Addenda to Racefail II: Electric BoogaJew

[xiphias]

Here's a bunch of other disconnected thoughts about Judaism and minority. These are mostly random things thrown out there. These do not form any sort of coherent narrative or argument; they're just . . . things floating around my head. These are somewhat more likely to be accidentally offensive, because they're not well-thought through, and VASTLY more likely to be useless.

I tend to try to pay careful attention to what things will have effects on the global and local perception of Jews as a group. Because of that, I'm deeply worried about the effect that the Bernie Madoff scandal had, and will have long-term, as well as the whole military mess attacking Hamas in Gaza.

That said, "Bernie Madoff and the Gaza Incursion" sounds like an early-seventies experimental electronica concept album.

Other people have been talking about "visible Jewishness". For me, that's a weird concept. I mean, my name is Ian Osmond. My mother is Matia Angelou. I'm in a Jewish community where last names like "O'Sullivan" and "Murphy" aren't uncommon. My shul attracts a lot of intermarried families, converts, and families with adopted kids, so, year to year, my classroom tends to be about 50% white, with the rest being a mix of Asian, mainly Chinese, Latino/a, and Black. Or mixed-race of any of the above.

Now, obviously, those students can't pass as "not Asian/Hispanic/Black", but they COULD pass as "not-Jewish." They're on TWO axes of minority. And "Jewish" is the less blatant one.

As BenG Jackson, may her memory be a blessing, pointed out -- she rarely got shit for being Jewish. Mostly, she was too busy getting shit for being, poor, black, and female. People would have to get through all of those to start oppressing her for her religion, and who has time? They just settled for the easier three.
Being Jewish and NOT any of the other things allows one to pass as white whenever one wishes, at least, until society decides to crack down on being Jewish.

Is "being able to pass for the majority whenever one wishes" the same thing as "being in the majority?"

In general, would being "a minority who can pretend not to be" get one shit from other minorities folks without that superpower?

What ABOUT the disconnect between internal and external minority identification? "Oreo", "banana/Twinkie", "high yellow". The first two are people who have the EXTERNAL markers without the INTERNAL identification. The last? Someone who lacks the EXTERNAL markers.

And NONE of the three are nice things to say about someone.

Are Jews inherently "high yellow"?

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Dammit, stop being so interesting!

Too late, I guess. :)

Is "being able to pass for the majority whenever one wishes" the same thing as "being in the majority?"

I've been thinking about this, too, coming at it from a different direction. I was thinking about my own areas of privilege, not least that I can pass as Christian. There are times since I left Christianity that I used my knowledge to convince someone that I am Christian and therefore moral. I haven't done that in years, and am disgusted with myself for ever having done so, but would I again if I had to? I want to say no, but...

And yet, I'm not a Christian. I'm bisexual and currently involved with men, so I can pass for straight, but that doesn't make me straight. But if I let myself consistently pass for straight, or Christian, especially if I silently countenance or participate in homophobia or religious bigotry, that would make me a dreadful hypocrite.

In general, would being "a minority who can pretend not to be" get one shit from other minorities folks without that superpower?

I think it often does, at least in my experience. This has been a lot of the criticism I've heard of bisexuals by gay and lesbian people, of light-skinned Black people and mixed-race people by other Black people.

And with that I really should go get some damn work done. :)

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Interesting thought. I've been following the Madoff thing from a distance, and this is the first time his heritage was pointed out to me; most of the places I've seen just think of him as a crook, and maybe just the face of a whole pile of shit that transcends race into greed, but I could just be lucky or dense and not picked up on it.

That said, I love Clive Owen, but The International makes my skin itch.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Also, Jack Abramhoff.

Will Rahm Emannuel make things better or worse?

The more I learn about politics and how people think, the more I start to actually consider the filter, "Is it good for the Jews?"

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

I'm going to say dense, then. This would be the time to make the [horribly obvious, at this point] disclosure that I'm not Jewish, so these things only occur to me when I sit down to think about them.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

Not only is Madoff Jewish, but so are a lot of the people that got taken by him. There's more than a little crisis in the Jewish charitable world right now, because so much of their income was coming from Madoff-invested money. In fact, the Jewish organization on the north shore of MA was shuttered because the vast majority of their money came from a charitable foundation that had *all* its money invested with Madoff. The hit to the Jewish community is huge.

I think this clip from X2 sums it up

[paper-crystals.livejournal.com]

[nextian.livejournal.com]

Found out last night that 31% of Europe thinks the Jews are responsible for the current global financial crisis. It's not good for the Jews.

I tend to feel extremely uneasy about saying things like "we also have the same thing happening to us as to PoC, except you can't see it". I do consider it different, and different in a series of important ways that isn't just "this is a good period," because for one thing our good periods are founded on a long series of previous good periods, and the power we are allowed to hold and keep.

Thaaaaat said, I basically agree with everything you've said here. :/

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Can I ask where that number comes from? I don't suppose I can find a way to bring it up in my frequent telecons with European colleagues, but if I can manage to ask about it, I'd like to be able to give a reference.

[nextian.livejournal.com]

It's right here. It's an ADL survey, but the sample size is very large.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry, I'm off-topic.

I have always, always loved "may her memory be a blessing" as the formal phrase for the dead. It's a loving and pragmatic tribute to the dead -- not a promise of a future afterlife, but a reference to the afterlife that is assured, the one in living memory.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I would disagree that Jews can pass, even though other people can be mistaken for Jews. A friend of mine went to an East Coast college and law school; in both cases, her roommates decided sight unseen that she was Jewish and breathed audible sighs of relief that she wasn't. (I've forgotten what 'gave her away'.)

[rosefox]

I'm Jewish and I pass all the time. Drives me nuts sometimes.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Heh! Boy, was I sloppy in saying that. I think I meant something like "some but not all Jews can pass." but frankly the sentence is a bit of a jellyfish. And when people feel free to tell somebody who "doesn't look like a Jew" all their nasty little jokes --- ugh.

[zarq.livejournal.com]

I would disagree that Jews can pass, even though other people can be mistaken for Jews

I agree.

I had a friend in high school write in my yearbook "For a Jew, you're not that bad". For the life of him, he couldn't understand how I could possibly take offense.

Then I got to college and one of my roommates asked me very politely if I would show him my horns, because he'd never met a Jew before and he wanted to know what they looked like.

I've always been convinced that American antisemitism is deeply ingrained.

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

I keep being astonished that that myth continues, now into the 21st century. (Was the roomie from the South by any chance? )

[ron_newman]

Did you reply by showing him a tuba or trumpet?

[ron_newman]

Why did they not want her to be Jewish?

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

One interesting facet is location: in the US, if people think about my ethnicity at all, they generally guess Jewish (though when I lived in Houston they tended to assume I was Christian, more so than anywhere else I've lived). In Europe, I've gotten asked several times if I was Italian, including in Italy, which I never ever got in the US.

I think a lot of it has to do with whether "Jewish" is even seen as one of the likely possibilities at all; for instance the Dutch city I lived in has about 100 Jews in a metro area of 750,000 (numbers are from Wikipedia, no idea of accuracy). There were a lot more, in a smaller general population, before WWII. And where I live now in Asia, it's certainly not one of the options anyone considers; I think people have sort of a general idea of "American" here, that probably includes Christianity.

[zarq.livejournal.com]

Is "being able to pass for the majority whenever one wishes" the same thing as "being in the majority?"

Can we? Perhaps. I think most Jews who identify themselves as such either can't, or choose not to. I don't think Jews are inherently high yellow. But our ability or willingness to assimilate is complicated by the varied relationship between Jewish observance and Jewish cultural identity, as well as the level of our desire for acceptance.

fjm's comment that erasure isn't assimilation seems very apt.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I'm one of those Jews who gets the "What? You're Jewish?" response a lot. My very solid British surname doesn't help. But I am... in fact, my mother's birth certificate says "Jewish" for race, because in 1926 in Springfield, Missouri, the white people didn't want Jews called white.

And I had a room-mate named Caitlin McLoughlin; her father is a Scottish Jew.

[ron_newman]

When a survey form (hello, Zogby Interactive) asks me for my race, I usually skip over "White/Caucasian" and prefer "Other", filling in the blank as "Jewish American".

I like being Jewish. I would never want to pretend I wasn't. Why would I want to subsume myself in a large undifferentiated category?

[florafloraflora.livejournal.com]

Interesting in paragraph 2. I had always thought of "is it good for the Jews?" as being about advancing the Jewish agenda (whatever that might be—I guess I thought of it as being in the eye of the questioner), not "is it good PR?". But when you put it that way, it certainly makes sense.

Maybe "otherness" is about whether bad PR for your group has to reflect on you or whether you can shrug it off. I worry to some extent about J Lo or the Pope making me look bad, but my group(s's) image is not as much of a concern for me as it is for some.

That said, as long as hearing my name leads people to change their behavior toward me I won't feel like I can pass. I'm inclined to say that if you have to worry about passing, you've got a problem. One of my biggest fights with my now-ex who wanted me to move to the sticks came when he said, "But why does it bother you so much [that there wouldn't be people like me there]? It's not as if you can't pass." Just the fact of having to worry about it is a burden.

[amysuemom.livejournal.com]

Everyone in my userpic is Jewish .

This comes up with my kids alot, but with John and I as well. I was always blond and blue eyed so growing up was constantly asked how I could be Jewish. John is a Jew by choice and given his distinctly Irish name it's not a religion anyone assumes he is part of.

I tell my kids that labels don't have to be worn on our shirts. People make assumptions, often some really negative ones, based on the stupidest things (race being one obvious example) and that you don't have to deny who you are but you also don't owe the world an explanation.

My son still, if asked "what" he is, assuming he deigns to answer you at all will say "a boy" and than shut you down completely.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

I've had some interesting discussions with people about the difference between the sort of labels that have a choice about coming out, and those that are inescapable. For myself, I find that they shape me in different ways, and that discovering places where I had the power to *choose* to come out made a big difference in how I felt about my relationship with the world.

I had no idea until you mentioned it that Madoff's ethnic/religious background was important to some people. My own world is so full of so many different sorts of Jewishness that the stereotypes strike me as silly, even as I'm aware that others don't take it that way - but it's not my main concern, and so it doesn't get a lot of brainshare from me.

My son is "Jewish enough" for some purposes, but it's certainly not going to be the main challenge he faces in life.

[jehanna.livejournal.com]

Nobody ever assumes I'm Jewish in my experience. I don't have several of the "assumed" traits physically, and my name is an Ellis Island Special, so people only realize when I tell them. Which typically comes up when I'm trying to schedule vacation time at work, or during the Xmas season when people ask what I'm doing.

I can't say I've personally experienced any prejudice for my religion. There were anti-Semites where I grew up, but it tended to appear in a more general sense--graffiti and the like--then as anything personal. Unless you count the one or two born-agains who worked for my Mom and kept trying to convert her, but that's beside the point.

However, I've experienced a lot of biphobia, both direct and indirect, and almost always worse from gay men and lesbians than from straights.