I am not asking this question disingenuously; I really want to know);
3. If–aside from generalizations about a divide and conquer strategy of the status quo, or complaints, for example, about Jewish paternalism during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s or the Crown Heights riots–we can come to some concrete, specific understanding not merely of how this dynamic works, but of what might be done not to get caught up in it.
A book I have pointed to in other posts, that truly changed my life when it came to thinking about these issues, is Yours In Struggle.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:04 pm
Even if the statistics don’t add up, people write about what they know best. The author is a Jew, so the author knows most about antisemitism. By the commenter’s arguments, I should be complaining about the fact that Asian racism is greatly ignored and that I am appalled that Alas doesn’t focus on those issues. Should I be appalled? No, b/c I can get that elsewhere if need be. Same applies to Black issues.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but the commenter seems to imply that this blog is the only blog that speaks about racism. Patently ridiculous. I think it cheapens Alas, or any blog, to expect its authors to speak about all race issues all the time. Let them write about what interests them. That’s the very definition of a blog, isn’t it?
Just saw Richard’s comment and I would like to say that, as an Asian, I’ve experienced it in terms of inter-organizational interactions.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:41 pm
Well of course she can comment on that without being Jewish.
I have never held much truck with the “My issue is all MINE!” theory which seems to suggest that only blacks can really have an opinion on black issues, only Jews can really have an opinion on Jewish issues, only the disabled can opine on disabled issues, etc. It is a toxic theory which doesn’t lead to any worthwhile discourse.
I don’t see why being non-Jewish would make it inappropriate or incorrect to go where she went.
Now, I think she’s wrong, for a variety of reasons including the fact that Alas is usually more focused on racism than Judaism. But she should be free to ask the question or raise the issue without being a Jew, just like all us white Jews can feel free to have an opinion on whether something is racist or not. Having an opinion is part of being human.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:02 pm
But Sailorman, it isn’t an issue of “My issue is all mine!” and the subject of this post has no right to make any comment on it. Rather, it’s that the Alas bloggers talking about antisemitism are saying, “Hey, this is a serious issue!” and Destinee’s comment suggested, “Well, maybe, but it’s not as serious as MY issue, so stop talking about it.” Her response was not so much a response to the issue as a request that the issue be tabled.
This comment was written by valkyrie.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:11 pm
Simple Truth:
Sailorman:
Certainly, everyone or anyone can have an opinion on everything or anything, but I think that beyond the issue of ‘having an opinion,’ there’s also the issue of how appropriate it is to express it in certain circumstances and ways.
I mean, I think of, say, a white environmentalist showing up in the middle of a black-lead discussion of racism to complain that the environment is a far more pressing issue, that there’s an excessive focus on racism in the discussion, and everyone should really be talking about the environment.
Sure that’s his right, but it’s also uncool, you know?
—Myca
This comment was written by Myca.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:23 pm
@Destinee
Your commentary was offensive on so many levels I barely have the stomach to wade in. While I understand your desire to see black issues front and center as I am a black woman myself; privileging your identity over others is just recreating hierarchies. Alas has written many articles critiquing racism aimed at the black community. Antisemitism is a very serious issue and in case you have forgotten there is a lot of murder and violence in Jewish history because of hatred. They have every right in their space to discuss issues that impact their lives to any extent that they desire. What would your reaction be if someone entered a black blog and made the same request of the owner there?
This comment was written by Renee.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:10 pm
I used to feel as Destinee did, and for good reason. There is a long history in discussions of race — particularly in discussions of racism against blacks — for people who are privileged racially to play oppression olympics by using their non-privileged… er… component. I could be “misunderestimating” here, but I’m under the impression that most Jewish people in English-speaking Western countries are white, and thus benefit from white privilege. Not ethnic privilege, certainly — but ethnicity and race routinely get conflated, particularly in America, and to a lot of black folks, Jewish people talking about anti-Semitism = gay men talking about homophobia = white women talking about sexism = Irish Americans talking about historical anti-Irish bigotry as if it’s still an issue, etc., all of which have been used in conversations about race as derailers. Frequently.
Alas has begun focusing on race issues to a greater degree recently, as part of a commitment to intersectionality. I can’t speak for others, but I know I’ve been reading and enjoying it a lot more because of this. That said, it’s still a relatively recent change, and you have to keep in mind that there’s a history here of feminist sites saying Go Intersectionality! and then failing to actually deliver. When Alas focuses on issues of anti-Semitism, it’s serving the overall goal of attacking oppression in an intersectional way… but a lot of people are still going to perceive discussions of Jewish people as discussions of white people. And since there’s already a (perceived) large contingent of Jewish voices in the feminist community, it’s logical that some people will perceive this as same-old, same-old.
There’s only one way around this, IMO, which is for Alas to increase its discussion of all oppressed groups across the board. More anti-Semitism, more racism against PoC (and not just black PoC), more poor women and immigrant women and Islamophobia and so on. You cannot effectively counter a perception of bias by reduction, IMO; only by greater inclusion.
All this said, I used to think like Destinee, but I’ve since altered my philosophy as I realized that it wasn’t possible to effectively talk about racism without learning about all oppression, and understanding the ways in which they overlap. I do think it’s crucial that we maintain separate, protected spaces in which each group can discuss certain topics, within-group or with others. But the system is perpetuated when various groups ignore each others’ issues and start sniping at each other for getting too much time/attention, etc. We don’t all have to talk about everything — that’s unwieldy and does nothing. But we can listen to what other groups are saying, and offer support.
(I’ve been failing on the lattermost myself. I’ve been reading the entries on anti-Semitism here and enjoying them, taking the opportunity to learn about something I don’t really understand. But I haven’t said much, and I should.)
This comment was written by nojojojo.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:29 pm
This argument only works until you realize that people make Antisemitic comments all of the time in the so-called enlightened west. While I would agree that Jewish people recently have had the benefit of some white privilege, there are times when their ancestry is revealed that we learn that the extension of white privilege has its limits. To this day many have no problem openly connecting Jewishness with frugality. This is a vicious stereotype and further does not take into account what kind of trade and subsistence activities that were allowed Jewish communities historically, it is problematic to say the least. Every single race, culture, creed and religion needs to be actively discussed if we are disturb dominant discourse.
This comment was written by Renee.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:30 pm
I don’t even see why religion needs to enter into it- it’s wrong for one Jewish person to tell another that hir focus on Jewish issues is excessive. Everybody gets to write about what interests them, and if what they say doesn’t interest you, hit the “page down” button until you see a topic that does.
This comment was written by Circadian.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Alas authors should write about subjects that compel them to write. They are wonderful writers and arguers, and I consider their writings as gifts. When we readers are not interested in the posts we’re free to go elsewhere.
This comment was written by marmalade.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:35 pm
Destinee, that is just a very odd comment - when you say “in the past month”, are you saying that in the context of the past month being “Black History Month”? And you thought there would be more focus on Black issues? Because, that can understand. Not that I at all agree with your comment - it would just seem less like out-of-the-blue rudeness.
I’m a Black woman and I’ve been reading Alas on and off for years. The content of the blog basically reflects the interests and passions of whichever bloggers are writing at the time (the only constant over the years has been Ampersand). For some of the bloggers it’s been fat issues, others anti-racism, still others various aspects of gender identity and stuff, feminism, intersectionality, immigration and lots of other stuff. Some I was interested in, some not, but I’ve always really liked the variety in both the writers and the topics.
I, too, noticed the focus on Jewish issues this past bit and just figured this current group of Alas bloggers were primarily Jewish, that there was just this issue with Israel and Gaza and everything flowing from that and it only makes sense that events would spur some to explore what it all means to them, Judaism, being a Jew in general and all the rest.
To me, this is one the absolute beauties of the blogosphere and the online community in itself. How often in normal daily life does someone from outside of whichever group get to sit in on (and participate in, if one wishes) conversations like that?
This comment was written by Nanette.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:45 pm
RJN, I have to say your comment makes me a bit uncomfortable. Not that there aren’t virulently anti-semitic Black people, just as there are virulently racist Jewish people, but… well, for one thing, there is no such thing as a “Black community”.
I don’t know your personal history in activism and so on, but perhaps it would be better if, instead of ascribing these person’s (including Destinee’s) behaviour/thoughts/opinions to “Blackness”, you would instead work your way around to putting individual’s behaviour/thoughts/opinions on those particular individuals, who no doubt have their own histories, biases and reasons for doing/saying whatever.
This comment was written by Nanette.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:00 pm
Yeah, I think the anti-semitism thing will work its way through. I”m a Jew, and I’m sick of talking about it. ;-)
Alas used to have a lot more posts about anti-racism — but our primary race blogger has been off caring for her babies! Selfish woman. :-P But I am very, very glad that we have Tempest and Nora and Karnythia allowing us to RSS feed their often anti-racism-concerned content.
I actually was going to put up a post about race and literature today, but then I actually worked on my own fiction, heaven forbid.
Anyway, I think the anti-semitism thing is just this month’s zeitgeist. Though I agree with what Amp says; it’s okay to have a Jewish-centered blog. (If this one were as Jewish-centered all the time as it has been over the past couple months, I might wander off to anotehr part of the blogosphere, but I strongly doubt that’ll occur — and even if it did, it wouldn’t impact the blog’s right to exist.)
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Alas authors should write about subjects that compel them to write. They are wonderful writers and arguers, and I consider their writings as gifts. When we readers are not interested in the posts we’re free to go elsewhere.
I agree, and I’m not just saying that because I’m tacitly an Alas author myself (I’m a sometime blogger at Angry Black Woman, and posts there get crossposted here). But I believe one of the reasons Amp asked to crosspost ABW stuff here was in an effort to increase the representation of writers talking about intersecting oppressions. I could be wrong about that; can’t speak for him. I’m just saying I think it’s a good thing, and maybe those authors, including me, need to talk more. =)
This comment was written by nojojojo.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:11 pm
I am mostly with nojojojo and Nanette here, but I have been feeling, as a reader, like it is too bad in retrospect that this influx of posts happened during Black History Month. (edited to clarify) - because I particularly like that this blog covers a broad spectrum of progressive issues as well as pop culture, and because while I am certain there was no particular decision to intensely focus on one issue in recent weeks, it gives the blog a more focused feel, which in the context of Black History Month (a topic which many progressives are giving at least some attention to), feels a little incongruous.
Also, I’m selfishly wishing there were more BSG posts. And so there.
This comment was written by Elusis.Report this comment to the moderators
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:12 pm
I was thinking back to a link Amp included in a Tab Dump recently about Jews and whiteness. A fair amount of the discussion at the link had to do with frustration at Jews pretending they don’t have white privilege, and I suspect a similar frustration is where some of the irritation or lack of patience with discussions of antisemitism comes from.
I’ve known European-descended Jews who will say that they aren’t white, and I think there is something dishonest or not quite right in that. I’ve always considered myself white, but when someone says “white, but not quite,” I know what they mean. That “not quite” is real, but it’s Jewishness, not not-whiteness. But if Jews are going to be expected to own their whiteness (and they should - the white ones, anyway), there needs to be a certain space to discuss the other ways we aren’t part of the dominant group.
I would expect it to taper off a bit. I wandered over here after that whole deal at Feministe, and one of the things I like about this blog is it seems to cover a wider range of issues and have contributors from more varied perspectives than some of the other places I’d been hanging out. But I’m also glad Alas provided the space for these discussions on a blog that isn’t “just” a Jewish blog. I don’t think I’m speaking only for myself when I say that seeing some of this stuff addressed in the open, so to speak, gave me a sense of relief to know that I’m not crazy, helped me clarify some things for myself that needed clarifying and gave me a lot to think about.
This comment was written by chingona.Report this comment to the moderators
March 3rd, 2009 at 2:43 am
Nanette,
Thanks for your comment. I think maybe the language I used is dated, since I certainly did not mean to essentialize antisemitism as part of “Blackness.” Twenty-five some odd years ago, when I was involved in what were called “racial awareness workshops” at the place where I worked, one of the subcategories of such workshops–for want of a better phrase–were those that dealt with “racism in the Jewish community” and “antisemitism in the Black community.” Those phrases, or phrases very much like them, were the ones that were used, and this subgroup of workshops were intended–as I remember them–to address, at least in part, what was then understood to be the largely unacknowledged/undealt-with issues of racism among Jews and antisemitism among Blacks, and how that lack of acknowledgment often prevented those groups from speaking constructively to each other. Indeed, now that I think about it, perhaps my whole comment @3 is dated–nojojo @9 pretty much gave me a “V8 moment” (insert image here of me hitting my head with the flat of my palm. Destinee’s comment, I think, just pushed some very old buttons and I wrote out of that response. In fact, if this comment would make any sense without my previous one being up there, I’d delete it. Because I think the direction the conversation has gone is far more fruitful than the one in which my comment would have taken it.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:09 am
Nojojo @9 wrote this:
In my daily life, until my Jewish identity becomes an issue, I am white. This goes without saying, and I try to own what this means and to be accountable and responsible for the privileges that come with that status. And, mostly, when my Jewish identity becomes an issue, here in the United States, that identity is not racialized (and I am referring here not to “legal” categories of race, such as are on the census, but about categories of perception), and so the antisemitism that I experience is, in a contemporary American context, not also a kind of racism, in the way that it was, say, in Nazi Germany or much of 19th century Europe, where the category Jewish was racialized and Jews were, according to some racial theorists, actually lower on the scale of racial hierarchy than Blacks were.
Still, it is important to recognize that Jewish as a category was racialized in the United States (and, I suppose, still is by white supremacists, but I am going to leave them aside for the moment), and in the not-too-distant past. Forgive me for quoting myself, but I want to refer to a paragraph from Part 5 of my antisemitism series. The page references in the first part of the quote are from Leonard Dinnerstein’s Anti-Semitism in America.
It is also easy to forget the connection between whiteness and Christianness that is woven deeply into American culture. The “white man’s burden” was a Christian white man’s burden; after all, the religion with which “we” were supposed to civilize the “savages” was Christianity, not Judaism. More tellingly, consider this quote from E. D. Cope, one of the leading paleontologists and evolutionary biologists of the late nineteenth century in this country–I found this in Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man. Cope wrote that mixing the “fine nervous susceptibility and mental force,” of the “highest race of man” (read: white people) with “the fleshly instincts, and dark mind of the African” would result not only in “the [white] mind [being] stagnated, and the life of mere living introduced instead” but also in the dubiousness or impossibility “of resurrection,” which would, of course, have been assured, in the absence of some disqualifying sin, to a child born to two white Christian parents.
If the talk is about racism in contemporary America, I am, as a practical matter, if not as an absolute categorization (as if such a thing were really possible) white; if the talk is about antisemitism, however, I cannot ignore the history in which I would not have been white had I been alive or the way in which that history teaches me that my “whiteness” could be rescinded at any moment–if, say, the white supremacists I mentioned above, or a group very much like them, should ever come to power. (And I am not even going to get into the ways in which Jews, even Jews we would consider white, are racialized in other parts of the world; or the ways in which the experiences of Jews of color complicate the whole question.)
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
March 3rd, 2009 at 6:37 am
I’m with Renee here. Why on earth is this being taken seriously? Isn’t this the same sort of entitlement shown by dudes who stop by feminist blogs to complain that the authors aren’t writing about these issues, which are way, way more important? The point isn’t that the issues may or may not in fact be important (they usually are), but that it’s not the commenter’s blog, and they don’t have the right to demand that the blog cater to them personally.
Additionally, as Ampersand pointed out, this blog does contain far more content on racism than on antisemitism. I’m reminded strongly of trolls telling women how good they have it compared to their Afghani counterparts, and to demand that there be more posts about how evil Islam is; these generally ignore the entire history of third-world feminist activism. The goal isn’t to get the target to start talking about something, it’s getting the target to stop talking about something that bothers the instigator.
I have my own issues about which I care quite deeply. Can I get a serious response if I troll hard enough in an unrelated thread?
This comment was written by grendelkhan.Report this comment to the moderators
March 3rd, 2009 at 8:50 am
My uncle owned a house which had in its deed “Not to be sold to members of the Hebraic race”; my parents both went to university when there were (unofficial?) Jewish quotas on attendance. Jews have had to fight for acceptance in North America within the last 50years as well — it’s not all over and done with. Just read articles on Bernie Madoff vs articles on any other scam artist. Only one set of those articles brings up religion in the lede (or at all).
It’s often possible for (Ashkenazi) Jews to “pass” as Christian in North America and Europe — but is hiding your religious or cultural background really what most people want? I know I have white privilege — I don’t even look stereotypically Jewish. I know I have other privileges, but there is a Christian privilege, and frankly, the online “A-list” feminist community is also filled with a cultural Christian privilege which is rarely acknowledged.
This isn’t to say that racism is unimportant, or less important, just that anti-semitism is also still important.
This comment was written by Turtle Wexler.Report this comment to the moderators
March 3rd, 2009 at 9:02 am
But there is.
Not that it is necessary to constantly rank them, but of course there is inherent competition between issues, whenever you are discussing issues for which a certain perspective will tend to lead to a different conclusion. This is so clear that it hardly bears explaining: demanding that a certain perspective be present (or absent) with respect to analysis of a given situation is, frequently, a proxy for demanding that a certain conclusion or argument be presented.
The fact is that although we all have varying points of view, the philosophical underpinnings of our beliefs have an enormous effect on the resulting conclusions we reach. A writer on gaza who focuses on racism may well reach different conclusions regarding he justification of Cast Lead than a writer who focuses on Israeli issues, or a writer who focuses on international law issues. People who look at illegal immigration from a legal perspective are going to have, generally speaking, different perspectives from those who look at it from a racism perspective. And so on.
But there are only so many different circles of influence we can consider at once and still have a functional conversation. So there is always an inherent competition among the competing interests groups to have their “pet” interest(s) be among those which are weighed and considered.
It’s a competition for limited conversational and thought resources. Why pretend it isn’t?
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
March 3rd, 2009 at 9:31 am
It’s a competition for limited conversational and thought resources. Why pretend it isn’t?
This blog has been around for years and presumably will be around for years to come. How does having a greater focus on a particular issue in the last month or so because some of the writers feel compelled to take up that topic turn into a zero-sum game with winners and losers?
Your larger point has some validity, but I don’t really see how it applies to this particular situation.
This comment was written by chingona.Report this comment to the moderators
March 3rd, 2009 at 10:04 am
I agree with all of this. I’ll note, however, that in at least some places in the US, even Ashkenazi Jews don’t necessarily “count” as white to many people. I’m not sure if I’ve told this story here before or not, but I went to a university in the Deep South. Once, I was sitting in the dorm lounge, and I overheard someone from a group of girls nearby (all white, Southern, and either Southern Baptist or Pentecostal) say, “Why don’t you ask Ruchama? She’s Jewish.” My usual thought on weird questions is that it’s better to answer them than to let people continue thinking weird things, so I said, “Ask me what?”
The question was, “Are you offended by the Confederate flag?” I answered yes. She continued, “But are you offended as a Jew, or are you offended as a Yankee?” She was trying to decide whether or not it was appropriate to buy something with a Confederate flag printed on it for a Southern Jewish friend. So the Confederate flag, as the symbol of Southern whiteness, she saw as not necessarily including Jews. I had several other incidents like this, including one where someone just flat-out asked me, “Are Jews white?” Where I grew up, just outside NYC, I was sure I was white. In the south, it seemed that nobody else was sure, and so I wasn’t so sure anymore.
(I had a friend who said that she had the opposite experience — she was white in Louisiana, but then suddenly became Hispanic in New York, even though she’s actually mostly Cajun, but with a Spanish-sounding last name.)
This comment was written by Ruchama.Report this comment to the moderators
March 3rd, 2009 at 10:10 am
How does having a greater focus on a particular issue in the last month or so because some of the writers feel compelled to take up that topic turn into a zero-sum game with winners and losers?
Exactly. Specifically, on a blog where the only limitation on conversation is the bloggers’ time and interest (as opposed to a newspaper or magazine, with a limited number of pages in each issue, or a TV program or movie with only so many minutes of running time), if new or renewed contributors — in the case of the past month’s focus on anti-Semitism, David Schraub and Richard Jeffrey Newman — are inspired by a particular topic, they produce more content than otherwise would exist. So there’s no zero-sum game.
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
March 3rd, 2009 at 10:34 am
Ruchama,
Interesting — I grew up in Alabama, and went to college in New Orleans. If I met Jewish people before college, I had no idea what they were. This could be because I was just so primed to assess people as friend or foe based on skin color that I literally didn’t understand how white people differentiated among themselves, or it could be because there were so few Jews in my town that I simply never encountered them. Probably the former, since there was a good-sized synagogue in town.
Things were different at Tulane, though, which had a large population of white Jewish kids (specifically from New York, for reasons I’ve never quite understood). I was still blind to them, though; I would hear white kids (who may have been Jewish for all I know) joking that Tulane was “Jewlane”, but I would look around in puzzlement and think, “Where?” I heard a lot of talk about it, though. There was a big brouhaha one year because one frat on campus — apparently the one containing a lot of Jewish boys — admitted a black guy. This apparently prompted another fraternity, which had a tradition of holding an “Old South Days” event, to parade across campus that year, with some guys in sidelocks dragging along other guys in blackface on chains. I remember the blackface and chains most vividly, of course, but it’s only now, in retrospect, that I recall the sidelocks.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 10:48 am
“So the Confederate flag, as the symbol of Southern whiteness, she saw as not necessarily including Jews”
I suspect that she might have said
“So the Confederate flag, as the symbol of Southern oppression and Christian-based white supremacist insanity”
which probably explains the “not for the Jews” part.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 10:57 am
I like Richard’s comment about feeling, based on an understanding of history and antisemitism that although we white jews are “white” that label of “whiteness” could be rescinded, perhaps not at any moment, but that it’s a real possibility. I think that’s a good description of how I feel.
I always check the box marked “white,” but I also always notice that there’s no box that fully reflects how I would describe my ethnic heritage. I actually wrote in “Jewish” on one census form, because beyond the racial check box it also asked an ethnic heritage question - examples being Irish or Italian or Spanish or what have you. There is no nation-state with which I identify my ethnic heritage. My ancestors came from parts of Russia/eastern europe that have changed names a bunch of times over the last 100 years. But when they lived there, they were not Russian or Polish or Czech. They were Jews.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 10:58 am
I’m also a Tulanian. The reason for all the Jewish kids is that Tulane used to be one of the few “good” schools that didn’t have a Jewish quota, and so a lot of Jewish kids ended up there, and then it got a reputation for being a good place for Jewish kids, and so even after the quotas, it was still sort of more at the top of Jewish kids’ (or parents’) minds than, say, Vanderbilt. Tulane has pretty consistently been about a third Jewish.
I’m betting the second one was KA? When I was there, they had a controversy because they had a ball every year where the guys would wear Confederate uniforms and their girlfriends would wear Scarlett O’Hara-type gowns, and they’d “secede from the campus” for the night. The agreement with the administration was that they were allowed to do this as long as they didn’t come on campus wearing the uniforms. One year, a few guys and their girlfriends decided they wanted to get some pictures of them in their costumes outside one of the old Southern style buildings on campus. (Already, breaking the rule.) While they were taking the pictures, they noticed some little black kids, elementary school age, playing on the lawn — I think they were there with a tutoring program. One of the frat guys offered a few of the kids a quarter each to pretend to pick cotton in the background of their pictures.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 11:06 am
Many of the people I met there, including these girls, did not think of it as a symbol of oppression or insanity. It was Southern Pride, without necessarily really going into all that that entailed. Several of them said that their grandparents still referred to the War of Northern Aggression. If it just represented the Confederacy, then there’d be no problem with giving something with that image to a Southern Jew; if they really did feel that it represented oppression and insanity — if the associations that they had with it were all things like the KKK — then they wouldn’t have used it at all, since these girls, while somewhat clueless sometimes, definitely did not approve of that sort of stuff. To them, it really was just Southern whiteness, and they were trying to figure out how Jews could fit into that structure.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 12:08 pm
On Bernie Madoff: what articles? I’ve only seen Those Jerks On The Internet mention Jewishness, and just now some strange text add on Google News that asked if he counts as a mensch.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 12:12 pm
There is no good way to type the onomatopoeia going on in my head as I read this, but it’s something like, “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
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March 3rd, 2009 at 12:44 pm
Destinee, I’m sorry but it seems to me you’ve got a fairly outsized sense of entitlement to come on someone else’s blog and tell them what they should be blogging on. If you have issues that you think aren’t being adequately dealt with in the blogosphere, by all means start your own blog and post to your heart’s content. It’s still a free country (unless the Fairness Doctrine gets re-instated and extended to the ‘Net).
Amp - what’s it cost to start and run a blog, anyway?
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March 3rd, 2009 at 12:49 pm
I got in a conversation with my boss a few weeks ago along those lines. He’s in his early 60s and grew up here in Tucson, where the dominant racial dynamic was and remains Mexican/Anglo. He told me that growing up he barely knew what a Jew was, other than a kind of white person with funny eating habits.
This is truly horrific. Or Mandolin said.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 12:52 pm
When I was there, they had a controversy because they had a ball every year where the guys would wear Confederate uniforms and their girlfriends would wear Scarlett O’Hara-type gowns, and they’d “secede from the campus” for the night. The agreement with the administration was that they were allowed to do this as long as they didn’t come on campus wearing the uniforms.
Why would this be any business of the school administration in the first place?
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March 3rd, 2009 at 12:55 pm
After thinking about it a bit, I think I realized what I was trying to say about the girls in my dorm:
They were living in a sort of constructed “Southern whiteness” that pretty much depended on blacks being invisible. When we started talking about the Civil War once, they all said stuff like, “Oh, I’m sure that, in your Yankee school, they just told you that it was about slavery, right? But it was about States’ Rights,” and got flustered when I asked, “States’ right to what?” During the course of this conversation, a black student came into the room to use the microwave, and all of them got really quiet. However proud they were of their Southern heritage, they knew that it just wouldn’t work to say those things while a black girl was in the room.
So, in thinking about those frat boys — if one of these girls had been that frat boy’s girlfriend, I am positive that she would have told him to stop, to leave the little kids alone. When it got that obviously racist, these girls would say no. But would they have dressed up in the gown and gone to the ball with the boyfriend in the Confederate uniform? I think so.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Well, the frats have charters from the university. The university can have certain rules for the frats and can suspend the organization if they break the rules. (Two were suspended during the time I was there, one for parties that got too wild and one for a party where several girls, who drank only what was given to them by the frat guy tending bar, ended up in the hospital with an OD on roofies.) In previous years, they’d been on campus in the Confederate uniforms, and some other students complained to the administration about it, and “You can wear the uniforms, but not on campus” was the compromise the frat and the administration reached.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 1:07 pm
O.K. I understand that the university can revoke a charter, etc. But why should the university care if someone’s wearing a Confederate uniform on campus? Because someone complained? So what? There’s no right to not be offended.
If people want to write letters to the editor of the school paper or post entries in the local blogs or get a 100 people to walk up and down the sidewalk outside the fraternity house saying “Kappa Alphas are racist assholes”, fine. That’s their right to freedom of expression. But it seems to me that saying that to the complainers is the proper response of the administration.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 1:13 pm
I’m guessing the issue was that there are more stringent rules on the fraternity as an organization than there are on the members as individual people. And maybe an official event glorifying the Confederacy could be interpreted as hate speech, which would be against the university rules for what fraternities as organizations could do? I’m honestly not sure, but I’d guess it’s something like that.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Well, I started my blog for free, and it only costs me the time I put into it. ;)
I came over to this post after seeing the title in someone else’s feed.
Why did it catch my attention? Somehow, it spoke to something I was feeling about Alas.
I’ve been a dedicated reader, and occasional commentor for, gosh, 2 years now.
And I guess I too was confused at the sudden glut of analysis and opinion on antisemitism. I think addressing antisemitism is valuable and important. I am aware that many bloggers and commentors here are Jewish, and I value their perspectives. I was simply surprised at the sudden change in content, and I kept wondering if I had missed something about a change in the purpose of Alas.
When Alas covers a broad range of topics, I find myself a frequent visitor. When the focus narrows to what almost felt like a single topic (antisemitism in this instance), I will come by only occasionally, just like I would to any single-topic blog. As others have pointed out, the blog owner and writers get to make their own decisions as to the content of this blog, and I respect that. As a dedicated reader, their content choices decide the frequency of my visits.
Is this offensive? Anyone have feedback for me? Even though I don’t agree with Destinee’s angle on this matter, in a general way she expressed something I was feeling too.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 1:38 pm
Not at all. We’re in no way entitled to your attention.
The blog will diversify again in time, I’m sure, when this topic burns out, and I hope that you’ll come back then. In the meantime, I can’t blame you for yawning and turning to something you find more interesting.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 1:49 pm
RonF,
Because it was never just Confederate uniforms. As Ruchama notes, the fraternity in question tended to engage in blatantly racist behavior while wearing the uniforms. It was the hate speech/hate acts that the university tried to control, not merely the uniforms. The “Old South Days” parade that I mentioned was less a parade than several dozen drunk, rowdy young white guys roving the campus in a pack, shouting slurs and abuse at anyone they saw who didn’t “belong”. Considering there were only a few dozen black students on campus, who tended to congregate in a few spots, and considering that the parade veered off its established route to come near one of those spots (no one was there, though; we’d received early warning from the campus police), I imagine the administration worried there might be an Incident if they let this sort of thing go on. And I think they were right. Free expression it might’ve been, but their purpose was also to intimidate; it was explicitly threatening behavior.
(To put all this in context, this was in the final years of Apartheid in South Africa, and the PoC student groups on campus had been staging protests about it at the main administration building. I think it was a year later that black students on campus received threatening notes in their mailboxes; the FBI was called in. So the “Old South Days” crap was set against this backdrop.)
And since we were paying just as much money as those assholes for our educations, and felt we had a right to go to school without harassment or intimidation, go figure, we objected. (Using “we” here to mean the African American Congress of Tulane, of which I was an officer while I was in college; we did lodge formal complaints. I assume there were other complaints by other groups targeted by this frat, but I don’t know — there wasn’t a lot of intersectionality or dialogue between the groups at that time [early Nineties]. As I vaguely recall, there were also complaints from white parents who objected to the conflation of Confederate symbols with Klannish behavior, and alumni of the fraternity being mocked.)
Plus, I imagine Tulane didn’t want to develop the reputation of being a racist school. Kind of puts a dent in enrollment, particularly if a third of the population is Jewish as Ruchama says.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Wow, Ruchama, all this stuff is taking me way back. And not completely in a good way. ::wan smile::
::lols:: I can’t tell you how many times I walked into a room full of white people at TU and heard them go quiet. =)
Tulane was a third Jewish? Seriously? Wow, I really must’ve been ignorant not to notice that. -_- Good grief.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 2:16 pm
That was one of the reasons. Another major attraction for us is that it increases the number of science fiction/fantasy writers who are posting at “Alas” (not all of us are sf/f writers, but most are). It’s weird, because it’s not like we spend much time discussing our creative careers here, but I really like it that so many “alas” bloggers are sf/f creators.
Plus, we just liked the writing at ABW.
My only regret is that you don’t post more often, but I suppose you might have a life outside the blogosphere or something. (How very selfish of you!)
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March 3rd, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Ah, well, if they’re walking around harassing people while wearing the uniforms that’s a different story. I thought they were just strolling around the grounds. If people complain to the authorities along the lines of “They’re wearing Confederate uniforms and I find that disturbing” my reaction is TFB. But if they were engaging in overt harassment then the authorities were correct in stopping it.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 3:49 pm
::lols:: I can’t tell you how many times I walked into a room full of white people at TU and heard them go quiet. =)
My company has a fitness center. Quite nice, actually - about 20 cardio fitness machines on one side and about 20 weight machines and an area for free weights on another. The locker rooms and showers are cleaned often. It’s only $15/month to employees. A goodly chunk of my department uses it, and our schedule is such that we tend to all be there the same time around lunch. There’s a couple of gay guys (from another department, and thus I don’t know them very well) who come in to use it about the same time.
One of the guys in my group commented a couple of times “Funny how the gay jokes stop when a couple of actual gay guys walk into the locker room.” Although normal conversation didn’t.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 3:57 pm
In the meantime, I can’t blame you for yawning and turning to something you find more interesting.
I can’t think of any blog I’ve seen where I find all the posts enthralling. And yes, it comes and goes in waves; sometimes I comment on all the active threads, and sometimes none.
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March 3rd, 2009 at 4:27 pm
According to Hillel, Tulane has an undergrad enrollment of 7,862, and about 2,000 of those undergrads are Jewish, which works out to about 25%. I know that when I was there, though (late nineties and early 2000s), I was told that it had been pretty steady at about a third for a while.
This comment was written by Ruchama.Report this comment to the moderators
March 3rd, 2009 at 5:45 pm
My sophomore year, the school paper — as they did at the beginning of each school year — published all kinds of statistics about the incoming freshman class. One number that got highlighted was the number of African-American males who were not on athletic scholarship — it was 7. Not 7 percent, but 7 people. There was some brief campus discussion then about what the university could do to attract more black male students, but that discussion never really went anywhere.
After the KA incident, which was shortly after a sorority party with a “rapper” theme (I don’t remember exactly what it was called, but one of the sorority girls was insisting that it wasn’t racist, because “We meant that people should dress like the people in Eminem videos!”), there was a campus meeting on racism. One of the KA guys gave a bit of a defense of KA (basically, “We’re proud of our Southern roots,”) and, when he was asked if they had any black members, turned the question around to one of the representatives of a black fraternity and asked if they had any white members. The whole meeting was just about that productive. (At one point, someone was complaining that if they wanted a letter to the editor to be published in the school paper, then it had to be in by Monday, and this was So Unfair. I was working on layout on the paper that year, and I stood up and explained that the newspaper room had a limited number of computers and the only way to get the paper to press on time was to lay out the opinion section Monday night, or Tuesday afternoon at the very latest. They thanked me, and then continued to get letters in on Thursday and complain about being silenced.) (The letter thing was just one particular group. But this was their constant complaint at every single meeting about any issue.)
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March 4th, 2009 at 1:31 am
[...] the comments on this thread there were requests for more posts on BSG. I don’t really have a full post in my head, but [...]
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March 4th, 2009 at 6:23 am
How’s this work for you?
This comment was written by grendelkhan.Report this comment to the moderators
March 4th, 2009 at 7:21 am
grendelkhan, what the HELL is that?
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March 4th, 2009 at 11:55 am
RonF, it’s from “Neon Genesis Evangelion”, and the short answer is that it’s the protagonist screaming; the slightly longer answer is that, plot-wise, it’s kind of complicated. If you’re curious, the scene in that clip is about halfway through “End of Evangelion”, the series-ending movie which, if you watch it after all twenty-six episodes of the original anime, still makes no damned sense.
But it does contain some of the most astonishing voice acting in terms of horrified screaming that I’ve ever heard. Best of all is one of the earlier episodes–I don’t remember which–in which a very long, very intense howl of terror and rage is immediately followed by this gorgeously cheesy rendition of “Fly Me To The Moon” over the closing credits.
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March 4th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
@RonF is missing out. Anime follows an extreme example of Sturgeon’s Law (which states that 90% of everything is crap - anime pushes that percentage a few points higher). Neon Genesis Evangelion is the cream of the other 10 (or 8 or 5 or 2)%. Takes the usual Ender’s Game / Harry Potter teen-world-saving genres and turns it on its ear in a horrifying display of bathos, giant-robot-gore, and horribly jumbled biblical imagery.
Of course, that video spoils the violent part of the climax of the whole series.
And yes, the “fly me to the moon” closing credits of every episode is the most jarring transition I have ever seen.
Although if we’re not careful, this thread will now be about anime.
This comment was written by Silenced is Foo.Report this comment to the moderators
March 4th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
Hrrm. I dunno; I think Anno overestimated his audience and pandered to them too much at the same time. The abstruse symbolism flew over everyone’s head, since it was intentionally nonsensical, but “hey, it’s a raft of naked pliant sex-doll Reis!” sure as hell sunk in, judging by the fanart. I watched the series so I could make heads or tails out of TVTropes; I felt a little dirty afterwards.
“Fullmetal Alchemist”, on the other hand, I thoroughly enjoyed. And as for “Elfen Lied”, why, I knew I was signing up for nothing but wall-to-wall fanservice and gorn, so I didn’t see the problem.
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March 4th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Elfenlied is the one anime that I wouldn’t admit to watching in public. It’s a shame, since behind the thinly-veiled paedophillic pandering, the glacial domestic soap-opera, and the over-the-top gorn… it’s a actually a very nice black satire of anime themes, and the Kurama character-arc is one of the best stories I’ve ever seen in anime.
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March 5th, 2009 at 6:26 am
So are the majority of really good schools in the North, though. Northwestern is about one third Jewish. Penn is about one third Jewish. Etc. It’s more than a little scary that it’s seen to be “noteworthy” that Tulane is about one-third Jewish. That’s a yawner among high caliber schools.
And I don’t get how there’s any “debate” about the whiteness of Jews (of E European ancestry, of course). Just because some ignorant yahoos from East Bumble ask dumb questions like “Are you white?” doesn’t mean that there’s any real debate on the topic.
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March 5th, 2009 at 6:53 am
Susanne:
Except that the question of the whiteness of European Jews–not only Eastern European (presumably Jews from England, Denmark, etc. would also be “white”)–is not simply about what some “ignorant yahoos” may or may not ask. There is a long history of Jews not being considered “white” in the United States–which does not mean, as I and others have said here quite clearly, that European Jews in the United States do not have white privilege–and to dismiss that history as you have done here is to dismiss part of what it means to be Jewish in the United States.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 7:04 am
As for Tulane being a third Jewish — it’s “noteworthy” particularly because it’s a southern school. A quick google tells me Duke is about 10% Jewish, and Vanderbilt was about 2% until they started aggressively recruiting Jewish students a few years ago and got up to 10%.
This comment was written by Ruchama.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 7:14 am
There’s a listing here (scroll down a bit) of Jewish percentages at colleges. I’m not sure where the data comes from, so I don’t know how accurate it is, but the numbers for the schools I’m familiar with seem about right. http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/310901-jewish-enrollment-graph.html
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March 5th, 2009 at 8:00 am
Richard,
How is it dismissing history to point out that Jewish whiteness (for those who are) is no longer in question, and hasn’t been for several decades? The same applies to Irish Americans — historically they were ranked right down there with black people, and discriminated against to the same degree. Yet over time this changed, and these days they benefit from white privilege; hell, most members of the Klan are Scotch/Irish-descended, like most white Southerners. Thankfully Jewish Americans never went that route, and were in fact prominent allies during the Civil Rights Era… but all this history doesn’t negate the fact that today, now, when speaking of the current racial situation in the US, most Jewish Americans are unquestionably considered white by most of the country.
I kind of feel like I’ve somehow offended some people here by mentioning Jewish whiteness, but I’m not sure how. O.o
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March 5th, 2009 at 8:14 am
Nojojo,
I don’t think you have said anything offensive and perhaps I read Susanne’s comment from a slightly different perspective than you did. Given the history in this country, it’s hard for me not to see Jewish whiteness as always and inherently contingent, precisely because of the ways that whiteness in this country is tied up with Christianness. That connection is not always so clear, but it is, I think, always there; and so while I would agree that there is no debate that Jews of European decent are, in general, considered white by most people in this country, the fact that someone can still ask about Jews, “Are they white?”–and the fact that organizations like the Klan will still insist that Jews are not really white–indicates the contingency I am talking about. In other words, I think the debate is there, ready to be opened; and I think it’s important to acknowledge that fact, even as I also think it is important to acknowledge that–to make it personal–in my daily life, unless my Jewishness becomes an issue, I live in this country as a white man and to use the fact that I am Jewish to try to avoid taking responsibility for white privilege is to deny that reality.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 8:22 am
I second all of this. (Well, except the “man” part, obviously.)
This comment was written by Ruchama.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 8:36 am
A book that does a really interesting job of talking about whiteness and Christianness is Richard Dyer’s White. It’s been a long time since I have read it and so I will not even try to reconstruct his argument; it is, however, worth looking at.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 8:38 am
There was a book several years ago called something like “How Jews Became White Folk.” I’ve never read it, but it looked interesting.
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March 5th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Richard,
Ah, gotcha. I guess it’s that I dismiss those who dismiss Jewish whiteness, because they tend to be extremists with an agenda (like the Klan, which attacks Jews in part to establish its own whiteness in relative terms — part of how the Irish “became” white; good summary of the book here). Or people whose only knowledge of Jewish people comes from extremist sources (which I suspect was the case with the girls Ruchama mentioned; Klan ideology is deeply embedded in old white Southern families). My own (pathetic) knowledge of Jewish people came solely from the media and books, and occasionally from visiting New York and noticing Hasidic Jews, but there was nothing in that to controvert the idea that Jews were white.
Clarification — I didn’t think I’d offended per se, but I do worry that bringing up whiteness has somehow derailed the conversation we’d been having.
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March 5th, 2009 at 8:40 am
Jews couldn’t have gone that route. The second incarnation of the Klan, the one that started in 1915, grew out of the Knights of Mary Phagan, the group that lynched Leo Frank.
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March 5th, 2009 at 9:13 am
Nojojo wrote:
When I read that, I immediately felt the need to respond, but I hesitated because I really don’t have the time to engage whatever debate might come out of what I want to say, but given Julie’s Gentile Privilege Checklist, I feel the need to point out that this statement is as clear an instance of Gentile privilege as I can imagine. Nojojo, I don’t know you and so I am not accusing you of anything, but the fact is that you can afford to dismiss those people–though I would point out that they are not the only ones who question the “whiteness” of white Jews–in a way that I cannot precisely because you are not Jewish.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Jewish people couldn’t've gone the Klan route, but there was nothing to prevent them from starting up their own exclusive organizations and using those to perpetuate racism, in an attempt to position themselves in the country’s racial hierarchy. The Klan was only the worst of the orgs that the Irish started. Not to mention that nobody needs an organization to perpetuate oppression.
Whether Jewish people would have done such a thing is another matter, but anybody could do it, provided they had the right coloring.
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March 5th, 2009 at 9:33 am
Nojojo wrote:
This is especially important to remember in light of the fact that there were Jewish slave owners, as well as rabbis who found justification for slavery in the Hebrew Bible no differently than there were Christians who found justification for that institution in their religion.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Very true. The secretary of the treasury of the Confederacy, Judah Benjamin, was Jewish. (In Joan Nathan’s “Jewish Cooking In America” cookbook, there’s an anecdote from the journal of a Jewish soldier on the Union side in the Civil War: His troop was in some small Southern town during Passover. He didn’t have much to eat, but then he noticed a small boy sitting on a stoop eating some matzo. He asked the boy if he could have a piece, and the boy ran into the house shouting, “Mama! There’s a damn Yankee Jew out here who wants some matzo!” The mother came out and gave him a few pieces.)
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March 5th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Huh. You’re right, and I hadn’t thought of it, though I should’ve. Just the fact that I could afford to go through so much of my life without noticing the Jewish people around me tells me I’ve got more privilege embedded there than I’d thought. It’s still hard for me to see beyond black and white, since that was so critical to the formation of my earliest survival mechanisms, but I’m trying to get beyond it. Thanks for pointing that out.
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March 5th, 2009 at 9:45 am
Ruchama,
That is a great story. I laughed out loud, though I recognize it’s more comic than funny (if that distinction makes sense).
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Just a note on “How Jews Became White Folks,” because it’s a personal pet peeve: The book is pretty terrible by academic standards, IMHO, and I wonder that it was even published. (I realize it’s potentially problematic to use academic standards as the yardstick, but that’s how Karen Brodkin, the author, is presenting the book, so I think it’s fair.) There are almost no primary sources, which for a history book is appalling and there are all sorts of outrageous claims for which no supporting evidence is provided. (To provide just one example, Brodkin claims that pre-WW II white Protestants in universities weren’t academically motivated and thus provided no real competition to first- and second- generation American Jews in the same universities. Brodkin does not corroborate this claim. Uh, what?)
There are some very good points in the book, and some points which could be interesting and important if further analyzed, but on the whole it’s pretty shoddy scholarship that’s pretty clearly inflected with sentimentalism and white guilt. In the words of Hasia Diner, a leading historian on Jewish American history:
I know there are better works exploring Jewishness and whiteness, many of which are on my rather long “To Read” list, but I think it’s an oversimplification to say that the answer to Jewish whiteness is an unequivocal “yes” when it’s really more of a “yes, but…” I don’t want to dismiss Jewish whiteness, but I also feel as though Irish Americans aren’t really an appropriate comparison in a lot of ways. I’ve also noticed the tendency for non-Jews in progressive circles to bring up Brodkin as irrefutable proof of Jewish whiteness, which is to my mind tokenizing in addition to closing off an interesting and complex discussion.
This comment was written by Sarah.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 10:11 am
That whole cookbook is really great — it’s an interesting focus, specifically looking at Jewish foods in America, and traces a bunch of recipes back to different places — showing, for instance, how foods eaten by Jews in different places got combined into whole new things in places like New York where Jews from lots of different places were living close together, and how the same original recipe could mutate into different things based on what foods were available and commonly used in different parts of the US. So, like, charoset in the northeast is generally made with walnuts, while most Southern Jews make it with pecans, and matzo balls in Louisiana have green onions and red pepper.
This comment was written by Ruchama.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
If I’m remembering her work correctly, Leah Hagedorn has done fascinating research on the Jewish community of New Orleans, arguing that in the middle of the nineteenth century Jews did have white privilege but that it was systematically eroded around the end of the century. She suggests that it’s particularly interesting because the process took place considerably later than other parts of the U.S. South. (I may be misrepresenting the argument–the U.S. isn’t my field, and it has been awhile. I know Leah’s work, ironically, from when we were colleagues in the Tulane history department in 2000-1.)
This comment was written by Yusifu.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 12:07 pm
Try Eric Goldstein’s The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (which I quasi-reviewed here).
This comment was written by David Schraub.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 12:44 pm
A side note:
There was a saying I heard as a kid (from a father who was telling me why I wasn’t allowed to play with his daughter) — turn a Jew inside out, find a n*gger. I didn’t run into it again until college (in a sociology textbook) and haven’t ever heard it since.
I’m wondering if anyone else has ever heard this or if perhaps it’s not said anymore because Jews are now seen as white.
This comment was written by AndiF.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Nojojo, I don’t know you and so I am not accusing you of anything, but the fact is that you can afford to dismiss those people–though I would point out that they are not the only ones who question the “whiteness” of white Jews–in a way that I cannot precisely because you are not Jewish.
I’m Jewish too. And I can afford to dismiss these people, because nowadays it really is a belief held only by uneducated people from the sticks and/or Klan members / white supremacists. I don’t need to think there is any “debate” on this issue, any more than I need to think that there’s a “debate” over whether the earth is more than 6,000 years old.
This comment was written by Susanne.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
That’s really refreshing to read. Even on blogs where privilege is being discussed, those who are most commonly on the disprivileged side of things are unable to acknowledge privilege that they do have. I commend you on not becoming outraged when your privilege is pointed out and on your work in trying to see the privileges that you do have. It’s hard work and to be applauded.
I have to disagree with this. My experience in urban, educated environments tells me otherwise.
This comment was written by Jake Squid.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 9:34 pm
How did I know southerners would end up the ones getting trashed before I even read the comments?
Just one of those lucky guesses, I suppose.
This comment was written by DaisyDeadhead.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
I didn’t mean to be trashing Southerners in general, just these particular KA guys. Sorry if that came across wrong.
This comment was written by Ruchama.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
I have just written DaisyDeadhead’s Law, which will echo Godwin’s Law:
“If bad/backward/stupid/racist (etc) southerners are not mentioned in the post and are not the subject, whoever uses them in comments first, to shore up their point, loses the argument.”
(Of course, that’s only the beta version.)
This comment was written by DaisyDeadhead.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Daisy, if you’ll forgive me being too busy to reread the entire thread — can you tell me which comment(s), in particular, you found objectionable?
(I’m not assuming I’ll disagree with you, I just want to read the comments you mean.)
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
March 5th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Well, in support of AndiF’s theory, the racist Southerners I know have never insulted Jews in my presence.
The only case of blatant antisemitism I’ve personally encountered came from a guy who sometimes dropped by a college Pagan Club (in the North), and I still don’t know if he meant it. I know that after the initial conversation where I delicately told him he sounded like a crazy person, he opined that the club was mainly “Jewish paganism” — which, in fairness, does seem literally true of one respected speaker (Kabbalist magician) and I guess this guy too.
This comment was written by hf.Report this comment to the moderators
March 6th, 2009 at 2:30 am
Amp, not necessarily “objectionable”–it’s just predictable, rote and very, very tiresome. I count 26 (!) comments referencing southerners in a thread that is ostensibly about black and Jewish topics here at Alas. (isn’t it?)
Can’t somebody else stand in for the world’s most evil racist antisemitic uneducated bad stupid (etc) “ignorant yahoos from East Bumble” once in awhile? I’m sure there HAVE to be others.
Correction: the second incarnation of the klan came with the release of DW Griffith’s film BIRTH OF A NATION (original title: “The Clansmen”) in February 1915. The lynching of Leo Frank occurred in August 1915, after they had already re-grouped after the release of the movie. (”Knights of Mary Phagan” was a klan front.)
This comment was written by DaisyDeadhead.Report this comment to the moderators
March 6th, 2009 at 6:55 am
OK, since it looks like I was the first person to mention the South — I was responding to the turn the discussion had taken about Jewish whiteness, and the south is the only place that I’ve ever really heard it questioned in casual conversation like that, and several times this questioning was in the context of things like the Confederate flag. And it happened several times while I was there, and only once that I can think of when I was anywhere else. And considering that I only spent 4 years in the south, out of my 28 years on earth, that seemed relevant.
This comment was written by Ruchama.Report this comment to the moderators
March 6th, 2009 at 7:10 am
Ok, Daisy. You’re right. The chances that a Jewish student would be asked “are you really white?” is JUST as high in Massachusetts or Illinois as in Alabama or Louisiana. There’s no difference between the south and north except that it’s warmer in the south and they sweeten their tea down there. That’s it. @@
This comment was written by Susanne.Report this comment to the moderators
March 6th, 2009 at 9:03 am
Susanne,
Actually, the first person I ever heard express anti-Semitic sentiment was someone who had spent all of her time in the U.S. in New York City. Before that, it had never occurred to me to think of Jews as distinct from the “white people” category. In some parts of the South, Jews are such a tiny minority that bigotry just doesn’t have much reason to come out. I’ve also seen this difference in the level of bigotry toward South Asians in places like New Jersey, where South Asians are everywhere and thus felt to be a threat, versus small towns in the South, where there might be one South Asian family in the whole town. While I had to deal with some religious bigotry in the South, I know people who grew up in Jersey who dealt with much worse racial bigotry.
I agree with Daisy that these assumptions that the South is somehow categorically worse than the North on race issues is really tiresome. (And I mean tiresome in the sense that I wrote an application essay many years ago on this topic, noting that there don’t seem to be as many incidents of white cops shooting unarmed black men in Southern cities as in enlightened places like NYC and LA, yet clearly the racism is all in the South, yup.)
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
March 6th, 2009 at 9:05 am
I have to say that I’ve experienced more antisemitism in the North than in the South, but the antisemitism I experienced in the South was different - more religious in nature. I can’t really speak to how “white” Jews are in the North vs. the South because it was never framed that way in my own experiences, but there are cultural differences.
This comment was written by chingona.Report this comment to the moderators
March 6th, 2009 at 9:47 am
And this particular event has to do with black and Jewish topics at Alas, how? This is supposed to prove what exactly, I mean, about the bloggers here and their chosen subject matter?
I just wondered. I guess I don’t see the connection.
PS: Believe it or not, I don’t sweeten my tea either.
This comment was written by DaisyDeadhead.Report this comment to the moderators
March 6th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I know the conversation has gone in a different direction, but I want to delurk to point out a few small things -
Could we use a term like “European Jews” when talking about Jews who identify as white? I feel like conversations like this create an assumption that Jews with European ancestry are more authentic than Jews with ancestry in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.
Also, if a European Jew doesn’t identify as white, I think it’s important to remember that only they know their life experience, even if an observer feels like they *should* identify as white based on their looks. In the past, I’ve heard people imply that European Jews don’t identify as white just because they don’t want to own up to their privilege - but, again, they don’t know what experiences those Jews may have had.
Finally, a couple of people have mentioned that they, like Destinee, have felt put off by all the recent posts about antisemitism. I’ll admit that that makes me uncomfortable. There’s good reason to be talking about antisemitism right now, what with the situation in Venezuela, South Africa, and Europe; also, keep in mind that these posts had a very precise starting point: the slew of ignorant and antisemitic responses to David’s posts on Feministe. I agree that we’ll probably open things back up to other issues soon (I myself feel like I’ve said what I wanted to say), but I guess I feel like we’re looking at this as a group of bloggers suddenly becoming obsessed over an issue, rather than taking the time they need to work that issue out.
This comment was written by Julie.Report this comment to the moderators
March 6th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Enough, Daisy. You made your point. Now you’re just derailing the conversation.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
March 6th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
(Daisy Bond here.)
Could we use a term like “European Jews” when talking about Jews who identify as white?
…Spain is still part of Europe, right?
My family is Sephardic; I’m perceived white across the board (my dad’s ancestry is Irish), but there are people in my family (and lots of other Sephardim) who are very much non-white European Jews. It’s not that they’re white-looking/white-passing Ashkenazim who don’t identify as white for whatever reason. It’s that they’re not white.
I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but “European Jews” isn’t the right term, IMO. The non-white Sephardim I know are first-generation European immigrants, for goodness sake. That said, I’m not sure what a better term would be. Ashkenazim almost works, but that leaves out the Sephardim who are white/white-passing, like me and other half of my family…
This comment was written by Daisy Bond.Report this comment to the moderators
March 6th, 2009 at 4:11 pm
That’s why I went with European (I also didn’t want to use “Sephardic and Ashkenazim” because that would imply that Sephardim from North Africa and the Middle East were white, too). But I see your point. We do need a better term.
This comment was written by Julie.Report this comment to the moderators
March 6th, 2009 at 6:37 pm
That’s why I went with European (I also didn’t want to use “Sephardic and Ashkenazim” because that would imply that Sephardim from North Africa and the Middle East were white, too).
Ah, fair enough.
If you want a term for Jews who identify as white, maybe we can just use “white Jews”? Maybe that creates a sort of foregone conclusion that’s problematic for conversations about the somewhat complex relationship between white-passing and/or white-identified Jews and white privilege. But I do like that it enables us to talk about white Jews while simultaneously calling attention to the fact that some Jews aren’t white.
This comment was written by Daisy Bond.Report this comment to the moderators
March 6th, 2009 at 10:32 pm
True, but then we’ve got Jews who may seem white because of their looks but don’t identify as white… gah, my brain hurts.
This comment was written by Julie.Report this comment to the moderators
March 7th, 2009 at 5:53 am
White Identified Jews - WIJ for short?
This comment was written by Eva.Report this comment to the moderators
March 7th, 2009 at 11:35 am
Richard Jeffrey Newman (addressed to Nojojo): Nojojo, I don’t know you and so I am not accusing you of anything, but the fact is that you can afford to dismiss those people–though I would point out that they are not the only ones who question the “whiteness” of white Jews–in a way that I cannot precisely because you are not Jewish.
I would like to talk more about this; unlike Nojojo, I am Jewish, and like Nojojo, I do dismiss people who question the “whiteness” of white Jews as being ignorant and not worth the time of day. How is it “privilege” to dismiss things that are simply, factually wrong? I can afford to dismiss people who say that the Holocaust never happened — because they’re incorrect. I can afford that not because I’m white, not because I’m Jewish — but because it’s simply not factual, any more than saying that 2+2=5 or that Syracuse is the capital of New York State. Can you help me understand what’s “privileged” about dismissing questions that are based on untrue notions in the first place?
This comment was written by Susanne.Report this comment to the moderators
March 7th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Susanne - I’m addressing your question in comment #100. I see you’ve posted similar comments regarding the relevance of debate on the topic of the whiteness of Jews.
Although it may be true, in your experience, that only the ignorant and people who are allied with hate groups see White Identified Jews and question their “whiteness”, that is, apparently, not the experience of many other WIJ, including a great number who have commented on posts here on Alas. And since having part of one’s identity questioned by people who are neither aggregiously ignorant nor overtly hatefull has been and continues to be an ordinary WIJ’s experience, I don’t know how it’s possible to dismiss it, merely because it is “factually incorrect” (assuming we have all the facts in a given case available).
Never mind the complications of physically being identified with a group of people who hold sway, priviledge-wise, over everyone else in the world. Not everyone who holds such priviledge wants it or understands it, feels like they actually retain benefits from it, or, as others have said, feels like, from the inside, it is theirs to claim even though, from the outside, it is a priviledge granted.
A roll of the DNA dice gave me the pink skin, fair (though curly) hair, and green eyes of my Dad’s Russian Jewish heritage, and my older brother got my Mom’s Middle Eastern looking, though of Polish Jewish heritage for centuries, olive skin, brown hair & brown eyes. Ultimately my brother and I both come from the Middle East (unless we came from people who converted to Judaism), if we go back far enough, as many Jews and non-Jews tend to mentally do. I think it’s that mental calculus that undercuts the perception of “whiteness”, despite what one’s eyes tell one about the person standing in front of them. I doubt very much that that mental calculus is ever going to go away. And although you may be able to dismiss it, or deny it, I can’t, and I wonder how many WIJ can.
This comment was written by Eva.Report this comment to the moderators
March 7th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Susanne,
I suppose it depends on what you mean by “dismiss.” When an individual says things that are factually untrue, of course I can dismiss what he or she says, and I can dismiss him or her as well, assuming that we don’t have a connection I can’t ignore. Suppose, for example, she or he is my boss, or my colleague, or even my student. Suppose that person is my girlfriend’s father or mother, or my son’s art teacher. In each of those cases, to differing degrees, to the extent that there is such a thing as antisemitism in this country, and to the degree that what those people are saying is part of antisemitic rhetoric–albeit an old one–I cannot afford to dismiss either them or the values they express. That they can express those values at all is a mark of privilege, that I have to defend myself against that they are saying is a mark of their privilege.
There is more that I could say, and I am not sure I have said this clearly enough, but I need to go.
This comment was written by Richard Jeffrey Newman.Report this comment to the moderators
March 7th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
Susanne, I’d add that there’s a difference between being able to dismiss the content of what someone is saying, and being able to dismiss the fact they’ve said it and the position they have that allows them to say untrue things apparently without concern that they will get called out as liars. I mean, it’s also untrue that if a Muslim man kills his wife, it must have been an “honor killing” instead of attributable to a longstanding history of abuse and untreated mental illness. But when I hear people saying that, I feel obligated to challenge it because allowing it to stand does affect how Muslims are treated, how Islam is regarded and even whether domestic violence victims will get help or just be dismissed as needing to change their religion. An untrue idea can have as much power or more than a true idea — “a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on.”
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
March 9th, 2009 at 9:18 am
@PG #2
PG (and Ampersand) - you are, of course, correct that I shouldn’t tell you when or what to think or write about.
I was making the same point in the opposite direction - you shouldn’t tell others not to have an opinion, either.
This comment was written by Simple Truth.I agree that the original post was what I would consider off-topic and not germane to the discussion at hand. I just found it a little offensive to be told what I could or could not comment on due to my religious/cultural status. That being said, I do enjoy the amount of intellectual discourse here, and on topics that I wouldn’t normally have on my radar (like Jewish culture), and the level of respect usually displayed in the forums.
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March 9th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Simple Truth,
I think you are missing why it’s peculiarly inappropriate for someone who is not Jewish to scold Jews for talking “too much” about anti-Semitism and other issues that affect only Jews: someone who is not Jewish doesn’t experience these aspects of life and therefore can’t know how much is the “right” amount for people to talk about this. We (non-Jews) are just not part of the community that is dealing with it, and while we may be sympathetic allies, we can’t really share the perspective.
That’s why it’s more problematic for someone who never has dealt with anti-Semitism to say “you’re talking about this too much” than for someone who has dealt with it to say the same. It’s like having a man tell a female rape survivor that she needs to get over her fear of men, versus having a fellow female rape survivor counsel her on how to do the same thing. Their points may be basically the same and equally (in)valid, but inevitably the speaker shapes the speech when giving a specific person a directive of this sort.
We’re not talking about a generalized policy question like “Should we get rid of the prohibition on unlicensed practice of law?” where people will have different opinions shaped by whether they’re lawyers or not, but ultimately it’s a fairly impersonal and unspecific point and so the identity of the speaker ought to be divorced from the argument he makes. We’re talking about a criticism made of this specific weblog for hosting a series of posts discussing anti-Semitism, and especially a criticism couched in the assumption that there’s some zero-sum game in which discussing anti-Semitism leaves less bandwidth for discussing other forms of racism, and that this weblog has been insufficient in discussing other forms of racism. In that context, it is perfectly reasonable to have less patience with a criticism made by someone outside the community than someone within it.
Or to put it much more briefly: of course you can have an opinion, but don’t be surprised if people tell you they don’t feel obligated to take your opinion all that seriously, and even find that opinion offensive, uninformed or inappropriate.
This comment was written by PG.Report this comment to the moderators
March 13th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
PG:
I actually came back to search for this thread to see your response. I think I see where we are at loggerheads. I agree that no one should be told they are talking too much about an issue they are familiar with by someone who does not have any authority in saying so….I don’t really feel that people should be censored like that period, by anyone - authority or not.
The issue that bothered me, and I’m beginning to think that I took it out of context, was that someone was telling me “it’s wrong…to criticize” based on a status. At first, and again- this is not what Amp meant (I think) - I took it as signaling that I should not have an opinion on Jewish issues because I am not a Jew, period, end of statement. Upon rereading it and taking it solely to mean the curtailing of someone else’s opinion, I agree with Amp and your comments. However, it still runs dangerously close to the line of telling non-Jews what their appropriate focus is, which is what originally got my dander up.
I’m starting to get more involved reading this blog so I hope you’ll forgive the growth spurts in commenting. It’s a developing skill that I’m learning.
This comment was written by Simple Truth.Report this comment to the moderators
March 18th, 2009 at 3:03 am
Sorry I’m late, but … @Julie:
Welcome to our world!
- yet another white-privileged mixed ashkenazi/sephardi jew
This comment was written by yrl.Report this comment to the moderators
May 2nd, 2009 at 12:10 am
Would Judge Diane Wood have dissented had a Christian been told a crucifix being placed outside their condo door was against the association by-laws? I’ve seen several comments regarding this case where that question is being raised.
This comment was written by manfromearth.Report this comment to the moderators