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White Ethnics’ White Privilege and the Jewish Problem (Et tu, Claudia Rankine?)

7/21/2019

19 Comments

 
Picture

​Re: Brief Encounters with White Men ​by Claudia Rankine, NYT magazine, 7/21/19

 
Dear Ms. Rankine,

I don’t have enough fingers to count the diversity events I’ve participated in over the last decade where a white person, struggling to understand their privilege says, “But I grew up dirt poor,” or “But I’m a wheelchair-user,” or “But I’m gay.” The word “privilege” in White Privilege is so easy to conflate with social privilege, economic privilege and other forms of benefits and opportunities. The word “privilege” often puts one more hurdle in the way of white people understanding our White Privilege. I agree with you that the term “White Dominance” might have been a better choice than “White Privilege” for engaging white people in our critical examination--and self-examination--of systemic racism in this country.

In nearly every diversity event I’ve attended, facilitators anticipate the issue of white people who don’t feel privileged. They frequently use as an example Italians or sometimes Irish to address pushback from White Ethnics to acknowledging and understanding our White Privilege. “Your ancestors might have been impoverished, but you still…” or “They may have fled famine…” they begin. But in exactly zero diversity events I’ve attended has any facilitator ever used Jews as an example. Several articles I read recently, while attending a conference at Teachers College, Columbia University on equity, race and pedagogical practices, similarly used examples of Irish, Italians and Slavs, but skipped the Jews. And yet White Ethnic pushback at the events I’ve attended is nearly always from people who, like me, are Jewish. I’ve heard an Irish person cite their White Ethnicity once in a diversity session, while struggling to understand White Privilege. And I haven’t heard a word about it from an Italian.

Not so we Jews. As victims of White Supremacy and hate crimes ourselves, more newly white in this country than many other White Ethnics, Jews who are new to doing work on race and equity are sometimes the folks who have the hardest time understanding that we are both marginalized and reviled, and fully possessed of White Privilege. That they’re not mutually exclusive. And that they intertwine in complex ways.

Blacks and Jews in this country have a complicated history. No more so than now, when being an American Jew is dangerously and erroneously conflated with the Israeli government’s human rights abuses against Palestinians and Israeli PoCs (there, I said it, it's my blog), and when Trump and company use Jews as a battle tool for their reactionary positions without our participation. It feels like we are now as hated by some on the left as we’ve long been by the extremist right. Yet Black universities gave sanctuary and jobs to Jewish professors escaping the Holocaust. We founded the NAACP together. We marched together in Selma. Our allyship has deep roots. But that allyship deteriorates further, each time we leave the messy relationship in the closet.

Every time I hear facilitators talking about Italians, or read scholars on White Supremacy citing the same, I find myself thinking, “Oh, they’re talking about Jews again, but are afraid to name it.”

Why? Are we too much of hotbutton topic? Do we hijack the podium too often? (Talking is in our blood.) Is the subject too incendiary? Just too complicated? It certainly is that. Various politicians and public intellectuals of color have recently cited fear of reprisal from American Jews and their allies for their silence on Israeli foreign policy. But leaving Jews out of the discussion on White Ethnicity is—dare I coopt this term?—a kind of fragility.

I get it it, though. I used to speak up about the particular issues of my dual identity as a Jew and a White. These days, when doing work on race, I often, like you, don’t mention it at all. I’m afraid to. Afraid of being seen as the Jew. Afraid of muddying the waters in an acute discussion. And it makes me ashamed. And less of an ally. I’m remembering a professional development session at my school, where I listened to a White-Jewish colleague protest that he was not from a privileged group. And I listened to the facilitator respond by talking about Italians. And I said nothing.

Ms. Rankine, you are one of my literary luminaries. I’ve read work by you with students, and discussed work by you with friends and colleagues. You’re a stunning writer. And brilliant. And deeply important.

So it was with a certain element of disappointment that I read your essential piece. Published in a periodical read by some of the same white guys who skip you in the airport line. And some of the same white friends of mine, authentically trying to look within, who still speak of being “color blind.” And I got to the line asking, “How did Italians, Irish and Slavic peoples become white?” and then, quoting Matthew Frye Jacobson, “…Celts, Slavs, Hebrews and Mediterraneans.” Hebrews? You mean the Jews? And I thought, “Et tu, Claudia Rankine?”

I have a shameful confession to make. When Jews were murdered at The Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, I was grieved and outraged, like so many people across racial and ethnic and socio-political lines. I tabled my day’s lesson plan for my 7th grade ELA classes, and worked with the Social Studies teacher to quickly create an interactive, culturally responsive lesson on hate crimes. I was deeply grateful that I work in a field where I had a productive outlet for my anger and fear, and where I like to think I make a difference. But there was a little part of me—and I’ve never said this to anyone before—that thought, “Oh, good. Now the country will actually believe that we are victims of White Supremacists, too.”

Because of our White Privilege, we aren’t afraid, when we leave the house, of being stopped and frisked, stopped and shot. Unlike you, we can choose to reveal our identities or not. Step into the exhausting Work or step out. That’s why we had to wear yellow stars on our clothing. To identify ourselves. That’s why most of the hate crimes against us take the form of graffitied swastikas, instead of injury to our bodies. (The exception being observant Jews in religious dress.) But our role in The Work is informed by our hyphenated identities.

I’d like to end this letter by quoting the last lines of your article. Because you said it better than I possibly can. “I was pleased that he could carry the disturbance of my reality. And just like that, we broke open our conversation—random, ordinary, exhausting and full of a shared longing to exist in less segregated spaces.”

​When discussing White Ethnicity in whiteness work, please let’s not erase the Jews.
 
Yours in Allyship,
Eve Becker

Painting: The Beggar of Prachatice by Conrad Felixmüller (1924)

P.S. Please read Greg Thrasher's comment, below. I don't know the guy, or how he found this post, but he calls me out for using Jew to mean white, American Jew. And he's right--that's exactly what I did. I stand corrected for normalizing whiteness. Most Jews are white, with the issues of hyphenated identity I discussed above. But we are, as he notes, a diaspora community and come in different shades and nationalities. I still have work to do and always will. 
19 Comments
Norm
7/21/2019 09:47:48 am

Reading now

Reply
Eve Becker
7/21/2019 10:34:25 am

Discuss here, or on my FB page, where I made the convo public, despite better judgement.

Reply
Eve Becker
7/21/2019 10:35:10 am

I'm calling out Rankine for avoiding the issue, and I'm guilty of the same thing. So. Trying harder.

Reply
Dana Catharine
7/21/2019 01:13:07 pm

Please keep writing- this is so important!

Reply
Greg Thrasher
7/22/2019 04:13:48 am

Many Jews are not White and Privileged like you are. So tired of this selfish narrative of White Jews .. Expand your lens to include the Diaspora of Jews on the planet


BLM

Reply
Eve Becker
7/22/2019 06:11:12 am

Greg--thank you for reading my post. You make an important point that I needed to hear. My point was that white, American Jews need to acknowledge both our white privilege and our Jewish marginalization in order to do The Work (BLM), and that over and over, in diversity trainings and articles (like Rankine's), facilitators and writers skirt the issue and use Italian or Irish as code for Jewish. And that without unvarnished, direct dialogue, we can't make progress together. Your point is that when discussing Jews, I defaulted to white--and certainly one of the aspects of White Privilege is normalizing whiteness, which I am guilty of in my post. No, not all Jews are white. We are a diaspora community. I was specifically and deliberately interrogating a problem of hyphenated identity, white-Jewish. I added a P.S. on my post, to acknowledge your observation. Meanwhile, if you care to read the discussion on my FB page, where I made this post public, you will find some interesting comments by a friend who is a Jew and brown. Keep talking. Best, Eve

Reply
Greg Thrasher
7/22/2019 06:28:55 am

P.S. I am unable to post on your FB reading is fine but so is commenting and contributing to this topic.
Peace
BLM

Norm
7/22/2019 12:09:42 pm

Nobody gets to define us. And I don’t get to define you. Unless you have studied our history and literature deeply, you cannot possibly understand what it is to be Jewish. Even we are still struggling to understand what it means. The culture of resentment, of accusation, of reductionism, of blame have. I place in this conversation. None. To reduce us to a few superficial variables is an egregious denial of our humanity. I reject it. Am Israeli Chai

Reply
Ellie K link
7/23/2019 11:14:55 am

Hi Norm.
I'm not sure I follow everything you said. I am Jewish, and am grateful to be alive at a time when we live in comparative safety in 2019 America and the have reality of Eretz Yisrael.

I do not agree with much of what Greg Thrasher says. Also, I don't like how he hectors the Jewish lady, Eve. She is correct--Jews are marginalized, regardless of skin color.

Further along, Greg says, "Many of us don’t want to [sic] lectured on the history of how White Jews were our messiah in dealing with White America. It was a dialogue neither camps should have avoided and deflected now that WE observe how ‘they’ will come for us in this Trump Era of White Nationalism."

These are reductionist talking points of an agenda. They don't even make sense! Jews were no "messiah" to anyone {Jews are still waiting for our messiah.) THEY of the Trump era have not "come for us", regardless of religion or race. Chai!

Greg Thrasher
7/22/2019 06:20:38 am

I appreciate the response and more importantly your acknowledgement of yours and others in White Jewish venues who not only pivot and engage in Whiteness under the agency of being Jewish.

Far too many White Jews embrace and leverage their duality of being White and a Jewish at the expense of Black Americans and others of color in America.

It is troubling but reality often is in a racist country like our America
BLM

Reply
Eve Becker
7/22/2019 08:10:17 am

Hi, Greg. Yes, that was one of the critical points that I was trying to make in my post, and that I hope was clear to you--that when PoC facilitators and writers avoid naming white Jews when discussing White Ethnics in the U.S., it can be harder for white American Jews to understand the full extent of our White Privilege (which doesn't negate our marginalization). It's a problem stoked by whites and PoCs alike--White American Jews for "leveraging" the duality, whether we're aware of it or not, white Drump supporters for hijacking the duality and using it as a racist tool, and PoC leaders in The Work for using coded language, instead of hitting the problem straight on, as you and I are both trying to do, here. Yours in solidarity, Eve

Reply
Greg Thrasher
7/22/2019 08:32:14 am

POC often avoid this discussion in part because many fear the wrath of the White Jewish community and many understand the pressures of this duality as well.

Many of us don’t want to lectured on the history of how White Jews were our messiah in dealing with White America

It was a dialogue neither camps should have avoided and deflected now that WE observe how ‘they’ will come for us in this Trump Era of White Nationalism

Enjoyed the banter
Peace
BLM

Reply
Eve Becker
7/22/2019 08:53:41 am

Truth. Your comments are much food for thought and work. I enjoyed the banter, too. Thank you so much!

Reply
Ellie K link
7/23/2019 10:32:29 am

Eve Becker, based on that over-long, emotionally deaf essay in the New York Times contrasted to the urgent, genuine prose I read here,- I arrive at an obvious conclusion: YOU are a better writer than Claudine Rankine. I would subscribe to the New York Times to read your essays on Jewishness and unrelated matters. Rankine wrote an over long tedious mess, tone deaf to reality, full of classist privilege about her perceived tribulations as a frequent first class air traveler!

I am not sure if Rankine 'can do better'. Choose your luminaries with more care. I only wish it were you teaching as a professor at Yale, not this self-satisfied Claudine Rankine.

Reply
Eve Becker
7/23/2019 11:13:39 am

Ellie K.,

Thank you for reading... and thank you for your praise. Makes me feel really good!

I have to disagree with you on Rankine, though. Seems to me that she was writing largely *for* that elitist group--those White Times readers who fancy themselves enlightened, but need an entry-level explanation of White Privilege. Therefore, her first class travel analogy was, IMHO, an appropriate one, and her word count necessary to pound the point home.

Try reading Rankine's Citizen. It stopped me in my tracks.

Anyway, not sure how you found my post, but I'm glad you did. By talking we move forward!

Best,
Eve

Reply
Ellie Kesselman link
7/23/2019 12:42:27 pm

Wow, Eve, you are so prompt! You are an EXCELLENT blog host. Note that I did not use the gendered term, "hostess" although being a good hostess in the tradition of early feminist writer Virginia Woolf and her wonderful "Mrs. Dalloway" is a vital role in any functional, stable, productive society of the past, present, or future, I digress, apologetically. I am much less disciplined than you are on my own blog, leaving my reader comments to languish unattended for months.

I found the link to this blog post in the responses to New York Times reader comments. You had replied to a "NYTimes Pick" comment, and included the URL to this post.

I will make a good-faith effort to read Rankine's Citizen. Thank you for taking the time and making the effort to read my comment, provide a thoughtful measured response (in which you didn't ridicule me for being ignorant or racist, as is typical by many feminist or socially progressive blogs), and even offer a specific reading recommendation for me! I love to read, but it is rare to find recommendations beyond those that are corporate or Silicon Valley tech generated.

Greg Thrasher said that he does not use Facebook, nor do I. I am a Trump voter; I suspect that Greg is not. Regardless, neither of us use Facebook. It violates our right to privacy, dehumanizes individuals, and is an instrument or even a driver of global corpocracy. If Trump wanted to earn the respect of the true left (not the neo-liberals), he would marshal the Sherman Act to go after big tech like an avenging Fury, in the tradotom of FDR/ I dogres again.

I do not believe in intersectionality. I believe in the lived American experiences and heritages of people like you and me. We are both Ashkenazi Jewish females. I care about you and me. I care far less about others. Let the hostile Greg Thrasher find his own way. Perhaps Norm is our ally.

You are female, Ashkenazi, intelligent, articulate, and white. I am a Virginia banker and former engineer, with no influence or role in your sociologically rarified world. (No snark intended! Your place in the world is as important or more so than mine.) I do have US relatives, descendants of beloved immigrant grandparents and even a Holocaust survivor. If you will permit, I would be glad to harangue my New Yorker cousin Adam Gopnik and his younger brother, periodic NYTimes art critic Blake Gopnik to condider you eork!

Eve Becker
7/23/2019 07:08:28 pm

Ellie K., I'm just discovering that my blog doesn't thread responses to responses. This is in reply to your second post; I hope you see it.

Thank you for your thoughtful, gracious, literate response. In all honesty, I don't associate those adjectives with Trump supporters, so I guess that because of you, I'm just an iota more broadminded than I was this morning. We don't see eye-to-eye on some deeply important issues, but I'm glad you found your way here and were part of this discussion.

I *am* with you on the Big Pharma tech companies. (And I applaud you for calling them out on their role in the charter school movement on your blog.) I wish I could get off FB, but I'm a bit addicted.

And of course I'd be thrilled to have your literati cousins read my post, if they're so inclined.

Best,
Eve

Eve Becker
7/28/2019 04:26:29 am

A propos, a post I wrote back in 2014 while attending PoCC (People of Color Conference--for educators of color and their allies), and when first grappling with my dual identity in public spaces. https://evebecker.tumblr.com/post/104384186326/can-we-talk-about-race-my-affinity-group-is"

Reply
Eve Becker
2/11/2021 05:07:33 pm

For more discussion on this post:
https://www.facebook.com/eve.jennifer.becker/posts/10219530823081248

Reply



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    Eve's Blog

    I've been blogging since 2010. When I've got writer's block in every other way (frequent), this low stakes riffing to think has been a constant. Over the digital years, I've had a half dozen or so blogs including a travel blog and a reading blog, both on Blogger, and an all-purpose blog on tumblr where I wrote about education, social equity and anything else that sparked me. I also posted some of my published print work on my website. My shit is all over the internet. I'll be using this space for the occasional blog post, now.

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