A Question of Blood and Belief - Part Three

By David Tamas-Parris, Candidate for A.A. at the University of Vermont

(Link to part 1: http://51ststateofmind.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-question-of-blood-and-belief.html)

(Link to part 2: http://51ststateofmind.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-question-of-blood-and-belief-part-two.html)

It would seem just from the above information that Jews are their own race. It isn’t, however, so simple. The divisions among Jews make it difficult to think of the group as one race. There are certainly differences in physical appearance between Jews of different background, and in Israel, where they all live together, there has been corresponding tension. Especially of note are the Beta Israel community, who are Jews from Ethiopia whom most people in the United States would describe as “Black.” These Jews were subjected to discrimination parallel to that of Blacks in the United States. Upon immigration to Israel, many faced nonconsensual injections of birth control, mirroring the American eugenics movement (The Independent). Using the same logic as expressed throughout this paper, one could reasonably argue that the divisions among the Jewish ethnicity can be considered races of their own. So, there isn’t quite an answer for whether “Jewish” is a race. When having a discussion about race, a social construct, one discusses how society forms ideas concerning a group of people. But different societies think differently, so whether a group is defined as a race depends heavily on the context. For example, it would be difficult to argue that the Rwandan Genocide came out of anything but racism, but it came from a conflict among two groups that most Americans would describe as “Black.” Since race doesn’t really exist for any good reason, racial divisions aren’t necessarily obvious, and this is demonstrated among Jews. 

    Although it depends on the context, Jews are a race in most respects. The definition of race allows for this, and the possibility of identification, on top of malice towards the group provide strong justification, although there are complications. Race is deeply flawed concept, but one that is necessary to face. Many Jews don’t prefer to see themselves as a race, essentially since the most prominent man to hold this position was a certain failed painter-turned-statesman. When talking to a friend about the premise of the paper, she replied that making the case for Jews as a race concerned her because she thought it would lead to more division. The point is valid. If the public acknowledged Jews as a separate race, more people might be encouraged to “other” us. I am not, however, arguing that my argument be adopted into public opinion. This is a completely different debate, and one that should occur, but I am simply trying to find truth, not necessarily to publicize it. I am contending that the flawed concept of race makes a comparable amount of sense applied to Jews as to anyone else whom we apply it.

Best regards, 

 David Tamas-Parris

A Question of Blood and Belief - Part Two

By David Tamas-Parris, Candidate for A.A. at the University of Vermont

(Link to part 1: http://51ststateofmind.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-question-of-blood-and-belief.html)

Jews are very frequently identifiable as Jews. To be considered a separate racial entity, Jews would have to experience separate racism, and for this to happen, those seeking to apply this strain would have to know whom to apply it to. This does not always happen, especially in comparison to “Blacks,” who have the label applied to them simply through the presence of substantially darker skin pigmentation; I certainly am not immediately identifiable as Jewish. Although I have brown hair and brown eyes, my hair is straight and my I don’t have a “Jew nose.” I spent my senior year in Hungary, during which I experienced tremendous amounts of antisemitism. People spewed things such as “All Jews are bad people” and “what can you expect from a Jew?” but I was never once the direct target of an antisemitic slur or insult. This was despite my classmates’ frequent honing of their abilities at identifying Jews by using celebrities as practice. People knew I was Jewish only if I told them. 

My father, though, has quite a different story to tell. He does have a “Jew nose.” His black hair left unchecked would develop into a “Jew-fro,” and in his youth it did. His appearance makes bald men in dark parks suddenly curious about his status of Jewishness. I strongly believe that my friend Joseph, the one who feels “pretty white,” would be immediately identified as Jewish by an interested party. The author of the tumblr blog This Is Not Jewish adds this: “As a blonde, blue-eyed Jew with an Anglo last name living in metropolitan America I have undeniable white passing/white privilege. But my Jewish friends with dark curly hair, ‘swarthy’ skin, and ‘Semitic’ noses? My friends with last names like Weber and Katz and Rosen? They don’t pass in America, let alone in Europe (and I feel 100% confident in stating that you know jack-all about how Europeans view race, but spoiler alert: Jews definitely don’t make the white people shortlist there, light skinned or not). Ever notice how white supremacist groups always include Jews on their list of ‘enemies of the white race?’ Or how the place where Jews are really overrepresented is in hate crime victim statistics? Millennia of rape and forced assimilation in diaspora may have lightened some of our skins (fun fact: many Jews, including many Ashkenazim, are people of color), but neither we nor white Gentiles have forgotten that our ethnicity and culture stem from the Levant” (Anonymous). Jews do not all share these physical characteristics, but many do, and if one so desired, he could identify a Jew and target him for racism.

The only remaining question is whether people exist who want to make the identification, and whether they use this identification, knowingly or unknowingly, to do harm. There is an unfortunately vast amount of evidence that the answer to both questions is yes. Mostly, wherever Jews have gone in the world, they have at one point or another been met with exclusion from society, violence, and worse. Nazi Germany took this pattern to its logical conclusion: the slaughter of six million Jews along with five million other “undesirables.” In this process, the word “Judenhass” (Jew-hatred) was ditched to make room for the word “Antisemitism” in an effort to ascribe the difference to the Jews themselves, instead of to German perception. It would be one thing if this racism was confined to the past, but, again unfortunately, it isn’t. According to a recent survey conducted by the ADL, “1.09 billion people have anti-Semitic attitudes.” It is not believed the men in the park inquiring about my father’s heritage were seeking cultural exchange. “Jew” was an insult at my middle school, and fair few of the student body of my high school thought “Jew noses” were undesirable and to be laughed at. It is clear that people, currently and throughout history, have applied harmful ideas and actions towards Jews.

A Question of Blood and Belief

When we published our preview of "Exploring the Karmic Color Wheel," we received a request from one of our readers to publish a 3-part report on antisemitism in the world. We believe that such a concern bodes well with our other articles and creates an expose on racial issues in America and around the world. Here is part one of "A Question of Blood and Belief."

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Stay Curious, 
FFSOM
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By David Tamas-Parris, Candidate for A.A. at the University of Vermont at Burlington

“I don’t know man,” mused my friend Joseph as we waited for the rest of the group to catch up to where we were. “I feel pretty white.” We were sitting in our canoe, having just set out that day from one end of an oblong lake in the Adirondacks. We were there as a celebration of our graduation three days prior. Indeed, his thought was an easy one to have: of the few bubbles available on every standardized test we ever took, “White” always seemed to be the most fitting option; our skin was indeed “white.” Everyone in the group had filled in this bubble, except my friend Nikolas, who is 50 percent Asian/Pacific Islander. I probably would have agreed with my friend Mr. Finkelstein; however, the last year had brought exposure to pertinent arguments, as well as certain experiences in light of which these ideas started to make sense. I had been led to the firm personal conclusion that, despite hesitance to label it as such, “Jewish” is most certainly a “race” in every sense of the construct that matters.

 

    Like most personal convictions, mine was significantly more black-and-white than reality, but in it lied a certain truth: to be ethnically Jewish means that one has to contend with many of the same issues presented to other non-hegemonic races. In most senses, “Jewish” should be considered a race unto itself. It is first necessary to realize that the nature of race, as a social construct, allows for the possibility that Jews are their own race. The are also often distinctive features that stem from being ethnically Jewish that make Jews identifiable, creating a visible difference between Jews and the hegemonic race. Furthermore, standards set by the hegemonic race, both historically and presently, attach negativity to these identifiable features. Providing testament, however, to the fact that the label of a “race” does not apply perfectly to Jews, is evidence of tensions between divisions among people with Jewish ethnicity.

 

    To begin a discussion about applying the label of race, one must seek first to create a working definition for it. This task is especially difficult, as the premise on which the construct was established has been shown to be largely false. “Human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups... Most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups... ‘racial’ groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes... Historical research has shown that the idea of ‘race’ has always carried more meanings than mere physical differences; indeed, physical variations in the human species have no meaning except the social ones that humans put on them...we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called ‘racial’ groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances” (American Anthropological Society). All of this evidence implies that race as a method of categorizing the human species is, to view it pragmatically, ineffective; it simply doesn’t do its job as advertised. This is not, however, to say that it doesn’t exist. The idea of race might be incorrect, but it has effected a society in which its posited divisions exist, due to the people who have payed attention to the “indicators” of these divisions. Essentially, racism has created race, and a race is defined by its corresponding racism. This matters in the context of the Jews, because it means that the group can be considered a race if it experiences its own distinct strain of racism.