Leftist Jews, Part II: White Privilege
In Part I of this two-part series, I discussed how leftist Jews, who often act in ways that are detrimental to Israel, are more like Uncle Toms than self-hating Jews or the kapos to which they have sometimes been compared. Uncle Tomism means that you put yourself down and obsequiously behave as you feel the elite majority wants you to behave.
Were the situation simply a matter of Uncle Tomism it may have been easier to contend with than it is. The issue is made more complex when we consider how Ashkenazi Jews confuse themselves with whites and see themselves as having white privilege. I say Ashkenazi Jews because I do believe that political leftism afflicts them more than their Mizrachi fellows, at least in Israel, about which I know more than about the USA. In this post I am going to focus on the leftist Jews in the United States and Israel alone. I do not know enough about other countries to say anything about them.
Leftist Jews and White Privilege
In a blog post, Sarah Tuttle-Singer describes an exercise conducted in a university class on multicultural conflict resolution, the purpose of which was to show how everyone comes into the world with advantages and disadvantages. The experience led her to understand that:
In some ways I am privileged. In some ways I am not. . . . here’s what I learned: We each come from a different world, and each of our worlds is based on so many things — some within our control, and some… not.
I would have thought that would be something most people have already understood before finishing high school – some kids have the brains, some are musically talented, some strong and good in sports. Some have supportive parents and some dysfunctional parents. True, we never put our personal talents or circumstances in terms of “privilege” but I imagine these kinds of qualities were included in the college exercise Tuttle-Singer wrote about. Did we, in my day, regard the rich kids as “privileged” or just “lucky”? I remember “as just lucky”.
So how is it that racial and ethnic group membership came to be spoken of in terms of “privilege” as if that is a dirty word? As if it was something that was embarrassing to acknowledge, as Tuttle-Singer discovered.
And I’ll tell you the truth – it was hard taking those steps forward. It was hard owning my own privilege. [emphasis added]
White-skinned leftist Jews likely see themselves as white and privileged. Being white means being associated with those who have power, with colonialists, with those trampling the rights of the underprivileged. And believing oneself to be associated with the privileged induces guilt in some. But for Jews, this sense of being white — because white used to mean WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) — is a new phenomenon.
American Jews have long been participants in the fight for civil rights and equality for black people in the USA simply because that is part of Jewish values. This newly developed association with white privilege, with those who massacred the American Indians who kept black slaves, and who discriminated against blacks, is intolerable. Yet at the same time, the white non-Jewish world is split on whether or not Jews belong among the white privileged.
Yair Rosenberg reminds us of this in his recent article in Tablet:
Duke’s outburst underscores again the fact that while many so-called anti-racists on the left dismiss Jews as white and privileged, the racists never did get the memo. To Duke and his ilk, Jews are foreign contaminants in the white gene pool as much as blacks or Mexicans.
And in an article in Tablet Carly Pildis, who is well aware of certain advantages of having white skin, describes the inability of the anti-racist to accept the Jew as a legitimate minority with a history of oppression.
If those who have experienced oppression should never be doubted in their experience, then stop saying I am a not a real minority, or that anti-Semitism isn’t real. If anti-oppression work must be intersectional, then that intersectionality can no longer end when the word Jewish is uttered.
Remember, it was not so long ago that Jews were not allowed into country clubs or onto beaches in North America. The Jews fighting for the civil rights of the blacks were, themselves, openly discriminated against at the same time and most definitely NOT part of the white majority culture.
@JasonWhitely In Toronto there use to be signs on the beach that said “NO DOGS OR JEWS”. That was in the mid 50’s. Hard to believe..
— WE ARE ALL MILO (@HelenAn29146628) May 29, 2016
@Zeinobia my dad had to go down to South Carolina in the 50s lots a sign saying no dogs blacks or Jews
— (((bebird))) (@bebird) July 12, 2016
So are white-skinned Jews like me privileged? I would say that being white-skinned and Jewish creates a disharmony in the non-Jewish environment whether those non-Jews are white or not. You cannot always tell a Jew by his or her name; not all of us wear Jewish symbols on our clothing or jewelry. People like to catalogue those around them; it makes them feel secure. So when they suddenly find out someone they thought was just like them is not just like them, it is upsetting to at least some degree. You can feel the change in the air.
Israel and White Privilege
There is discrimination in Israel as there is anywhere else in the world. And I suppose that my white skin and my Anglo-Saxon accent automatically gets me labeled differently than my darker skin peers without my accent, and perhaps that affords me some advantages in some situations. Is that white privilege?
What kind of privilege is it, then, when affirmative action means that some Israelis from disadvantaged communities, who might otherwise not have been accepted to universities studies, are admitted in order to give them a chance to improve their potential for achieving a satisfying career? When that means that others who satisfied the admission criteria are bumped to make room for them, is that not a kind of privilege?
The point is that life is not fair. There are Arabs and Jews and whites and blacks and smart people and unintelligent people and the able-bodied and the physically challenged and tall people and short people and beautiful people and plain people and male people and female people . . . and some of these characteristics give one an advantage over others when looking for jobs and lovers and friends. It’s just the way life is.
But white privilege seems to be the one that takes the cake. The one that makes one feel guilty and for which one should do penance. And isn’t that a form of racism in itself? Mike Dice seems to think so.
Jews, Israel, Arabs, and White Privilege
Palestinian Arabs, and many Israeli Arabs, view Ashkenazi Jews as European implants into the Middle East. In other words, as members of the white world and not as “real Jews”. It is a convenient ruse and it seems that many Ashkenazim have not yet got that we are not white and not European.
Israel, White Privilege, Leftist Uncle Tom Jews
It appears that what we have are Ashkenazi Jews in the USA and Israel who feel guilty about the white skin that they think gives us a kind of white privilege. Having fallen into the trap of believing ourselves to be white, the leftists get all apologetic for the white privilege they think is automatically ours. That apparent white privilege is only skin-deep, however, because beneath our pale skin beats a Jewish heart. The Jew, then, is in a bind. There is, on the one hand, “privilege,” that is noxious to Jewish sensibilities and that, at the same time, deprives Jews of being rightfully regarded by the anti-racist non-Jewish leftist as a minority. On the other hand, there is the oppressive antisemitism Jews face in spite of having white skin.
The tension between feeling guilty-by-association-because-supposedly-white and experiencing firsthand, secondhand or even third-hand antisemitism leads to attempts to resolve the stress. As I stated in Part I of this series, this can be done in one of four ways: trying to pass as a non-Jew, hating Jews, remaining conflicted or embracing the Jewish identity.
Remaining conflicted and actually hating Jews and anything Jewish can both lead the individual to adopt leftist interpretations of recent Israeli history that claim that Israel (supposedly as a white European Jewish colonial power) has occupied land that is not hers and is practicing apartheid against a people who are brown. Accepting this foreign definition of the nature of the Jewish state is the essence of Uncle Tomism.
I have no problem with Jews who believe that we should be doing something more or something else to resolve the hostilities between us and the Palestinian Arabs. I do have a problem with Jews who think we should appease the Arabs from a position of white privilege. Tuttle-Singer suggested that that is the just thing to do.
And those of us further ahead have a responsibility to make things equal for everyone.
Sorry. It is NOT our responsibility, nor is it possible, to MAKE things equal for everyone. Here’s a metaphor for you: in a place where height is a means to complete a particular task, one person is tall and one is short. The short person keeps attacking the tall person because of the unfairness of it all. Is the best solution chopping off the tall person’s head to make them equal in height or, alternatively, having the short person put lifts in his or her shoes or stand on a box?
The West has provided the box on which the Palestinian Arabs can stand if they so choose – providing substantial funds that other developing nations can only dream of seeing in their own banks. But instead of USING the box, the Palestinian Arabs repeatedly kick it away (by their leaders’ improper use of the money) and ask for our collective Jewish head to be chopped off instead. Nothing else will satisfy them.
We did try chopping ourselves off at the knees when we signed the Oslo Accords. But that is not good enough – they want our head! The leftist seems to be saying – so give it to them already!
It also seems that the Jewish leftists have “forgotten” that Israel was once at the bottom of the socioeconomic pecking order. We had help – Jews in other countries and allies provided boxes for us to stand on. And stand on them we did! Ignoring that provides a convenient fantasy for those who want to believe we Jews have some “white privilege” that magically gives us the power and the means to cause the Palestinian Arabs to change.
In other words, there are complementary responsibilities for ALL parties to the conflict. To suggest otherwise is to be racist. God forbid I dare suggest that the Uncle-Tom-not-really-white-privileged Jewish leftist is racist!
In conclusion, having bought into the lie that we Ashkenazi Jews are white, the leftists have allowed themselves to be bamboozled into supporting causes that seek the destruction of Israel by those who are exploiting natural Jewish traits that encourage us to seek truth, justice and fairness. I find it ironic and sad that some of my fellow Jews try so hard to be “white” while feeling guilty about supposedly being white at the same time. And in feeling guilty about having some made-up “Jewish white privilege” vis-à-vis the Palestinian Arabs, leftist Jews suck up to the elite in North America and around the world in a way that can only be seen as Uncle Tomism.
* * * * *
I want to thank both Diane Weber Bederman and Sarah Tuttle-Singer for having provided me with the triggers that led me to begin to make sense of what I see in Jewish leftist behaviours. I think public debate about issues that are fundamental to the state of our state is absolutely necessary.
This is because we Jews feel If we join the “melting pot” of America, where everyone is the same, there would be no more anti-Semitism after we all “melt”.. Helping others to “melt” does not help the cause of Jews.. It will always continue for us..