TUMBLRS ASSEMBLE!
As many of you know, our friend Rosa Sparks is having a real shit time of it lately. The most recent in a long string of personal upheavals is that the house where she and her daughter live was just robbed, and many of their personal belongings were taken. Rosa is about to start her dream job, and the organization is giving her the opportunity to work from home so she can be flexible for Mini Sparks’s demanding school and gymnastics commitments. However, in order to work from home, she needs to be able to use her own laptop. I’ve spoken to her about what Tumblr could do, and she’s expressed that the laptop and some working money is of the most immediate concern. I’d love for us to raise $2,000 for her to replace her laptop as soon as possible, and to give them some cash to replace any necessities while all the insurance bullshit gets worked out. Normally under these circumstances, we’d set up a Chip In, but that site is shut down and I can’t find a similar set up that won’t charge additional fees for donations. So instead I am simply asking you to please PayPal any amount you can spare directly to rosasparks@gmail.com. Please feel free to reblog this post, or repost about it. Rosa is a personal friend to many of us, and a great inspiration and entertainer to many, many more in this community. Thank you so much!
So some punks were posting shit about her arm hair and Marina replied. Oh my god, I adore her. She’s so fantastic, I swear to god.
hairy arms united in follicular solidarity
epiphanies about love with gaby and chloe
Chloe: WHATEVER I STILL BELIEVE EVERYONE IS REALLY GOOD AT HEART ETC ETCGaby: AWWW I LOVE YOU
Gaby: I HATE OTHER PPL
Chloe: I FEEL THE SAME WAY
Chloe: IS THIS WHAT LOVE IS???
rainbowspartacus replied to your photo: (por chloe sevario) miss you
<3 miss you both
I miss you too but not the part of you that steals potatoes
sO my friend’s dog died and she lives in new york city and so she had to take it to the vet by the subway and she put the dead dog in the suitcase on the subway and it was a pretty big dog and some dude saw that she was struggling with the suitcase so he asked if she needed help with it and he said do you mind me asking what’s in it and she didnt want to say a dead dog so shE SAID IT WAS A BUNCH OF LAPTOPS SO HE TOOK THE SUITCASE AND RAN AND I JUST
Alright, I am gonna break this down as simply as I can, and then that’s it.
Here are some issues with “shit white Jews make” as a sentence, and the various things that tiny little sentence taps into. This is generally true across the board, though of course, context can and does make a difference.
1) it does imply the “Jews are all white, all Jews are white” stereotype, which is one of the most inaccurate stereotypes of all time. It totally engages in erasure, for one thing, of a great many Jewish people.
2) For another, a great many times that it’s used, it is holding white-skinned Jews, who are NOT considered or treated as white on MUCH of the planet, more responsible for white supremacy than actual white people. Which is not cool. And it is deeply, deeply problemmatic. (Not to mention that “white Jews” is a US-centric term that simply does not hold water anywhere outside North America. The world is not the USA.)
3) If the context is issues in media, it does tap into the old trope of “Jews run the media” and “Jews run Hollywood,” which are itself branches off the old ZOG root. In this case, sticking the word “white” in front of it does not limit the fall-out to only white-passing Jews. The anti-Semitic stereotype hurts all Jews, of all colours and backgrounds; that’s the point of any stereotype that’s invoked, whether you shove the word “white” in there or not. The anti-Semitic fall-out will not stop at the doors of any subset of Jews of Colour just because the word “white” was put in there as some sort of fig leaf. (There is no privilege involved in being a Jew of Colour!) By contrast, if the phrase is something like “shit that Jews come up with,” in this context at least, it still taps into that same stereotype, and therefore is still wrong to do, but it does so WITHOUT the additional baggage of the above two issues.
4) bringing up someone’s Jewish ethnicity and/or religious practice (yes, it is both) into the mix when it is not relevant to the person’s misdeeds is holding their Jewish identity responsible, and therefore implicates the Jewish people as a whole. That is not ok. It is never ok.
Sometimes, one’s Jewish-ness does matter and is relevant to the subject at hand, such as in the context of inter-culture exchange, or the nature of some of the shit that’s going down in Israel-Palestine. When calling out someone for perpetuating -isms however, it’s much more problemmatic. It’d be similar to calling out someone and then saying “well what do you expect from this Egyptian Muslim” or “of course, it’s a Rromani who did this.”
Wow. Such an awful lot that goes into just a mere four words, isn’t it? And yet, that is exactly what happens when gentiles whip that line out. “Shit that white Jews do.” “Oh man, Jews always do this.” This is why Jews - of all colours - get so upset, this is why it touches a nerve. Such phrases tap into layers of oppression and oppressive history, and perpetuate dangers that face my people. Please try to be mindful of this.
bolded mine. if you’re having a problem with white ppl, you’re having a problem with white ppl. stop adding white onto jew when ya’ll are screaming you’re not anti-semitic.
a primer: so you’ve been called an ‘anti-semite’
ohmygod that dumb post about the connotations of the word “antisemitism” is still going around my dash
albeit with some good analysis and discussion at this point but like:
if you’re not jewish and a jew calls you anti-semitic, you need to sit down and shut up. when you realize how/what you’ve done is wrong (you may ask respectfully and they get to choose whether or not to explain), you apologize. and you never do it again. ideally you also call out other non-jews who say similar things.
if you’re jewish and a jew calls you anti-semitic (or more like, informs you that something you said is problematic or upsetting or actually offensive instead of funny), you need to sit down and think about it. if you don’t understand why, you need to go read up on our tradition’s history and learn what are the classic propagandic techniques and stereotypes that you have unwittingly perpetuated. and you need to realize that when you make said jokes or comments or defend offensive goyim, you are socially giving the non-jews license to do these things again, because “you think it’s OK!”
if you’re talking about israel/palestine and someone calls your arguments anti-semitic, please consider the tone and the specific word choices of what may otherwise be a valid argument. and remember that a lot (but not all) anti-zionists use offensive language that the christian monarchs and government agents developed thousands of years ago.
if you’re not jewish, you never talk over other jews who are calling out antisemitism.
that’s it. that’s how it goes. same rules apply to other isms: sexism, racism, homophobia, islamophobia. antisemitism is equally bad.
blessings upon your head, kinderlach. go forth and prosper.
#why does no one understand that antisemitism is just as bad as other -isms
Alright, I am gonna break this down as simply as I can, and then that’s it.
Here are some issues with “shit white Jews make” as a sentence, and the various things that tiny little sentence taps into. This is generally true across the board, though of course, context can and does make a difference.
1) it does imply the “Jews are all white, all Jews are white” stereotype, which is the most inaccurate stereotype of all time. It totally engages in erasure, for one thing, of a great many Jewish people.
2) For another, a great many times that it’s used, it is holding white-skinned Jews, who are NOT considered or treated as white on MUCH of the planet, more responsible for white supremacy than actual white people. Which is not cool. And it is deeply, deeply problemmatic. (Not to mention that “white Jews” is a US-centric term that simply does not hold water anywhere outside North America. The world is not the USA.)
3) If the context is issues in media, it does tap into the old trope of “Jews run the media” and “Jews run Hollywood,” which are itself branches of the old ZOG root. In this case, sticking the word “white” in front of it does not limit the fall-out to only white-passing Jews. The anti-Semitic stereotype hurts all Jews, of all colours and backgrounds; that’s the point of any stereotype that’s invoked, whether you shove the word “white” in there or not. The anti-Semitic fall-out will not stop at the doors of any subset of Jews of Colour just because the word “white” was put in there as some sort of fig leaf. (There is no privilege involved in being a Jew of Colour!) By contrast, if the phrase is something like “shit that Jews come up with,” in this context at least, it still taps into that same stereotype, and therefore is still wrong to do, but it does so WITHOUT the additional baggage of the above two issues.
4) bringing up someone’s Jewish ethnicity and/or religious practice (yes, it is both) into the mix when it is not relevant to the person’s misdeeds is holding their Jewish identity responsible, and therefore implicates the Jewish people as a whole. That is not ok. It is never ok.
Sometimes, one’s Jewish-ness does matter and is relevant to the subject at hand, such as in the context of inter-culture exchange, or the nature of some of the shit that’s going down in Israel-Palestine. When calling out someone for perpetuating -isms however, it’s much more problemmatic. It’d be similar to calling out someone and then saying “well what do you expect from this Egyptian Muslim” or “of course, it’s a Rromani who did this.”
Wow. Such an awful lot that goes into just a mere four words, isn’t it? And yet, that is exactly what happens when gentiles whip that line out. “Shit that white Jews do.” “Oh man, Jews always do this.” This is why Jews - of all colours - get so upset, this is why it touches a nerve. Such phrases tap into layers of oppression and oppressive history, and perpetuate dangers that face my people. Please try to be mindful of this.
I’d like to comment and add a bit:
“(Not to mention that “white Jews” is a US-centric term that simply does not hold water anywhere outside North America. The world is not the USA.)”
I’m not originally from North America, but South America. In my original community Jews are mostly Maghrebim who immigrated in the 19th century; Sephardim who were in northern Morocco for centuries, descendants of Iberian Jews running away after the expulsion in the Iberian Peninsula and as a group they never mixed with the local Maghrebi population, they also immigrated to my city in the 19th century along with the Maghrebim (between those two groups, there were a thousand families immigrating over there around the same time); there are some Sephardim who came straight from the Iberian Peninsula in the 16th century and lived for the most part as Anusim (long story about those folks, goes beyond my point for now); there are many from Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia; a few from France, England, Germany and Lithuania — these latter groups ended up marrying into the larger population and are now mixed.
That means that at the esnogas (shuls, synagogues) we’re all shades of brown, with few white-passing folks. Despite all of that, I had to deal with “but you don’t look Jewish” and “Jews are supposed to be white and blonde”(*) even in a community in Brazil which is mostly Maghrebi and Sephardi.
The fact that there is a large Ashkenazi community going further south in the country doesn’t help. Gentiles use their existence to delegitimize our existence. Sadly the obsession with “white Jews” isn’t exclusive of North America.
(*) First, even I have never seen this disproportionate amount of blonde Jews. White passing, yes. Some blond, but mostly not. Second, even though this happened more than one time, with more than one person, in one situation the person justified that her friend was blonde and her friend’s mom was too, therefore this should be the normative look in the Jewish community. She also ignored the fact that the mother’s friend was a white-blonde-blue eyed gentile from northern Europe with no Jewish ancestry at all (not that there aren’t Jews who look like that, I personally know some, but to this specific context it was just… *sigh*).
