On Rep. Steve Cohen

On a voice vote, late in the day on July 29, 2008, the U.S. House passed the historic resolution apologizing for slavery and Jim Crow, one sponsored by Rep. Steve Cohen, a Jewish American representing a majority-black Memphis congressional district.

That news has been all over the place, though that quote comes from racismreview.com which has the actual language of the bill.

Cohen made this comment: "I hope that this is part of the beginning of a dialogue that this country needs to engage in, concerning what the effects of slavery and Jim Crow have been, I think we started it and we’re going to continue."

I was going to reply there about the unfortunate aspect of Cohen being white. I doubt a black representative could have gotten something like that through, so the black community of Cohen's district seems to have benefited from a reformist attitude that accepts white dominance. (We're not a post-racial society, so I'm going to ignore the "colorblind" argument even though Cohen seems to be a great Representative and enjoys popular support in his district for good reason.) So, while it's a great bill, and Cohen is to be commended for it, it's very important to remember that this is only the beginning of the discussion to which Cohen is trying to contribute. But there's something else.

White and Jewish are not the same thing; Cohen is both. Jews have a long history of involvement in others' struggles. The obvious and most relevant example here is Jewish involvement in the Black Civil Rights struggle in America. It's something of which many Jews are very proud. Despite our failures to be the best allies at all times, I'm usually proud to be Jewish when stuff like this happens. But there's a reason for it that isn't purely altruistic. Jews are often hoping that by making a better world, it will also be a better world for Jews. It would be unfair to say that such behavior is tainted, but it is wrong that Jews feel the need to fight indirectly against antisemitism in this way. Especially when socialist Jews pit themselves against religious Jews or anti-war Jews pit themselves against "neocons" (often a loaded word, and I mean it that way here).

We should remain the best allies we can be (that includes recognizing that we're not "owed" anything in return), but we should also recognize that Jews are still oppressed. Our oppression has only sometimes (going back through history, all the way too the Inquisition and further back) included economic oppression, so the fact that Jews are doing okay financially shouldn't mislead us. We still have great difficulty talking about Jewish oppression. Usually, we get labeled as shrill neurotics if we're at all "uppity." See Abraham Foxman or Alan Dershowitz. Or we might be labeled as neurotically obsessed with past oppressions. I've seen that logic applied to Holocaust survivors like Elie Wiesel and to people born the 70s.

So I began by positioning Cohen as white and privileged and moved to position him as Jewish and oppressed. (His black constituents may even sometimes collude in Jewish oppression.) Both descriptions are true, though neither are the complete truth.

Holocaust Music

The idea of collecting music written in internment camps before and during World War II may not occur to everyone.

But that has been Francesco Lotoro's quest since 1991.

"To allow the musicians to continue to work was also a way to control them better," said the 44-year-old Italian Jew. "At Auschwitz, there were seven orchestras."

(to me via Nextbook.)

Sylvain Sylvain: A Mizrahi Jew, Joins Moz defying the boycott

A neat article about Sylvain Sylvain. From Z-Word, The New York Dolls are backing up Morrissey for his PACBI-defying gig in Tel Aviv.

The last time Sylvain Sylvain was in the Middle East, he was being expelled from his Egyptian home because he was a Jew.

Previously Sylvain Mizrahi, the 59-year-old guitarist for the legendary New York Dolls was born in Cairo to a prominent Jewish family.

"My daddy had a great job at the National Bank of Egypt. But in the mid-'50s, they fired him, then they confiscated all our belongings and kicked us out," Sylvain told The Jerusalem Post during a conversation ahead of a Dolls' show last week in Italy.

Where to begin?!?!

Pro-Israel advocates are Sleepless in Seattle, according to Rabbi Yonah at Jewlicious, who directs us to this news story on a divestment campaign in Seattle. Lets start here:

Kolokoff, who is Jewish, said she was not surprised by the reaction of StandWithUs Northwest and other Israel-advocacy groups to the initiative.

Of course, it's a story from the Jewish press, and they're in the habit of pointing out Jews. But the purpose here seems to be to immunize Kolokoff from accusations that he or his initiative are counter to the interests of Jews. It levels the playing field between his voice and that of the united voice of Jewish advocacy groups, which lessens the collective Jewish voice overall. The implication is that if one can find a single, contrarian Jew, then there is no need to wrestle with the fact that an overwhelming majority of Jews hold any particular opinion. Had the article simply omitted this irrelevant fact, it would be open to charges of bias for presenting a supposedly slanted, overly-Jewish view. In response it yields to gentile privilege, which demands that the collective voice of Jews need never be taken seriously, even when the audience is insignificantly gentile.

"A lot of people feel to raise any question about Israel is tantamount to a crime," she [Kolokoff] said.

The collective voice of Jews is reduced to shrill over-reaction.

Leibsohn said he feels it is important to stop the initiative from reaching the ballot not out of concern for the economic impact it could have on Israel, but because of the message Seattle’s divestment would send to the rest of the country.
"We wouldn’t want this to pass in Seattle and then spread to other communities," he said. "That’s why we think it’s important to stop it here."

It is not enough that Jews collectively oppose such measures. It is not enough that there are good arguments that the initiative is antisemitic. It's not enough that Leibsohn personally opposes the measure on various grounds.

It's never enough to stop us from being labeled shrill neurotics. Gentile privilege insists that there is something wrong in Jews fighting for Jewish interests. We have to recognize that for what it is: oppression. No, it's not the Holocaust. Or Jim Crow, or whatever. But it is offensive to compare it to these other things at all. It doesn't have to be genocide for it to be wrong.

Taking Art out of Context

Jews support Obama pretty strongly. A recent poll by J-Street shows 58% of Jewish voters will "definitely vote for Obama." I doubt there's a non-black demographic group that supports him as strongly.

So how does it come to be that the media is obsessed with how anti-Obama (and racist) Jews are? Older voters don't like Obama as much as younger voters. Many older people are kind of racist. So how about portraying older people who happen to be Jewish as representative of all Jews? Actually, even then, there's gonna be someone like Art, whose absence from MSM reports shows just how racist the media are.

Journey of an idea

Via Hatewatch: How black Baltimore drug dealers are using white supremacist legal theories to confound the Feds.

Estelle Getty

Estelle Getty passed away yesterday. (Baruch dayan ha'emet and Ji Jang Bosal*.) I found the news at both Racialicious and Deadspin.
At Racialicious, Latoya Peterson writes:

Nooooooooooo!

At Deadspin, DAULERIO writes (in bold):

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!

To the best of my knowledge, neither writer had any idea that Getty's passing is directly relevant to their website's general content.

Getty came out of New York Yiddish theater and Borscht Belt comedy. Makes sense, yeah? The downright mean, but totally endearing one-liners that made her character on The Golden Girls so popular. Absolutely from the same place as Joan Rivers and Don Rickles. But her character was named Sophia Petrillo. Italian Catholic. And Sophia's daughter, Dorothy Zbornak was by extension also Italian; though Dorothy was played by the also Jewish Bea Arthur.

The show ran from 1985 to 1992. And we're still having trouble portraying Jews on TV.