February 28th, 2008 §
“This worries me, this looking-Jewish thing. If you’re Asian or black, at least you know where you stand and how others see you, you can be 100% sure that you’re going to be treated differently, rather than just wondering.” -Emma Forrest, Namedropper.
I’m Jewish. Well, by some degrees. My father was Jewish. I was raised Jewish. And apparently, I look Jewish enough to be picked out simply by my face in a bar on occasion.
I joke with my friends that I talk about white people like I’m not one. Reading about women of color had me thinking about being Jewish this evening. It was also prompted by a story my friend told of seeing a huge banner headline on the BBC’s website trumpeting that one Israeli had been killed by a Palestinian today, while somewhere further down in the article it was mentioned that an Israeli airstrike killed five Palestinians. Though of course the Palestinians were ‘militants,’ but still they don’t warrant a headline. When it comes to the Middle East, Israelis are the white guys and the Palestinians are the Other.
When I first moved to South Carolina from Massachusetts, back in high school, I clearly remember two experiences. The first person who really talked to me was a black guy. He introduced me to some other girls, one of whom immediately asked me if I was going to date him. I replied that I had just met him and I was just looking to make friends. She nodded and said “I don’t date black guys either.”
WHAT?
I don’t remember if it was the same person who later asked me, “You’re Jewish? What’s THAT like?”
Well, kind of like having a terminal illness, except nothing like that. WTF?
Being Jewish is a weird identity issue. Most of the time, I’m like every other dark-haired white girl. Not the most desirable, of course, but normal. But every now and then it comes up.
Saturday night, I was sitting in a bar with my Indian friend, Karthika. While we were animatedly discussing my city council rep (whom I love, BTW), I noticed a guy at the table behind us staring at me. He was probably thirtysomething, not bad looking but nothing stellar. Of course he came over to us once I accidentally made eye contact. And one of the first things he said to me was, “You’re Jewish, right?”
He went on to ask my friend if she was Pakistani, and then to make a complete ass of himself talking about politics with me.
It’s been a while since I’ve heard that question. I get it more often when people hear my last name, but rarely just on looks. Once in New Orleans, in a jazz club, and probably a few more less memorable times.
“And if you’re Jewish, you’re close enough that boys sometimes say, ‘Hey, are you Italian?’ and I say, ‘No, I’m Jewish,’ and they deflate, like ‘Oh, why has this image of Sophia Loren suddenly turned into Joan Rivers?’”-Namedropper
I also had a guy ask me once if I was Italian (at the time my hair was red, and my skin is naturally ghosty ass pale with freckles), and when I asked him why, he said “Your nose.” I said, “No, I’m Jewish, and that’s not a really good pickup line.”
I mean, do you really hit on a girl by asking what her ethnic background is? Like if she doesn’t answer correctly, you’re going to walk away?
Anyway, all of this doesn’t really have a conclusion. Most of the time, I’m the white girl. I get treated like a white girl. I just feel odd when I get pegged from a mile away as something that comes with attendant prejudices–well, other than being female and looking younger than I am.
When I hear that one of the smears of Obama is that he’s a secret Jewish Communist (and yet secret Muslim at the same time) I remember that something that I am is hated by large numbers of people. It’s just not so easy to pick out of a crowd.
I understand then why the nice Jewish couple I spoke to in Cherry Hill were concerned about Obama’s position toward Israel. For me to criticize Israel is one thing–and I do, constantly–but a politician’s position toward Israel is read as his position toward Jews. And those people are, like my grandparents, old enough to remember what it was like when they had to start their own business because no one would hire them.
I grew up in a suburb of Boston. Most of my life, I’ve lived in large cities, or that weird little place called Hilton Head, where most of my neighbors had moved down from the north. I haven’t had to deal with anti-Semitism much. I can afford to write rambling blog entries wondering where I stand on the “woman of color” spectrum.
February 14th, 2008 §
May 17th, 2007 §
Jerry Falwell is dead.
And I sat down last night and watched The People Vs. Larry Flynt and exercised my first amendment right to say: Jerry Falwell was a hateful old man and I will not miss him one bit.
February 11th, 2007 §
Marc Bolan was a Jew.
Oh, my Jew pride just went up another notch.
I should’ve known, from the hair and all, right?
I found this out from an eMusic search for Bolan which pulled up an album in the “radical Jewish culture” series that was a tribute to Bolan. Happiness is.
November 8th, 2006 §
Just kidding about that part. BUT…
I am happier than I’ve been in a really long time.
Today is so much nicer than the last election, when a long day of knocking on doors and getting out the vote started out with a happy ending (we won Pennsylvania) and ended with the shitty one…you know what that was.
I didn’t do much electioneering this year other than calling and emailing people in states with swing races and harassing them to vote. My state is solidly red, though I can feel good that my vote may have helped put a Democrat in as superintendent of education–god knows we need the help down here in S.C. My sister got to have the fun of voting out Rick Santorum, and I am jealous, but she says she thought of me in the polling booth and I guess that’s good enough. I was gettin’ some sweet action last night while Jon Stewart announced that Santorum had been “Raptured away.” I was pretty close to rapture myself.
We proved Mr. Warren Ellis right yesterday, you know. Karl Rove is NOT a wizard and they can’t steal every election. Your votes count, and right now it’s going to come down to a few thousand of them in Virginia. But those few thousand look like they’re swinging blue, and that’s a great thing.
I am bummed that Harold Ford lost in Tennessee, but I guess we’ll see a woman Speaker of the House before a black Senator from the South (since Reconstruction, anyway). On the upside, there’s a new black governor in Massachusetts. Oh, and does anyone else find it hilarious that Hillary Clinton won exactly 66.6% of the vote to reelect her Senator?
I am irritated that Joe Lieberman still managed to get his squirrelly ass back in the Senate, and I wish someone would find me a cool Jewish politician. (Russ Feingold, are you a jew?) Warren Ellis’s comments on Joe Lieberman cracked me up: “Joe fucking Lieberman got re-elected as an independent. He remains one of the most despicable, crooked, hate-filled and deceitful politicians in America. He pledges to vote with the Dems, but someone who’s spent the last ten or fifteen years trying to pull the party to the right cannot be trusted on that score. He is profoundly anti-freedom. He appealed to the worst parts of Al Gore (and his censor-happy wife Tipper), and he should have had his legs broken years ago.”
Also in the words of Mr. Ellis: “There’s an actual honest-to-god Socialist in the Senate now.” Yeah, that’s right, Bernie. We’re talking about you. Why can’t you be my Senator?
Katherine Harris did NOT get elected, which is rad. You all remember her from the vote-stealing in 2000, right? And Ken Blackwell is also not elected to be governor of Ohio. You Ohioans and Floridians can feel safe voting now, right?
And they overturned the abortion ban in South Dakota. That almost makes me feel better about the gay marriage ban that passed in my state.
Oh, and Donald Rumsfeld is gone.
Today rules.
Also, I made the GRE my bitch. 750 verbal 680 math. that’s right. I rule. you all want to give me lots of money to go to grad school, right?
February 13th, 2006 §
I have relocated, since I’ve been ignoring this thing and had other things to do, like attempt to figure out my life. The only thing I’ve figured out is that life is un-figurable, so I’ll go back to unsolicited opinions about various subjects.
For instance: does anyone believe that Dick Cheney shot someone by ACCIDENT?
Re: Cartoon riots: it sounds like something really simple, making a mountain out of a molehill, until you think about the types of propaganda used, say, in Hitler’s Germany. I am NOT defending or condoning violent responses to a cartoon, but I can’t say that if the cartoons were about Jews (in general, not specific ones) that I wouldn’t be protesting, and I’d sure as hell be writing about it here.
To continue on this topic, I watched a very interesting “30 Days” episode the other night. If you are not familiar with that show, Morgan Spurlock of Super Size Me fame sends a person to perform a life-changing experiment for 30 days. In any case, he sent a white, Christian guy from West Virginia to live in America’s largest Muslim community for 30 days. Watching the change in John Q. Whiteguy as he learned that Muslim does not equal rabid suicide bomber was enlightening. It’s sad as hell that mainstream America really does think that way.
But it’s nice to know that people are still capable of change and learning from their surroundings.
Wish they told us who that guy had voted for. 
December 2nd, 2004 §
I’ve got a secret to tell you.
I went to a religious school. No, not just the Hebrew school I dropped out of after three years as a kid. I have a degree from a Jesuit university. Loyola University New Orleans, class of ‘02, Magna Cum Laude, English. That’s me. And I loved it.
OK, so I could’ve done without the crucifix staring down at me from the head of every classroom (except the one where it was missing, but even then, the paint on the wall had faded around it into the shape of the cross. Eerie.). But what I loved about the school was its commitment to teaching. Almost all of my professors were above all else, brilliant communicators who encouraged us to discuss and even argue with them. From the science classes I had to take to graduate, the sociology class that I took to fill a space in my schedule (are you single yet, Dr. Mahmood? I am…) to my major courses and yes, the required religion courses, the professors I learned from did indeed live up to the Jesuit ideal of educating the entire person.
I don’t agree with the Catholic church’s official position on many subjects. But I met many a Catholic who didn’t, either. And today I got my Loyola alumni bulletin in the mail and in it, an extended excerpt from Rev. Kevin Wm. Wildes, S.J.’s inaugural address. Rev. Wildes replaced Bernard Knoth, who was the President of the University while I was there. (Bernie had to resign under some nasty accusations, but we won’t talk about that.) I don’t know him, but his address impressed me, so I’m going to quote him here.
“It is no surprise that universities have flourished in the United States. This is a nation that values freedom, curiosity, innovation, and ingenuity. And universities can only fully flourish in societies that value freedom and the free exchange of ideas. Universities must be places where people can be free to question, doubt, explore ideas and beliefs, and test the limits of knowledge and values. Any university, to be a university, must cherish and protect the freedom of inquiry. . .
In the success of American universities, however, there are risks and dangers. As colleges and universities have become more important to American life, there are many people, including several public officials, who would like to regulate universities and control them. Who speaks, what is read, and what is taught have become important, controversial questions for higher education in the United States. The very freedom that is so important to American society and the flourishing of universities in the United States is threatened by efforts to control them and restrict freedom within them. These efforts must be resisted if American universities are to continue and to flourish. . .
As we look out on our world today, the words of John F. Kennedy ring true: ‘The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by obvious realities. We need men and women who can dream of things that never were.’”
Today, while I was reading this, the Bush administration was trying to come up with new ways to cut Pell grants to help students attend college. Today, I sent another $301.80 payment on my student loan, even though I don’t have a job in my field. But what I learned there was invaluable.
Religion and the religious are not the enemy. Religious education is not a bad thing. But as the Washington Post showed us, fear and lies and refusal to test the limits of values are creating a culture of ignorance and bigotry in the name of religion. And without the culture of questioning, this may be all that our kids learn.
Today’s post dedicated to: Dr. Melanie McKay, Dr. Mary McCay, Dr. Marcus Mahmood, Dr. Thomas Smith, Prof. John Biguenet, and all the wonderful professors at Loyola University New Orleans. Gotta love a school that sells sweatshirts reading “Social Justice University.” And to Dr. James Kilroy and Dr. Randy Arrington from Tulane University as well. The school would’ve been a complete waste of money without you. And last but not least, in memory of Dr. Julian Wasserman.
November 23rd, 2004 §
Great article here. ABC News reports that “Some say U.S. no longer feels like home.”
No shit, sherlock. As Michael Moore put it, “Dude, where’s my country?”
One of the subjects referred to in the article is “aggressive Christianity,” which some people feel threatened by. I certainly do feel threatened by aggressive Christian attempts to legislate my uterus, my education system, and my sex life in general, but more importantly, I feel threatened by what I see as an aggressive ignorance in this country. Not only do we not know, but we don’t want to know, so there! I see people in their twenties who have no idea what’s going on and insist that they like it that way, that nothing in the government affects them at all. Kids who do well in school are not “cool.” I remember hiding my test scores from my friends, and not wanting to go to academic awards ceremonies.
Liberal arts education is falling by the wayside (and our President, Yale degree or not, can’t pronounce “nuclear”) and students are trained instead to follow rules. “Look where we will all over the world, we shall find that the education imparted to the children is intended to facilitate smooth running of the Government,” said Mahatma Gandhi. And you can see that in this country. Although at this point, they don’t want to teach them anything, unless it’s creationism. If we continue to not fund public schools and turn out barely functional kids, we keep an unskilled workforce to clean the houses of the rich, pump their gas (at least in New Jersey, where the concept of self-serve doesn’t apply), and most importantly, fight their wars and vote for whomever says things the simplest, or just not vote at all.
We idolize stars like Britney Spears and Jessica “Chicken or Fish?” Simpson, and vilify the ones who speak their minds. Bands that talk politics aren’t on the radio, and John Mayer writes a column in Esquire asking where the protest songs are. (Well, A. make an effort and you’ll find them, and B. if you want to hear one, write one yourself, you’re supposed to be a musician.) And yet when Anti-Flag takes the stage people complain that they’re “too political.”
We’re put into little boxes based on our careers, and we assume that the people who do other jobs must be experts as well. We assume that those in power must be there because they deserve to be, because they know something we don’t, and that way we don’t have to think about it.
Fox News and TV in general serve that desire. Don’t think, just absorb. We’ll tell you what to think so you don’t have to take the time to form an opinion. “Watching” TV is a top activity–and what does that consist of? What are you doing when you “watch” TV? But yet anyone who thinks differently must be “wrong” or “jealous.” There’s something wrong with a society that doesn’t want American goods, American TV, American “Values.”
American “values” say that anyone who doesn’t have what we do must be lazy, that they haven’t worked hard enough to be rich–though how much work does it take to get rich in the stock market? I think we’re the ones who are lazy. We’re complacent. It’s easy to accept that we’re right, that we are the good guys. TV news and George Bush tell us what we want to hear. It’s hard to think that we might be wrong, that injustice happens in this country. That it happens in our name and is perpetrated by the people we voted for. If we think that, then we might have to do something.
We don’t want to have to stand up and say something. After all, it’s not us. We’re not terrorists. We’re not criminals. We’re not gay. We’re not pregnant, not poor, not black, hispanic, asian, middle-eastern, jewish. What does it matter what happens to them? It’s not on Fox News, not on the front page of the New York Times, let alone the neighborhood newspaper, so why should we care?
I care. I am young, female, Jewish, broke. I am thoroughly disgusted by the thought of the death penalty and war. Racism of any kind personally upsets me. I’ve worked with kids in our public schools and listened to administrators talk about having to cram more kids into one classroom because they had to lay off another teacher. I can picture being someone else, and I want to learn more about other people.
I cannot sit back and be ignorant. I cannot let this government pass laws that most people don’t even know about, that discriminate and give them more power over our lives. I cannot watch them declare wars that kill thousands of innocent people and make monsters out of our children. I can’t stop it alone, but I can learn and I can pass what I learn on to others. That’s my part in combating the culture of ignorance that we live in.
