And the color of that claim is tinted being as it is viewed through rose-colored glasses!
The controversy over this real estate development commercial was that it erupted from nowhere? There is no prejudice, there is no structural or systemic racism that has and continues to impact Mizrahi Jews in Israel?
Ideals are one thing, practice another. Sad to say, but the problem tends to get worse with Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Ashkenazim. Narrow-minded, insular people tend to look for anyone they can discriminate against.
That said, it’s still considered an “internal” matter. Even the most anti-Mizrahi Jew would identify with a Mizrahi before he identified with, say, a Ukrainian or a German.
I don’t know if that means much. Your average racist redneck probably feels more kinship to a black American from his neck of the woods than to a, say, random white Scandanavian. Shared culture and nationality bring people together, but they don’t blot out racism and feelings of “us vs. them”.
I have a feeling that if I started attending a synagogue, some significant fraction of the people I’d meet would inquire about the when and why of my conversion (rather than assuming I’m a “natural born” Jew like them). I would expect to have to confront assumptions that I’m outsider, a cultural interloper, someone who is different. I base this WAG on the writings I’ve read from black Jews who have had to overcome feelings of alienation in their own community. So I guess what I’m saying is I wonder if your take on Jewish/Israeli unity reflects the experience of someone who looks like the archetypal Jew/Israeli, rather than someone who has to deal with “othering” on a regular basis.
I think you may be glossing over a lot of prejudice that did exist. Sure, Jews lived in the south. That doesn’t mean they weren’t subjected to prejudice. Black people lived in the south. Are you claiming there was no prejudice directed against them as well?
I also dispute your claim that it was only a few hate groups that produced all the prejudice. The court that convicted Frank was run by the Georgia state government. The group that lynched Leo Frank included governors and mayors and sheriffs. The lynch mob wasn’t some fringe group; it was the establishment. These were the people who had been elected as representatives for the general population.
That was the point of lynch mobs. They killed their victims openly in public view to demonstrate that they didn’t have to worry that people were going to oppose them. The minority of people who disagreed with them were being shown that the majority supported them. If anyone tried to stop this lynching they could end up being the victim of the next one. And the community would watch it happen and not object.
Jews faced the same reality as blacks faced. They lived under the constant awareness that on some random day, the entire community they lived in might decide to torture and murder them. It might be because they did something wrong. It might be because they did something trivial. And it might be over nothing at all. But they all knew the threat was there.
Interestingly, it’s pretty much the opposite. While I am pretty fair of features, even relative to other Ashkenazim, growing up as a sort-of immigrant (long story) had me looking in at “regular” Israeli society from the outside. To me, there was no difference between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim - they were all “Sabras”, people who, unlike me, had grown up here and spoke without an accent. It took me until my late teens before I felt confident as an Israel myself. So I admit that my upbringing, as well as the teh fact that it took place in a secular, upper-middle-class and let’s face it, majority Ashkenazic environment may well have colored my perception and given me a somewhat idealized view on intra-Jewish relations.
That said, very few Israelis would claim that things aren’t much better now than they were in the past. Bigotry among Jews tends, IMHO, to be cultural rather than genetic - in other words, while there are exceptions (especially among the ultra-Orthodox), people who look down on Mizrahim claim that their culture is “primitive” and “violent”, not that it’s in their blood. I’ve heard similar stuff said about Russian immigrants, for instance, and the only difference between them and most Ashkenazim is that we got out of Russia earlier. Because of that, time is on our side, as it tends to lead to greater social homogeneity. Intermarriage helps, of course. It’s always happened, and it’s happening more and more as differences start melting away. My sister is married to the son of Algerian immigrants, my best friend, who’s Ashkenazic, is married to a Moroccan, and another good Iraqi friend of mine is married to a Ashkenazic girl. As I said, I’m an idealist. I still believe in the melting pot.
I’ll second that.
This is just factually incorrect. There were many, many systems devised, not just one. And no one adheres to a 3-prong system anymore. The words for two of those races are even offensive, because the concept is so outdated.
You apparently need to read about modern race issues, and not assume some ancient book is the determinant for everything.
That is where we disagree. Most Southern Jews were fairly wealthy to very wealthy. They might be a banker, lawyer or businessman but they had influence. That is generally why they were there in the first place. It might have been trading cotton in the port of New Orleans or running a men’s clothing store in some smaller town but they definitely had power in general.
That is very different than Southern blacks. The South was their home as well but they were not viewed anywhere near as equally as Southern Jews. There were wealthy Southern blacks too of course but it wasn’t the general trend. The first Jewish U.S. Senators were all Southern: David Levy Yulee (Florida), Judah Benjamin (Louisiana), and Benjamin Jonas (Louisiana) all from the 1800’s. New Orleans, like Charleston, Savannah, Atlanta and many other Southern cities still have very strong and influential Jewish communities.
I think the difference is that there never were any Jewish ghettos in the South so people just viewed them as those successful people that are a little different but still very important. That is different from the Northeast when later waves of Jewish refugees flooded cities like New York and presented a cultural threat. I am not saying that no Jewish people were ever targeted in the South because that would be ridiculous even if you replaced the group and region with just about anything but it wasn’t institutionalized in general except in the most redneck parts. Southern Jews could do just about anything else other white Southerners could do including winning high offices and founding big businesses. It seems like half the buildings at Tulane in New Orleans are named after early Jewish benefactors that weren’t allowed into many Northeastern schools.
You’d be wrong. In my experience, no one ever expects converts to explain themselves, or identify themselves.
I can accept that. My impression is that it came from Eurocentric intellectual arrogance more than anything else, but yeah, accepted as mishpacha, even if they were looked down upon.
Many, likely most, Southern Jews have had roots that go back many generations. Jews in the South go back to early colonial days and were mostly of Sephardic, often literally Spanish, Jewish ancestry, even if they waylaid a generation or so in more northern Europe after escaping the Inquisition. They came often as merchants and built businesses that they passed on, but many were peddlers too, at least on their way to becoming shopkeepers. Reportedly they became highly assimilated very quickly. A nice overview article with this one bit that is most relevant to the discussion and this thread:
The large influx of Ashkenazi Jews in the early 20th century was another beast entirely. That first generation or so they lived congregated into ghettos, were poor, and were very “other”.
That is a very excellent cite DSeid. It matches my experiences perfectly growing up in the Deep South (Northern Louisiana near Shreveport, LA). We certainly had our prejudices like anyone else but Jews, especially Southern Jews, were an explicitly protected category and even fundamentalist and evangelical preachers told their congregations that. People in the Bible Belt tend to listen when someone tells them God will smite them if you mess with his chosen people. That type of thinking has a long history.
How so? aside from it being posted kind of mean spirited?
We come in 3 minor variations (genetically super extremely minor)
Caucasian, which comes in every color from very pale to very dark
Asian, which also has much variation
and African which can have all lovely varieties of colors.
That isn’t nonsense, it also does not mean anything special per se unless you’re a scientist trying to study our origins etc.
Is someone “White”?
My answer is simply what damned color does your eye tell you the person is? Though i dont think anyone is so pale they are actually white, even a cadaver isn’t white.
Hell, i am not even white, i have a half assed melanocyte or 2 functioning.
Its just a color, should not mean anything special anyways unless we are handing out sun block?
It’s pretty seriously taboo to ask about conversion. I would guess how welcomed an outsider would be varies from congregation to congregation though.
:rolleyes:
For you to know that I’m wrong, you’d have to accuse these people of being big ole liars. You strike me as a reasonable person, but I dunno. Do you think they are lying? Or do you think it’s possible that you, a white Jew, both don’t and can’t know what black Jews experience? I believe you when you say you never hear people interrogating black people about the authenticity of their Jewishness. But I also believe people when they say they’ve never seen anti-Semiticism or racism. “Well, I never!” isn’t a convincing argument to me, sorry. Not with the world being as big as it is.
Richmond holds a folk music festival every year. A couple of years ago, the Jewish gospel singer Joshua Nelson performed, and I loved his performance so much that I bought my Jewish friend one of his CDs. The moment she saw his brown face on the cover, she asked me if I knew whether he was a convert. (Not that it matters, but he was born Jewish). I know she wouldn’t have done this if the guy were white. My friend is the wife of one of the city’s most respected rabbis, and she’s one of the most religious people I know (apart from my mother). So forgive me if I don’t believe you when you say no one ever puts their foot in the mouth and says shit they shouldn’t say when encountering a non-white Jew. To believe this would be to believe the Jews never suffer from basic lapses in etiquette. Jews aren’t that magical.
Those arbitrary divisions in particular do not mean anything special if you’re a scientist trying to study our origins etc. As categories they are a historical artifact.
Bump to share this link from the Times of Israel which was recently shared with me.
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/yes-ashkenazi-jews-including-gal-gadot-are-people-of-color/
OK. I will never again check the white box. If it says “Caucasian,” maybe I’ll check it, but if it just says “white,” I won’t.
I have long said there needs to be a separate line for “Jewish,” and I still think this.
We also come in these variations: Tall, medium and short.
But that isn’t what we were talking about. The claim was that there was 1 (and only 1) “traditional” racial classification scheme and that it was Caucasian, African and Oriental. That claim is nonsense completely apart from whether the classification scheme was nonsense or not.
Oh, everyone puts their foot in their mouth. I meant that I never heard anyone interrogate a convert about their reasons for conversion, or their religious background, or their sincerity. In fact, if I say to someone I didn’t realize was a convert, “Do you remember sitting through Rosh Hashanah services when you were a kid? Now synagogues have all kinds of kids’ programs.” And they say “I converted to Judaism when I was an adult,” I might feel like I had put my foot in it.
That’s all I meant.
Well if you really feel that way maybe you should take advantage of the new “Middle East and North Africa (MENA) racial category” to be on the 2020 census as your out. It really is the lion’s share of the genetic signature within the population overall.
Back to that three racial groups silliness, a fun article in a recent Science: “There’s no such thing as a ‘pure’ European—or anyone else”
monstro I suspect it varies by congregation, how novel seeing a Black Jew is for the congregants, and how knowledgeable of proper religious and plain social etiquette individual congregants are. Jews can be as ignorant and rude as anyone else, no question. And my apologies for the broad brushstrokes, but some sub-groups get more than their share.
No matter what the circumstance a “novel” face is going to get noticed and if people don’t ask they’ll at least be wondering what the story is, or presuming one. I am sure that outside of our congregation my daughter (of Chinese origin) will get that, and I when my family were the only Whites at a funeral on the South side of Chicago we certainly got looks and a few comments from those who did not already know our connection to the family. They weren’t mean-spirited comments at all, just curious, and one teasing.
America is far over-weighted with Jews of Ashkenazi heritage. It is unfortunately easy for American Jews to be ignorant of the breadth and diversity that the culture and the identity contains.