That was the rallying cry for the nationalists back in the day--"That's the problem with black folks--we can't stick together. We need to be like the Jews! Though don't ever bad-mouth each other in public. And they stick together!"
I've said all this before, but it's worth restating. I told my buddy Eyal about that on a train ride back from Brooklyn, once. He burst out laughing and mentioned that I'd do well to sit in on one of his family dinners.
Anyway, I thought of that reading about this J-Street/AIPAC beef. Black folks swear that they are uniquely afflicted, particularly cursed, and irredeemably divided--unlike white people who live in perpetual Nirvana. This is real talk--I remember when I found out white women went to the hair-dresser. My reaction was basically--For what? Your hair's already straight. Oh man, so ignorant. One of the lingering effects of racism is the belief that white people don't actually have any problems. White Supremacy depended on the dichotomy--there's a reason why black occurs almost synonymously with poor, but whites who are poor must also be trash.
But I digress. The solution to our woes was obvious--Be more like the Jews! They never fight in public! They always stick together!
It cracks me up, just thinking about it. I hope it's not like that anymore. We really should know by now.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
There's a saying that applies quite well here: "Two Jews, Three Opinions".
[Chuckle] By way of link within the link and on topic - I see Ackerman is his usual demure self. Luhdat guy.
Jon Stewart has had a bit in his standup routine for years about this. Something about how a small group of Jews are supposed to rule banking but they can't decide what to do about lunch.
I thought we were supposed to get together, get some land, and raise out food just like the man. Oh, and save our money, do like the mob.
Well, at least we got our funky president.
This blog put me on Randall Kennedy's brilliant book, 'Sellout'...and I found that virtually all of his insights about group policing and shunning, basically how groups enforce cohesion, applied wonderfully to my own movement.
Hey, we have an Agenda and all of us follow it.
What, are you saying Bill Donohue is wrong? That's why the gays run the country, and soon the world. Because we have an agenda and we stick together.
Like last week, when Barney Frank and David Mixner were openly mocking each other on CNN because one of them endorsed a national march on Washington that, according to the other, only put pressure on the grass. I laughed out loud. We're so successful, we have our own Clarence Thomas now!
The first thing I thought of reading your post was the arguements I have been seeing recently about how the democrats need to be more like the republicans, sticking together more and infighting less and of course others who think that would be terrible.
I know that the rightness or wrongness of the "we need to stick together" solution was not the point of the post, but it was what interested me.
FWIW coming from a white republican like me, I would say that the stick together plan is not a good plan for any minority. White people don't stick together, they are part of every political and social group and as such are wooed by all groups. At least as far as politics go Black solidarity at the 95%+ levels have always seemed self defeating to me.
One the point about Democrats need to be more like Republicans, its been pointed out that the problem is not exactly Democrats and infighting but just about getting a cohesive message about how they feel pertaining certain key issues in elections. Democrats need to be pithier in their language and use the kind of action words that Republicans throw around so well. John Kerry is the best example of Democratic language as a hindrance.
Another example of this, I heard a rumor that Michelle Obama actually came up with "Yes We Can!" but David Axelrod didn't want to use it because he thought it was too childish. I think "one of these things is not like the other" is only too childish for a quarter of the electorate.
Michelle might have thought of using "Yes, we can!" but it's actually an old, well-worn union slogan, going back at least to the United Farm Workers. I've read that the neighborhood where Chavez lived in San Jose was known as Sal Si Puedes ("leave if you can") and that he came up with "¡Si, se puede!" as a sort of pun on that name.
Chavez might have used it before he founded the UFW, when he was organizing for the Community Service Organizations, or it might pre-date Chavez entirely. In any case, everyone in the labor movement inferred that Obama used "Yes we can!" in recognition of his background as an organizer and as a shout-out to them.
@ Pesto-thanks for providing the background on that, and being such a tasty pasta sauce.
For realski? Minority groups and majority groups will always, of necessity, embrace different tactics. Because the majority can generally work its will on the issues that matter to it, it can afford to be less cohesive, and concentrate on increasing its strength by being a big tent. If a minority wants to win on specific issues that are important to it, it must be cohesive, so that it can act as a single swing bloc. Politics 101. Ask the great dead mick Parnell; despite the fact that his party composed between 63 and 85 seats in a 650 member Parliament, by voting as a block he was able to make and unmake governments, and get the issue that most mattered to him --- a controversial proposal to let the Irish have their own Parliment (Home Rule) --- up for a vote several time. If he hadn't been brought down by a personal scandal he almost certainly would have passed it, and the Anglo-Irish and Irish Civil wars might have been averted. Cohesion is an necessary tactic for a minority.
I tend to disagree with that. Solidarity among minorities - in the sense of voting as a bloc on issues that matter - is the only way to be noticed and to press for those issues. Had blacks not thrown their support behind one party it would be easy to ignore their concerns (for the most part civil rights issues). As roughly 12% of the voting population, the only way to make that count is to vote en bloc. It's a perfectly rational thing to do.
I think the opposite is true. By throwing support so completely behind one party you end up in a situation where one group takes you for granted. Since they know you'll support them no matter what they have no incentive to do anything for you. And the other group sees that it has no real shot of getting support so it doesn't have any incentive to do anything for you either.
Black people didn't suddenly choose to be Democrats; we were and are rejected by Republicans.
To me, the primary voting issue for black people is civil rights - still. And black people will vote for the party that does the least to dismantle civil rights protections. Which is why, despite being generally conservative, black people don't typically support the modern republican party; the issue of states' rights gets little traction in the black community; the federal government is less of a bogeyman for us. I'm not sure what else you think we expect or on what basis you speak of the black community being "taken for granted".
2 things
1) Democrats do deliver on the issues Black people care about, which is why they keep voting for them.
2) You have the causation backwards. Conservatives always seem to say to Blacks "hey if you didn't vote 90% for the other guys we'd support your issues too" Uh normally in a democracy the idea is you support the issues people care about and then they vote for you, not the other way around.
There are lots of groups that vote overwhelmingly for 1 party or the other, I'd imagine 100% of Oil industry CEOs and top executives vote GOP for example. That is how it should be, there should be meaningful differences between the parties. Really the only group I can think of who is regularly hosed by supporting one party and having nothing to show for it are Pro Lifers.
How about if Republicans just agreed to become more like Democrats, with the infighting and failure to stick together?
(Though it would seem logical that a progressive party would be full of people saying "we need to do it differently" and the conservative party would be full of people united behind "we need to not change," I could readily see divided conservatives arguing about what to protect while united progressives passed the public option--so it seems a little more specific to our parties.)
You wouldn't be saying that if that 95% voted Republican.
I remember as a child, when I realized there were different kinds of Christian--and they didn't get along. My mind was completely blown.
For real man.. hell I used to think that white people came in two types - Jewish and Christian - and that the split was about 50-50. I grew up in central Jersey...
As a child I thought only black people were Christian. I thought the only YT people involved with Christianity in any way were the Pope and Jesus himself (thsi was before I saw the Good Times Black Jesus episode.)
I was kind of shocked when I got older and learned that there were white Christians, and that some of them were fervently Christian, and that some of them even saw Christianity as a white thing.
I really had a hard time understanding Northern Ireland as a kid, because what? They're both white--what do they have to fight about?
I spent quite a bit of time a few weeks ago trying to convince a Jewish friend that no, all Christian sects weren't "essentially the same", and that a marriage between people in different sects could, indeed, be a big deal. Growing up as the child of a Catholic and an ELCA Lutheran, I was made aware early on that there were drastic differences between the various branches of Christianity (even if Catholicism and Lutheranism aren't that far apart in the grand scheme of things.)
I was chatting once with this 50ish black guy at a bar -- he was currently a Baltimore cop, but had been in the military during the 1980s/90s. I asked him where he had been stationed, and he told me, "Oh, all over -- Germany, Italy, Britain, Yugoslavia after the war, Kosovo." I then asked him which was his favorite. "Well, of course, Italy was the best, it's beautiful there; but I found Britain to be the most educational."
I was confused. Britain? The closest to us culturally, politically, linguistically? Why would *that* posting be the most enlightening?
His reply: "I was stationed in Belfast. I never knew that white people could hate each other. That they could feel that prejudiced against their own kind. It blew me away."
Great story.
He was unfamiliar with the idea that white people like to murder each other? Apparently he had never heard of WWI or WWII.
You're confusing wars between nation-states, which primarily occur because of socio/political/economic reasons, and wars of ethnic conflict/hatred (whether declared or guerilla). This is why France and Germany have a different relationship today than, say, Greece and Turkey.
But the fact is, there simply was no theatre of battle in either of the World Wars where it would be possible to completely separate the twin forces of ethnic conflict and great-power economic interests. So if I'm "confusing" anything, it's because all war is an inherently confused clusterf*ck of mixed motivations and hatreds, on behalf of the wealthy and the common people alike.
And that extends to the Cold War and the "War On Terror" too.
C'mon, Funk. In Belfast people were bitterly hating the white person in the apartment above them, or 2 feet over. Hating on a different state that has a different language, a different culture, and most of the people in it live hundreds of miles from you is very different. Sure, between France and Germany some people spoke the language, some had intermarried, but for most people it was very much one of the other, with "other" far away. In Ireland the other was living one street over and had for generations. France and Germany fought a bunch of wars but don't have anything along the lines of Color Days.
Plus state v state is very different from bitter hatred between 2 parts of what is ostensibly one state.
You know what's funny? When I was growing up, I used to say to myself, "We need to be more like the blacks. Nobody messes with them in this school, and if anyone did, I bet forty black kids who didn't even know that picked-on one would come to his aid. I bet. Meanwhile we small handful of Indians are picked on with impunity, and when it's not me, I'm just glad." Keep in mind that I was seeing this through the severely tinted glasses of nerd-dom.
That's nerditude or nerdition, if you're not into the whole brevity thing.
The comment about Jews is not as off as this post makes it suggest. The idea that Jews don't criticize each other in public is hardly contradicted by the fact that we do little but criticize each other in private.
And the J street phenomenon is more notable for how long it has taken to arrive and how much trouble it has maintaining support. The great majority of jews in this country do not agree politically with much that AIPAC is doing. Despite this there has been a Jewish reluctance to criticize AIPAC because they represent Jews. You now have Jewish Senators who agree with J-Street on the issues bowing to AIPAC pressure to not attend a J-Street event precisely because J-street attacks other Jews.
This is all rather silly because when Jews were a weak minority there was some sense to this kind of banding together. But while even more a minority, we are not at all weak at this point. And yet AIPAC has largely been able to play on the reluctance of Jews to publicly attack Jews to speak in the name of Jewish Americans while pushing a view that a minority of Jewish Americans actually hold.
It is true that when we do criticize each other publicly we can be caustic. But that is jut our style.
I agree that it seems like J Street seems to be a lot closer to Jewish beliefs, from my understanding and experience. It's kinda disturbing, and says a lot about AIPAC and our country, that we tolerate them asking for how much of J Street's funding comes from Arabs.
As a mixed kid (or "child of intermarriage", if you like long phrases), I wonder if the mixed kids - who are an increasing fraction of the adult Jewish community - are more receptive to the idea of criticizing groups like AIPAC that supposedly represent "the Jews". I'm a little hesitant about posting this, because some non-mixed Jews use the assumption that this very point is true to bash mixed ones, and also because mixed Jews are hardly uniform in their opinions on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and other Israel-related issues.
The thing is, though, the US "Jewish establishment" has been generally hostile to us. Unlike what the aforementioned non-mixed Jews might assume, it's not some issue of dilution of Jewish pride that possibly makes us more open to criticism of the Jewish establishment, it's that when somebody already has an adversarial relationship with you, you're not likely to see them as speaking for you, or to want to defend them reflexively.
Well, AIPAC has played on the cowardice of politicians, particularly in the Senate. The Senate is cowardly on all issues, as we've seen.
I've met barely any Jews under (say) 35 who I think would side with AIPAC. It's an old people thing, like Jews who didn't want to vote for the "schvarze."
It is true that when we do criticize each other publicly we can be caustic. But that is jut our style.
Ours too.
I remember when I found out white women went to the hair-dresser. My reaction was basically--For what? Your hair's already straight.
I just lol'd in my cubicle. My wife is a five-foot-nothing ginger teaching high school in inner city Philly. She's got naturally curly hair. The kids were amazed by it when she first started, I don't think they'd ever seen that before. Of course, coming from rural Pennsylvania, she discovered her own new cultural phenomena--like the black girl weave tap and ashy skin. It's amazing what you can learn when you leave your cocoon.
yeah, I got a grin on that one too.
Ha! I'm mostly white and white-looking (and not black at all, as far as I know). I have long, VERY curly hair. When I was in 4th grade, I transferred to an inner-city, 90% black school that had a specialized math/science program. The other kids were FASCINATED with my hair. They couldn't believe that a non-black kid would have hair that curly, and they couldn't believe that hair that curly would have a "white" texture. We'd line up to go somewhere, and I'd have a mob of three or four kids crowd around me and start trying to fix up my hair. It got to where one teacher made a rule against anybody but me deliberately touching my hair in her presence.
I, meanwhile, learned about the black cultural phenomena that you describe, and a lot of other things that I'd never learned about in my well-to-do, almost-all-white-people bubble.
This past summer, I was making some extra loot cleaning beach condos with a good buddy of mine. This is at the Outer Banks of NC, and me and my friend drove two hours every saturday to clean all day, and one morning as we were coming in my friend (a black dude) said the following to me (a crackalicious peckerwood):
The funny thing was that at that very moment, there was a vacationing black couple driving an escalade next to us in traffic. I didn't really make a big deal about it, but it was like, dude, I'm right here cleaning up after these folks with you. Despite what you may have heard, there isn't a secret white people fund to make sure we all have beach homes and tennis lessons... we can be broke, violent, locked up, and all the rest of the things that come along with being poor.
Yes. The "We need to be more like the Jews" sentiment is a combination of 1) admiration for the cultural, economic, and political success of Jewish folks and 2) the insularity that leads many black folks to assume that the grass is greener.
We covered this idea last year in our black-Jewish dialogue series Chitlins and Gefilte Fish.
Years back, I remember reading a blog by someone who was Jewish and he was linking to a story about the last two Jews in Afghanistan. His punchline was that there were only two left, and of course, they hate each other. They had some feud and apparently both had turned each other in to the Taliban for various offenses against the state.
I agree with the thought that every group has in-fighting and not all is what it apprears to be.
In terms of "being more like the jews".....in terms of image/media control.....the fact is, we can learn a thing or two from them.
For ten months white folks have been losing their damn minds and trying every which way to call our POTUS a n****a without actually using the word. It's generated a lot of discusion and that's a good thing. But take note of this:
************************************************************
GOP officials apologize for Jewish stereotype
Posted: October 20th, 2009 02:29 PM ET
From CNN Political Producer Peter Hamby
Jim Ulmer is the chairman of the Orangeburg County Republican Party.
(CNN) – After his words attracted national attention and drew condemnation from a Jewish state senator, a South Carolina Republican official is now apologizing for co-writing a newspaper op-ed that described Jews as penny-pinchers.
James Ulmer, chairman of the Orangeburg County GOP, said he made a "great error" in the op-ed, which he penned along with Bamberg County GOP chairman Edwin Merwin.
The piece, which ran Sunday in the Orangeburg Times & Democrat, was meant to defend South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint's position against congressional earmarks.
***********************************************************
Folks, I dont claim to know everything and i'm always open to different points of view, so school me on this.
Why does it seem to me that if someone uses an anti-semetic slur, the repercussions are swift and almost ALWAYS includes an apology. Smear black folks all over the TV and all we 2 minutes of outrage, someone getting fired (for all of 6 months) and then re-hired when the furor has died down.
Because the Civil War happened here, and the Holocaust happened in Europe. Because, in this country at least, Jews are seen as white. And lastly because you're talking about two different groups who exist in two different places on the American spectrum of power. I think some of that's changing (Dig Don Imus.)
That said, I think had someone referenced black people and dancing in that sort of metaphor, I think there would have been a lot of apologizing. It may not have been sincere, but it would have happened.
Really? Because I'm pretty sure we just would have heard about how many of that person's black friends think x-quote is acceptable. If not that, I think we'd be hearing about how the speaker of x-quote is "not a racist."
We've had a lot of examples of this over the last 2 years, and certainly we've talked about them here. So I'm kinda surprised by this reply.
I think Ta-Nehisi covered the basic reasons. Also, as a counter-example, look at Trent Lott. Or, to follow on TNC's suggestion about referencing black people dancing, look at Howard Cosell (what he said was much worse than referencing dancing, of course), Al Campanis, or Jimmy the Greek, all of whom lost their jobs, precipitously, over 20 years ago after making racist comments on the air.
Lastly, to expand a bit on "the Civil War happened here, and the Holocaust happened in Europe" -- there's not much benefit politically to posturing as an anti-semite. I just don't think many politicians any more are going to win elections by "out-hymieing" the other guy, so to speak, so there's no real incentive to defend these kinds of statements. It's still possible, on the other hand, to win political support (or get your radio talkshow discussed everywhere for a week) by posing as the person who's "standing up to the PC thought police" WRT race.
Pesto--For every Don Imus, there's a Pat Buchanan. There is a line somewhere, and it shifts depending on certain factors, but I think you can still get away with a lot of racist stuff.
I think the answer really is about party affiliation and constituency. I think that some in GOP figure they can offend the hell out of black people because they aren't pursuing their vote. They are more competitive in some Jewish constituencies
@TNC: I think I'm missing your point.....Don Imus was off the air for 6 months and re-surfaced with 2 black co-hosts. Jews may be seen as "white" but they're still "penny pinchers" according to non-jewish folks. Anti-defemation groups come out of the woodworks
to counter every slight but it seems, TO ME, that black folks get nothing but justification for why we're too damn sensitive.
@ Dan W: Exactly.
I don't know -- this is such a complicated issue. On the one hand, there's undoubtedly more overt racism towards blacks than towards Jews (though I don't quite agree with TNC that "in this country at least, Jews are seen as white"). Or if it's true, it's beside the point: as I've suggested here before, Jews may or may not be white, but they undoubtedly aren't Christian -- as most blacks are -- and that counts for a lot in the US.
Look at it this way: I would have predicted, quite confidently, four or five years ago, that we'd have a black president before we'd have a Jewish one. I'm certain we'll have a female president before we have a Jewish one. And a Latino, too.
Part of this is, f course, a numbers game: there just aren't enough of us Jews to count as a significant voting block, outside Florida, anyway. But a lot of it, I think, is just not being Christian.
Again, let me stress that I'm not saying that Jews have it harder than blacks. We certainly don't, and I'm grateful for that, and consider it my duty and my pleasure to give others a hand when they want it.
It's more that the black/white axis is often considered the only polarity in America. It's not: there's Christians v. Everyone Else (including Muslims and Mormons). There's immigrants vs. natives (great piece in the Times the other day about African immigrants tangling with black Americans in the Bronx). There's North vs. South, and urban vs. rural (come one, now, how many of you automatically subtract 10 points from your estimation of someone's IQ when you hear a backwoods accent. (Lenny Bruce has a great bit on this.))
Oh, and admiring Jews, as a group, for anything at all -- the way we (supposedly) stick together, or our emphasis on education, or our liberal voting patterns -- it all feels a little to me like complimenting blacks on their music or dancing or sports skills. The problem isn't that the talents thus ascribed or trivial or significant: it's the fact that anyone feels comfortable making such generalizations at all. I often find myself reminding people that there are lots of dumb Jews, and poor ones, and conservative ones...
Your focusing on only half of my answer. I conceded that the basic premise is right. But I'm trying not to ignore evidence to the contrary. You can't act like things which don't fit into your thesis don't have merit. It's true, for instance, that Don Imus is back. But you can't act like nothing happened.
@Dan W The two aren't mutually exclusive. You'd hear a lot of denunciation and "suchandsuch isn't a racist."
This is really a reply to Faivel, but there is no reply button to his message.
The idea that jews have trouble getting other white people to vote for them does not work at all below the presidential level (and there it is not clear that it is not simply the numbers issue). Last I took count (and this may have changed with all of the senate turnover of late, but I doubt it changed significantly) there were 12 Jews in the US Senate despite a Jewish population in the 2-3% range. There are also two jewish supreme court justices (admittedly appointed rather than elected). And a healthy jewish Congressional delegation.
It is true that very few of those Jews are in the South, but that just makes the heavy representation overall more impressive in other parts of the country.
Even in the South where antagonism to jews has been the strongest we have lucked out in being replaced by the muslims for that kind of antagonism.
@Lon: You're quite right, and I should have noted as much. The Supreme Court is a weird one, actually, because 6 of them are Catholic. I have no idea what that means.
I suppose it's possible we could have a Jewish president if there was a candidate as preternaturally self-possessed and charismatic as Obama -- or JFK. But somehow I don't see it: I think there's a fundemental difference betweeen they way people vote at a local level and how they vote at a national level. There's a considerable percentage of Americans who simply don't want someone who doesn't believe in Christ to be President. Whence the whole Obama-is-a-Muslim strategy.
That said, I don't feel under-represented, and I don't really care who's President as long as they roughly share my political beliefs. If anything, a Jewish President would almost certainly have to be more of a Zionist than I am, and I certainly wouldn't want to see such a thing.
@Faivel
You might be right about the Presidency. I don't have a strong sense either way. One thing that seems clear is that it still is easier for a non-WASP president to get by as a democrat because most of the wouldn't vote for an X voters wouldn't vote for a democratic candidate anyway.
A democratic mormon would likely do better than Romney did last time around on that basis. (I think there are now 6 mormon senators 3 from each party).
And Obama got elected in a perfect storm of a year. He would not have had a chance in 2004 if he had the same record he did by 2008.
As for the Catholic thing in the Supreme Court. I think that is actually a result of the anti-intellectual nature of the right wing evangelical movement. The biggest block of those catholic justices is the right wing intellectual block. Harriet Meirs was originally picked, I think, primarily to counter that. But the fact that to find a protestant evangelical candidate for that slot they had to dip down to Miers shows what a bare field it is. Right wing Catholics seem to be more intellectually minded at this point. I know that seems to be a gross over generalization. But that seems to be the experience. If democratic presidents were inclined to nominate protestants, or even moderate republican presidents, I don't think they would have the same difficulty.
@Lon: It may be a gross generalization, but I think it may have some truth to it: a Jesuit education is an impressive thing, and it may be that for a position as intellectual demanding as the Supreme Court, Catholics provide the most respectable face of social conservativism.
On the other hand, the Dems were trying to appoint Mario Cuomo, at one point (he ultimately turned it down), so maybe it has nothing to with where they fall on the political spectrum.
Sorry, y'all, for thread hijacking.
"Because, in this country at least, Jews are seen as white."
A minor nitpick - unmixed Ashkenazi Jews, or mixed Ashkenazi/some white ethnicity Jews, are seen as white. According to the Institute for Jewish Community and Research, about 20% of US Jews are Jews of color (or, as they put it, though I hate this wording, "ethnically and racially diverse Jews").
That doesn't change your points, which I largely agree with, but I felt compelled to point it out anyway.
@JL:
Jinx, as we used to say. No wonder we crossed user-names...
Sorry to be ignorant, but can someone explain the black people and dancing thing?
Jews as white is a fairly recent thing. I'm not Jewish, but my wife and a bunch of family friends are. The majority of the older generation, although well-educated, tended to work as civil servants because most large private companies simply would not hire Jews. Similarly, my wife's family lived in a rural part of Maryland where they were the only Jews, and generally kept that to themselves, because no good was going to come of people knowing.
hmm...i've encountered and experienced this kind of admiration of jews before, and i wouldn't say it's exclusivly a black twang. Many iranians have similar thoughts about jews, or more specifically persian jews (kalimi's). Most of them are exiled secular iranians (or very private iranians living in iran) , and often view jewry as somewhat antithetical to the maxims of the IR (Islamic Republic), this is of course a secular sentiment, but in some ways also a reaffrimation of religious bonds as it is not uncommon for moderate muslims to express these views. The rationale is a little convoluted, but it remains relevant, as it is true that, within the country, the jewish community has a very close knit relationship, for obvious reasons. But what complicates things is that the religiosity of the state, actually has led to a hightening of jewish religiosity, which further complicates the picture. It's a mixed bag really...
and just to be clear, I'm talking strictly personal experience here...
A friend of mine married a woman from Poland. Here non-English speaking parents gave them a traditional good luck symbol to hang over their doorway. It was a picture of a rabbi counting gold coins.
Re “We should act like Jews, Koreans, etc.”
Nationalism may not be the best response, but the problem that nationalism is trying to address is not imaginary.
The fact is that all ethnic groups aren’t similarly situated. The pie is not equally sliced. The governments of the US and most of the other leading nation-states act as de facto pressure groups on behalf of “whites”. The darker-hued must lobby these powers for the left-overs.
(Jews, whose historical persecution and continuing at-risk status cannot be minimized, have a conditional pass for white in the current dispensation.)
Meh. If you were like us, who'd play sports?
You would. You guys were the original b-ballers. You know that, right?
Hell, yeah. Boxers, too, for a little while anyway.
Who could forget that we used to dominate as cagers?
What a quote. Daily News, hunh?
Whenever my fellow Jews demand unity (which as a left-wing American-Israeli Jew who supports J Street, decries the lies told by AIPAC, and believes that the only hope for Israel is a fair and just two-state solution which establishes a viable Palestine -- I have had my fair share of people calling me out for wrecking our unity) I like to remind them that we have not, in fact, been unified since that Golden Calf incident. Heck, even God and Moses had a falling out that time.
I actually have some pro-two-state writing that I must go do right now for someone paying me to do it, so I won't go on and on (oh - but I could!), but:
A) to me, this speaks to just how fucking scared AIPAC is, because they know that 75% of American Jews (that's THREE-QUARTERS OF US, in case I wasn't clear enough) support the idea of a two-state solution, and two-thirds would support the American government putting pressure on both sides to get there. If J Street weren't a threat, AIPAC, et al's, panties would not be in such an ever-loving bunch.
and B) if you would like to read me going on and on about this (!), or get a good list of books to read, or find out what you can do to learn more or be active surrounding the issue of a two-state solution, you can go here: http://emilylhauserinmyhead.wordpress.com/category/israelpalestine/
/ellaesther out - to save the world, bitches!/
Oops, meant to include the link to that poll:
http://www.jstreet.org/files/images/J_Street_Survey_Analysis_032309.doc
Of course you should be more like us. We're so good with our money:
http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/10/two-sc-gop-ers-demint-is-watching-our-nations-pennies----just-like-a-wealthy-jew.php?ref=fpblg
OY.
But, on a different front, this?
I remember when I found out white women went to the hair-dresser. My reaction was basically--For what? Your hair's already straight.
This made me LAUGH OUT LOUD. Delicious.
It's less about Jews than it is collective thinking generally.
Black people, like all people, share a lot of cultural, linguistic, and yes, athletic traits. But people hear I'm mixed and they're like "Oh, I bet you can sing." uh, before my voice changed, ok, you got me. but notsomuch anymore. "you play ball?" well, that's more from growing up in Indiana, but not particularly well, no.
And I hate watermelon.
Why is it when negative stereotypes are placed on us, it stirs up immediate reactions that "Hey, we're not all alike!" yet when semi-positive stereotypes (eg, libido*, sports, dancing, etc.) so many accept the universality either tacitly or explicitly?
Maybe its because I can "pass" and thus buck a lot of the typical stereotypes while proudly asserting my blackness in the face of incredulity, but I think too many people think "black people do X" and "white people do Y" and "Jews are like Z." It's not always racism, it's just the same intellectual laziness that permeates all collective thinking. Yes, I'm black. I'm proud of it, but what any given person think blackness entails doesn't apply to all blacks anymore than what being American means to Chris Hitchens, Maya Angelou, Rush Limbaugh, or David Duke. Being "black" or "American" or both and then some, help make communicating certain ideas better, but these ideas are too often abused as identifiers with some sort of static meaning.
Either we are individuals or we are not.
*libido often linked to our more animalistic caricatures, so I hesitate to call it "positive." Not too long ago, a guy I just met said "Oh, you're black. I bet you like sex a lot then, huh?" I asked him if white boys didn't like sex. Unsurprisingly, he looked at me quizzically and seemed not to understand my reaction.
God, where do you live? Who ARE these people?! I am constantly amazed by the stories I hear on this blog about what black/mixed people are asked when going about their daily lives.
Thanks for your thoughts. I liked what you had to say.
I don't see that there's anything too terrible about wanting to emulate a different ethnic group in terms of family values, value placed on education, community self-help, forms of artistic expression, or whatever. Every culture has some area where it pulls way ahead of everyone else and sets the bar a notch higher, and nobody's ethnic group has a monopoly on all the best traits. Diversity lets us observe other ways of life and see what aspects of them we want to take on ourselves.
But it's important to state occasionally that talking about traits in terms of ethnic groups that have them is a shorthand. We all sort of know that there are dumb Jewish people who flunk out of college, Latinos and Italians who don't do the big extended family thing, and so on. People who talk that way are discussing the traits, though, and very few traits are truly unique to a single ethnic group. It's a matter of what people emphasize, on average, rather than absolutely distinct kinds of people.
But more important question is: Can we, the Black Community with its history of Top-Down, "messianic" leadership afford to "Be like the Jews"? Not to mention the "myth of the Black monolith" meaning the Black community is very diverse. Black leaders have taken advantage of this unspoken rule of not criticizing them in public.
Raised out west, I remember falling out laughing when taking with a group a native New Yorkers in Harlem because they used the term "Black-Owned Church". All of my life, every Black church I knew of was owned by its members, yet it was in Harlem of all places that I learned Black churches aren't owned by their members and have paid rent for years.!?
No I don't think that we can afford to be like the Jews: especially here in New York City
Is this really that hard to figure out? Jews have high levels of group cohesion because they share a belief system that has lasted for thousands of years - a belief system which pretty much requires living close to other Jews. So Jews combine both ethnic and ideological/religious continuity with geographic proximity. This explains why Jews can win seats in Congress, but the White House might remain out of reach.
Er, it's not our belief system that makes or made us live together. As long as you have 10 men to form a minyan, you can settle wherever you want. More significant is the fact that in Eastern Europe at least, where many of us come from, we weren't allowed to live anywhere else: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_of_Settlement.
Beyond that, it's always been American immigration policy -- and in many ways a wise one -- to encourage newly arrived groups to settle in the US together. And besides, every group tends to clump: Consider the Palestinians in Dearborn, the Somalis in Maine and elsewhere, the Portuguese in Providence, the Irish in Boston, Poles in Chicago, and so on.
It's not obvious from my handle, but my recent ancestors came from the Pale.
Yes, you only need 10 men for a minyan, but you'd live a pretty impoverished religious life without a larger community and fully-functioning shul. I'm speaking of Jews universally and not strictly in the American context. Outside of US-style Reform/Conservative communities, Jews still walk to shul. That practice, as I'm sure you know, arises out of specific prohibitions that are part of the core belief system.
But I was trying to make a broader point - which I think is hard to a refute - that Jews are unique in that we combine a national identity with a belief system. It's my opinion that this contributes to group cohesion. Do you think it is a neutral factor?
No, you're right. Partly: I don't know if French or British or even Israeli Jews ordinarily walk to shul. My larger point was that most ethnic groups clump together in the US.
As for Jews being unique in combining a national identity with a belief system, I'm going to have to disagree. I don't quite know what you mean by "national identity" -- me, I'm American. But combining a racial or ethnic identity with a belief system is not at all uncommon. Consider Tibetan Buddhists, most Native American tribes, and indeed many indigenous peoples. You can't really "convert" to being Navajo, either.
Apologies for making assumptions based on your name. I don;t have a Jewish name -- first or last -- either, and it always bugs me when people do to me what I just did to you.
I don't think that the perceived reticence of Jews to publicly criticize each other is what it appears to be. In my opinion, it's not that Jews won't criticize each other, it's that there exist no counterparts in the Jewish community to the community leaders you find in other ethnic groups, and no real issues about which these public disagreements would be had.
Jews have never had it nearly as tough as most other minorities in this country and have never really needed to band together to fight for social justice for themselves. Without this need, there have never really been opportunities for national Jewish leaders to emerge.
The only issue that Jews have as common in America is Israel, and even with that, most people's involvement is personal or familial, rather than communal or political.
Certainly, there are many Jewish leaders in the country - in business, politics, media - but their leadership positions don't have anything to do with their Jewishness. The thought of Rahm Emanuel and Eric Cantor fighting over a political matter seems perfectly natural to me, but I can't even think of anything related to their Jewishness or the Jewish community about which either would be considered leaders.
This isn't really the case with black or other minority leaders, as far as I can tell. Thanks to the many remaining issues that often face their communities, it's very hard to be a black politician without at least partially being a "black" politician.
I gotta say, as a left Jew with a strong interest in race and a growing disgust with Israel's endless assault on the Palestinians, that US Jews are disgracing themselves (ourselves) with their/our complacency on this matter. That Obama felt moved to dismiss the Goldstone report, for example, indicates how little we Jews (who supposedly favor a two-state solution, according to polling data, by more than two to one) are getting our collective asses in gear to challenge the despots in Israel.
I think it's a combination of intimidation and complacency. AIPAC, ADL, Abe Foxman, the David Project, Stand With Us, Daniel Pipes, the list of pro-Zionist anti-democratic thugs goes on forever. That's the intimidation: who wants to be called a self-hating Jew? Even though "true" Jews who adopt and feel a deep Jewish ethic should be screaming. The second part, complacency, has to do with having it good in the US, and with having been admitted, more or less, into the white club.
Time to raise hell, fellow Jews. These are our cousins whom we are grinding into the dust. Don't claim to be such a progressive on everything, when the Middle East is freezing your/our heart and rotting your/our brain. Push Obama! If he just started ending aid to Israel (military aid and civil aid) it would make a big difference over there. Support the boycott of Israel. What makes it so different from South Africa, other than that the people in charge are Jews?