xiphias | Addenda to Racefail II: Electric BoogaJew

Addenda to Racefail II: Electric BoogaJew

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"?

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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'.)

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

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.

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.

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

It is weird reading accounts of prejudice against Jews, because in all the places I have lived (rural areas around Michigan), the topic has never come up. I've heard people tell a lot of rude ethnic jokes about Poles and Irish, and some astounding bigotry against people with dark skins, and my maternal grandparents apparently always disliked my father because he was Catholic, but it's like Jews aren't even on the radar around here. Then again, maybe it's just chance, and maybe there is a lot of anti-Jewish prejudice that I never ran into.

Out of curiosity, how many Jews did you run into?

Let's see: I have an uncle who is of Jewish descent, there were two of my professors that I remember mentioning being Jewish at one point or another, and one of our friends is quite vocal about being a convert, and there is a small temple (Temple Jacob) in the neighboring town that has a small congregation. Of course, I haven't gone around asking people or anything, so I expect that I've met a lot of people who would consider themselves Jewish without my ever realizing it.

I live in NYC. Most of the antisemitism I've experienced living here has been almost casual. Phrases like "I Jewed him down" aren't exactly commonplace, but the people who do say them don't seem to think they are being prejudiced. Soft bigotry.

Part of it may be that we have a high immigrant population. Attitudes, biases and stereotypes may extend from parent cultures.

I suspect "not on the radar" is accurate - and prejudice tends to be less of a factor when groups are not perceived as a threat. (My husband grew up on the Oregon coast and says that any racism he heard growing up was far more likely to be directed against Latino farm workers than against people of African ancestry. Because Latinos were the "other" they saw.)

I had a school teacher (I was at a Jewish school at the time.) who got asked in New York City if he had horns.

??@?@?@

Okay, it's not just "never seen a Jew before", then. Maybe they think that's why the ultra-Orthodox wear hats?

No idea. I think this was in the late 90s when it happened.

It's a pity that Hellboy is so obviously Catholic, 'cause that would be cool. . . .

Well, he grinds them down. Otherwise nothing short of one of those British bearskin hats, or something Carmen Miranda would wear would suffice. I don't think they'd fit in a shtreimel unless it was hilariously oversized.

What would be cool would be if he periodically chopped them off and made shofars out of them. Of course they surely wouldn't be kosher, but it would certainly be neat.

Instead we'll have to wait for rams (or at least horned animals that aren't cows) that are genetically engineered to be intelligent, have the right sort of lips, and who are Jewish. Someday, man, someday.

Not exactly. Southern New Jersey. :)

I can't speak for everyone, obviously, but I grew up in the rural South, and directly encountered zero stereotypes or myths about Jews. Not because everyone was absolutely openminded -- given other racial epithets and actions I observed, I wouldn't believe that -- but because it was so far off the radar, it never arose. I would read books where someone was described as "looking Jewish" or "having a Jewish name", and those phrases were completely meaningless to me (and largely still are, though I have enough datapoints now to sort of have an idea, just not a very firm one). I never knowingly met a Jew until my senior year in high school, and that was a friend I'd known for months before the subject of religion came up -- and when it did, it was no big deal, not just for me, but for anyone in our social circle. Mileage obviously varies, but in the parts of the South I know, anti-Semitism just wasn't an (expressed) issue.

Out of curiosity, what parts of the South?

My wife grew up in Texas. I have cousins who grew up in South Carolina, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee and Virginia who all reported experiencing varying degrees of antisemitism. A very common problem: teachers who not only refused to give them time off for Jewish holidays but would deliberately schedule tests on those days and refuse to give makeup exams. Many were taunted by their classmates for being "Christ Killers" or worse. My cousins in Georgia woke up one night at 3am to find a cross burning on their lawn. I could go on.

My family living in the Northeast and Northwest wasn't subjected to even half as much prejudice.

I'm truly glad the area(s) you lived in were free of that sort of thing. Sincerely, it's nice to know. My impression of the South has always been pretty negative.

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nolly.livejournal.com - 2009-02-11 18:56 (UTC) - Expand

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nolly.livejournal.com - 2009-02-11 21:59 (UTC) - Expand

I do remember that he explained to me that his pastor had told his church congregation the Bible said Jews had horns, but couldn't remember what part.

I suspect he was referring to this.

Did you reply by showing him a tuba or trumpet?

That would definitely have been a less profane and heated response than the one he got. :)

Cartman: Kyle, all those times I called you a stupid Jew, I didn't mean it. You're not a Jew.
Kyle: Yes I am, Cartman! I *am* a Jew!
Cartman: No, no, don't be so hard on yourself.

Why did they not want her to be Jewish?

Because they were bigots, in that and many other ways.

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.

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