And when I say “whiteness,” I include concepts such as white-passing, conditional whiteness and functional whiteness. I am no longer going to discuss Jews in terms of whiteness.
First of all, confident assertions about the whiteness of Jews as a whole, certain kinds of Jews and/or a particular Jewish person relies on treating race as biology and geography, which is diametrically opposed to the purpose of using the phrase “people of color.”
Secondly, a lot of those “white Jews” live under a particular set of circumstances that only applies to a narrow segment of Jewish people, a segment that is deeply assimilated into mainstream American culture, all the way down to internalizing its most toxic attitudes and behaviors. The issue of Jews and assimilation beyond stringent halachic observance is a conversation worth having, but not like that.
Calling most Jews white because they’re lighter than a brown paper bag relies on an understanding of racial oppression that uses the Black American experience as a control group or a measuring stick, which I’ve repeatedly expressed my frustration with. If we go by that, every non-Black and non-Native group who willingly came to the United States is white. That sounds really ignorant when said out loud, doesn’t it? Ignores a lot of history, a lot of struggle, a lot of intergenerational trauma, doesn’t it? Yeah, exactly.
If I can be real for a second, I notice strong parallels between antisemitic stereotypes and anti-Asian ones, and I don’t believe that’s an accident. I remember when there was real, earnest discussion about whether East Asian people should be considered honorary whites and therefore exempt from anti-discrimination policies, particularly college admission. (And, when I’m feeling cynical, it comes with an added dose of, “See? They hate, fear, and exploit Black people too!”) No, this was not on Tumblr. This was in reputable media sources.
Thirdly, my experience with gentiles who are convinced of the whiteness of Jews is similar to Eric K. Ward’s. There’s something distinctly regional about it because most of the people I’ve encountered who are intractable about the whiteness of Jews are from New York and Chicago. I wasn’t particularly surprised by what happened at Chicago Dyke March, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a similar thing happens in New York, Los Angeles or DC. I’d be more shocked if it happened at the Albuquerque Dyke March. Not saying that they love Jews in Albuquerque, but places like NYC and Chicago maintain a certain brand of antisemitism that masks itself as resisting injustice. Not saying that these places are more antisemitic, just that the expression of it is different and often unacknowledged and unexamined. In my neck of the woods, antisemitism is more like–well, you remember Charlottesville.
Fourth, the majority of concepts and frameworks that dominate how we talk about racial justice are by and for people who are insiders to US history and culture, even if their experience of it is a horror show. Make no mistake, lots of folks on this website decry US-centrism as a way to shut Black Americans up when we talk about our experiences with antiblackness. Even so, there is an awful lot of projecting US racial dynamics onto non-US contexts, ignoring the historical, political and cultural distinctions of US racism. Don’t get it twisted. This doesn’t make other countries into some post-racial utopia. It just means that the how it functions and who it targets does not neatly map onto the US context. (Though everybody seems to have it out for Black folks, including other Black folks.)
Fifth, and this is where I’m gonna lose you if I haven’t already, I honestly believe that whiteness and Jewishness are antithetical to one another.
To be white is to own every place you go to. To be a Jew is to wander in search of home. To be white is to always be on the VIP list. To be a Jew is to never forget that we were strangers. To be white is to ignore the past. To be a Jew is to remember, remember, remember. To be white is to be a god to be obeyed. To be Jewish is to struggle with God.
Take whiteness away, and what is left? Whiteness is a blank sheet of paper. Whiteness has no center. It has neither roots nor wings. Whiteness rules the world (for now), but it sold its soul.
If (when) whiteness goes away, there will still be Jews.
Households with regular shouting incidents tend to have children with lower self-esteem and higher rates of depression. A 2014 study in The Journal of Child Development demonstrated that yelling produces results similar to physical punishment in children: increased levels of anxiety, stress and depression along with an increase in behavioral problems.
Never forget that Tuvok’s reaction to being trapped in a years-long starless void was to make terrible puns.
Who says Vulcans don’t have a sense of humor?
Tuvok’s bone dry sass gives me life. Like, sure Spock’s sass was more overt, and T’Pol could out-sass everyone with just a look, but with Tuvok, you get the feeling his bad puns and veiled sarcasm are the Vulcan equivalent of dad-jokes. At home, his kids would be completely unimpressed at his humor, but on Voyager, he can be HILARIOUS all he wants, and most everyone misses the joke, and I think he likes it like that.
I like that first sequence you mentioned. On suggested variation is to watch R1 first ahead of IV. Chronological order makes sense, too, as does release order.
that made the CIS planets secede in the first place. Most tend
to forget that a large number of planets turned against the Republic
because the Republic had been exploiting them for centuries and giving
nothing in return. They had been leached of resources, yet offered
nothing of the wealth they created for the Core planets. That was a
system Padmé was never willing to touch. Again, Padmé’s kind of peace is
the one who benefits only her and her own, not everyone. She’s you
typical white liberal.
Yeah, there’s a reason people say peace without justice is no peace at all. I believe Padmé always meant well, but she wasn’t willing to examine how incomplete and flawed her perspective was from her own place of privilege. In this she is much like white liberals in our world.
I’m not sure how that ties into Padmé’s culpability. Meta critiques of a narrative don’t change the moral valuation of a fictional character’s reactions to in-world events. Also, while I agree the narrative you speak of can be problematic, it’s also true that in real life people are conscripted or pressured into being cannon fodder in wars for politicians’ and capitalists’ gain. The clones are just an extreme version of soldiers who had no choice. In the meta I linked I think the issue wasn’t that the decent Separatists were conventionally attractive humans but that they were privileged elites.
I liked @awakening5‘s A New Order (link) and @the-bi-writer‘s There Is No Redemption Here (link). They’re on opposite ends of the ST timeline, with ANO being a vision of a possible Episode IX while TINRH is a timeline fork just before TFA. They’re both Finnrey fics, with ANO featuring a sweet slow burn and TINRH lots of steamy action (but SFW versions of chapters are also offered). Both fics also feature Force-sensitive Finn, and shows Finn growing into his powers. There are probably tons more, but I haven’t been reading a lot of fics recently.
J.J. Abrams himself explicitly compared TFO to much better organized neo-Nazis (link). The FO stanning and apologia and the demonization of the Resistance are pretty frightening to watch, frankly.
Idk about that, since it seems her idea of peace was largely for other elites like herself (link). She was also mighty quick to throw the Clones under the bus even though they had been created for the convenience of the Republic and had never had a choice when it came to their involvement in the war. Maybe she did better with the Gungans than prior queens of Naboo, but she sure didn’t seem to give a shit that Anakin had murdered Tuskans en masse.
L.J.'s Obsessions 