#ethnic identity

[all-turkic]

What is the meaning of Hıdırellez for Turkic People?

HistoryTraditionsSignificanceConclusion Video: The UNESCO Cultural Heritage of Hıdırellez!You may also like Hıdırellez, also known as Hıdrellez or Hıdrellez Bayramı, is an ancient spring festival celebrated in Turkic states, Iran, and some Balkan states. This festival is observed on May 5 or 6 every year and is regarded as a time of renewal and rebirth. In this article, we will explore the…

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#Celebrations and rituals #Central Asian culture #Cross-cultural exchange #Cultural significance #Ethnic identity #Festivals and traditions #Folklore and mythology #History and heritage #Hıdırellez #Turkic culture

[jpf-sydney]

Netsugen

New item:

Shelf: 913.6 KAW Netsugen. by Kawagoe Sōichi ; [commentary by Nakajima Kyōko].

Tōkyō : Bungei Shunjū, 2022. ISBN: 9784167919023

490 pages : map ; 16 cm. (Bunshun bunko).

This work was originally published as hardcover book by Bungei Shunjū in 2019. Includes bibliographical references. Text in Japanese. The 162nd Naoki Prize, 2019.

#fiction #historical fiction #ainu #cultural assimilation #ethnic identity #yamabe yasunosuke #sakhalin #naoki sho #jstudies

[noperopesaredope]

Recently, I’ve been working on designing a 7 person family of Black characters, and because I’ve been made aware of how little we are taught about this, today, I was looking up how to draw Black facial features. By this, I mean the common ethnic features many Black Americans have. These features may vary due to the different ethnicities across the areas of Africa many AA descended from, and there’s been a lot of interracial/interethnic mixing, but those features exist. And I, a white-passing half-black person with identity issues, have begun to realize just how many black features I actually have, features I’ve never really noticed about myself.

I have a small nose, but it is in the same shape as the nose shape common amongst many Black folks (of certain ethnicities, obviously). It is somewhat flat, or at least rounded. It is wider than it is long. It has all those other aspects you see in that type of nose, and I never realized it. Or, at least, I never realized it was ethnically Black. I just thought it was “ugly.”

After noticing this, I took a headshot of my face (without smiling), and looking at the photo, I realized that, despite my light skin, I look more black than white if you take the time to notice. I can’t describe what features make me look that way, but I can say for sure that, in that moment, I saw more of my Blackness than my whiteness.

Fuck, people have told me a lot that I look like my dad, like that one random girl who stopped me in the library and asked if I was [insert my Black dad’s name]’s kid. I said yes, and she said “I see it,” before walking away. This was completely unprompted. And according to my mom, when I was a baby, every elderly Black woman could almost immediately tell I was mixed, or at least not fully white.

Learning about those little facial features that others saw in me ended up making me see how mixed I actually was.

And that relieved a lot of body dysmorphia for me, resulting in both affirming my racial identity and accepting my body more. I had been so focused on looking more like what conforms to Euro-centric beauty standards, that I didn’t even realize the legitimate beauty my appearance holds. And I began to love those parts of my body more.

So, to all those white-passing folks who think they don’t look enough like [insert race], you just need to look a little closer, and look at others too. Because I’m positive that you do have at least some of those feature. I’m sure that, despite the color of your skin, despite the shape of your eyes, despite the texture of your hair, you will be able to spot it.

#race #racial identity #black #blackness #mixed race #biracial #multiracial #african american #racial imposter syndrome #white passing #identity issues #racial experience #ethnic identity #race and ethnicity #ethnic features #face #facial features #tw body dysmorphia #tw internalized racism #tw internalized anti blackness #drawing faces #humans are so diverse #self love #learning to love myself

[magnetothemagnificent]

been thinking about this question and hopefully this won't be too awkward to ask. since judaism is itself an ethnicity and religion at the same time, imagine you have ancestors from like idk portugal who converted to judaism centuries and centuries ago and so their descendants are all jewish but don't know about the conversion part. can they call themselves ethnically jewish?

A person becomes part of the Jewish ethnicity when they convert to Judaism. Ethnicity is more than DNA, it's about your peoplehood. As a student of anthropology I honestly don't like how the rise of at-home DNA test kits have put into people's minds their identity is a complicated equation of DNA percentages. People are not math problems. If you were born Jewish you are 100% Jewish. If you converted to Judaism you are 100% Jewish. DNA tests only measure the genes you're more likely to share with certain populations, and even then they're not completely accurate. Ethnicity isn't about blood quantum, at least it shouldn't be.

Here's an example, using myself:

I've never taken a DNA test, and don't intend to, but if I had to guess it would probably give me a result of something like: 58% Ashkenazi Jewish; 25% Northern European; 15% Sephardi Jewish; 2% Northern African.

What does that tell me about my ethnicity? Nothing. It tells me percentages of DNA I have that are most likely shared with certain populations of people from certain geographic regions (haplogroups), but my ethnicity is 100% Jewish and I don't need a DNA test to tell me that, because I know I was born Jewish.

DNA tells you your haplotypes. Peoplehood tells you your ethnicity. And peoplehood is defined by the people themselves.

So yes, the descendents of converts are ethnically Jewish. All Jews are ethnically Jewish.

#jumblr #jewish identity #race vs ethnicity vs haplogroup #dna test #anthropology #ethnicity #ethnoreligion #judaism

[odinsblog]

Many years ago, the Jewish U.S. scholar Norman Finkelstein wrote a best seller that caused uproar among a group he exposed as the “Holocaust Industry”: people who invariably had not been direct victims of the Holocaust, but nonetheless chose to exploit and profit from Jewish suffering.

Though treated as leaders of the Jewish community, they were not primarily interested in helping survivors of the Holocaust, or in stopping another Holocaust – the two things one might have assumed would be the highest priorities for anyone making the Holocaust central to their life. In fact, hardly any of the many millions the Holocaust Industry demanded from countries like Germany in reparations ever made it to Holocaust survivors, as Finkelstein documented in his book.

Instead, this small group instrumentalised the Holocaust for their own benefit: to gain money and influence by embedding themselves in an industry they had created. They became untouchables, beyond criticism because they were associated with an industry that they had made as sacred as the Holocaust itself.

A follow-up book called the Antisemitism Industry, an investigation into much the same group of people, is now overdue. These ghouls don’t care about antisemitism – in fact, they rub shoulders with the West’s most prominent antisemites, from Donald Trump to Viktor Orban.

Rather, they care about Israel – and the weaponisation of antisemitism to protect their emotional and financial investment. They profit from Israel’s central place in US political, diplomatic and military life:

• as a giant real-estate laundering exercise, based on the theft of native Palestinian land;

• as a laboratory for the production of new weapons and surveillance systems tested on Palestinians;

• as a heavily militarised colonial state, a spearpoint for the West, useful in destabilising and disrupting any threat of a unifying Arab nationalism in the oil-rich Middle East;

• and as the frontier state for eroding legal and ethical principles developed after the Second World War to stop a repeat of those atrocities.

Anyone who challenges the Antisemitism Industry’s – and therefore Israel’s – stranglehold on Jewish representation in public life is hounded as an antisemite or self-hating Jew, as is currently happening most prominently to Jewish film-maker Jonathan Glazer. He is the Oscar-winning director of The Zone of Interest, about the family of a Nazi commandant of Auschwitz who lived blind to the horrors unfolding just out of view, beyond their walled garden.

I wrote an earlier piece about the manufactured furore provoked by Glazer’s comments at the Oscars. In his acceptance speech, he denounced the hijacking of Jewishness and the Holocaust that has sustained Israel’s occupation over many decades and generated constant new victims, including the latest: those who suffered at the hands of Hamas when it attacked on October 7, and the many, many tens of thousand of Palestinians killed, maimed and orphaned by Israel over the past five months.

—Jonathan Cook, the antisemitism industry doesn’t speak for Jews, it speaks for western elites

#politics #palestine #israel #jonathan glazer #weaponized antisemitism #gaza #the zone of interest #antisemitism #anti zionism ≠ antisemitism #jonothan cook #weaponized zionism #war crimes #genocide #zone of interest #ethnic cleansing #hamas ≠ palestine #israel ≠ all jewish people #pro palestine ≠ antisemitism #holocaust industry #idpol #hasbara #weaponized identity politics

[kaladinkholins]

Seeing fan discussions about Blue Eye Samurai and especially Mizu's identity is so annoying sometimes. So let me just talk about it real quick.

First off, I have to emphasise that different interpretations of the text are always important when discussing fiction. That's how the whole branch of literary studies came to be, and what literary criticism and analysis is all about: people would each have their own interpretation of what the text is saying, each person applying a different lens or theory through which to approach the text (ie. queer theory, feminist theory, reader response theory, postcolonial theory, etc) when analysing it. And while yes, you can just take everything the authors say as gospel, strictly doing so would leave little room for further analysis and subjective interpretation, and both of these are absolutely necessary when having any meaningful discussion about a piece of media.

With that being said, when discussing Blue Eye Samurai, and Mizu's character in particular, I always see people only ever interpret her through a queer lens. Because when discussing themes of identity, yes, a queer reading can definitely apply, and in Mizu's story, queer themes are definitely present. Mizu has to hide her body and do her best to pass in a cisheteronormative society; she presents as a man 99% of the time and is shown to be more comfortable in men's spaces (sword-fighting) than in female spaces (homemaking). Thus, there's nothing wrong with a queer reading at all. Hell, some queer theorists interpret Jo March from Little Women as transmasc and that's totally valid, because like all analyses, they are subjective and argumentative; you have the choice to agree with an interpretation or you can oppose it and form your own.

To that end, I know many are equally adamant that Mizu is strictly a woman, and that's also also a completely valid reading of the text, and aligns with the canon "Word of God", as the creators' intention was to make her a woman. And certainly, feminist themes in the show are undeniably present and greatly colour the narrative, and Episode 4 & 5 are the clearest demonstrations of this: Mizu's protectiveness of Madame Kaji and her girls, Mizu's trauma after killing Kinuyo, her line to Akemi about how little options women have in life, and the way her husband had scorned her for being more capable than him in battle.

I myself personally fall into the camp of Mizu leaning towards womanhood, so i tend to prefer to use she/her pronouns for her, though I don't think she's strictly a cis woman, so I do still interpret her under the non-binary umbrella. But that's besides my point.

My gripe here, and the thing that spurred me to write this post, is that rarely does this fandom even touch upon the more predominant themes of colonialism and postcolonial identities within the story. So it definitely irks me when people say that the show presenting Mizu being cishet is "boring." While it's completely fine to have your opinion and to want queer rep, a statement like that just feels dismissive of the rest of the representation that the show has to offer. And it's frustrating because I know why this is a prevalent sentiment; because fandom culture is usually very white, so of course a majority of the fandom places greater value on a queer narrative (that aligns only with Western ideas of queerness) over a postcolonial, non-Western narrative.

And that relates to how, I feel, people tend to forget, or perhaps just downplay, that the crux of Mizu's internal conflict and her struggle to survive is due to her being mixed-race.

Because while she can blend in rather seamlessly into male society by binding and dressing in men's clothing and lowering her voice and being the best goddamn swordsman there is, she cannot hide her blue eyes. Even with her glasses, you can still see the colour of her eyes from her side profile, and her glasses are constantly thrown off her face in battle. Her blue eyes are the central point to her marginalisation and Otherness within a hegemonic society. It's why everyone calls her ugly or a monster or a demon or deformed; just because she looks different. She is both white and Japanese but accepted in neither societies. Her deepest hatred of herself stems primarily from this hybridised and alienated identity. It's the whole reason why she's so intent on revenge and started learning the way of the sword in the first place; not to fit in better as a man, but to kill the white men who made her this way. These things are intrinsic to her character and to her arc.

Thus, to refuse to engage with these themes and dismiss the importance of how the representation of her racial Otherness speaks to themes of colonialism and racial oppression just feels tone-deaf to the show's message. Because even if Mizu is a cishet woman in canon, that doesn't make her story any less important, because while you as a white queer person living in the West may feel unrepresented, it is still giving a voice to the stories of people of colour, mixed-race folks, and the myriad of marginalised racial/ethnic/cultural groups in non-Western societies.

#blue eye samurai #mizu blue eye samurai #fandom critical #blue eye samurai meta #wank.mp3 #shut up haydar #fandom.rtf #this is a bit of rant but the prevalent whiteness of fandom in general just gets on my nerves i'm sorry #giving me flashbacks to a:tla fandom fr cuz it's the same shit! people love to devalue the stories of non-white non-western identities #also to be clear i am a southeast asian living in southeast asia and similar to mizu i am often alienated for having mixed ethnic ancestry #and even for speaking english (bcs my granddad served the fuckin. british colonials. so my fam speaks mostly in english) #cuz where im from it's still extremely hegemonic racist patriarchal misogynistic homophobic like the setting in the show #so like even though the story is set in historical japan and may seem far-removed from the experiences of a US or european audience #those of us outside the west and in the global south still face a lot of the struggles that mizu goes through till this very day #so please dont just dismiss that. it feels incredibly tone-deaf #okay rant over

[suguruslut]

When Dick gets in a fight at school after being called a racial slur, Bruce dives into researching about how to help his child deal with racism, learning a lot about his son's identity (and his own) in the process.

#dick grayson #bruce wayne #dick & bruce #richard grayson #batman #robin #batman and robin #dc comics #dc universe #light angst #identity #romani dick grayson #racial slurs #school fights #gotham #modern au #ethnicity #wayne manor #father son relationship #character development #family fluff #dick grayson fanfiction #dc fanfiction

[broomsticks]

if anyone's curious:

16 Works in American Sirius Black 6 Works in Arab Sirius Black 7 Works in British Sirius Black 7 Works in Catholic Sirius Black 14 Works in Chinese Sirius Black 8 Works in Desi Sirius Black 3 Works in Egyptian Sirius Black 305 Works in French Sirius Black 24 Works in Japanese Sirius Black 15 Works in Jewish Sirius Black 14 Works in Korean Sirius Black 14 Works in Person of Color Sirius Black 4 Works in Vietnamese Sirius Black

14 Works in American Remus Lupin 8 Works in Biracial Remus Lupin 44 Works in Black Remus Lupin 3 Works in Chilean Remus Lupin 6 Works in French Remus Lupin 6 Works in German Remus Lupin 18 Works in Irish Remus Lupin 17 Works in Latino Remus Lupin 17 Works in Scottish Remus Lupin 620 Works in Welsh Remus Lupin

(17 nov 2023 on ao3!)

#i might have missed out some ethnicities/identities please lmk if you spot any!! #hp fandom stats

[imissthembutitwasntadisaster]

.

#My issue with side y discourse generally is when they say you shouldn't use queer lables because your identity in Christ should be first. #like yes it should but if you're also comfortable calling someone straight then you're being a hypocrite #because that is an identical kind of lable #and same with other labels! are you comfortable calling yourself your ethnicity? your age? your gender? your job title? #then you're doing the exact same thing and in none of those cases is it considered that you're not putting your identity in Christ first #if I said I'm british people wouldn't be like ooh you're prioritising being British above God #like I COULD but not by using the label itself #I'm British. I'm female. I'm 21. I'm straight. #vs I'm british. I'm female. I'm 21. I'm bisexual. #I think if people have an issue with the latter but not the former that logic just doesn't follow through #and i know some people are more comfortable saying SSA #which I totally respect #but a. I personally am not because it feels stigmatizing and b. that's still a label in the same way #idk man I just don't get this specific approach. #also I know that's not all side y. but it defo is some of them!!!

[7amaspayrollmanager]

I'm now converting specifically bc of these type of posts

#btw like in palestine yeah theres not like a demographic but in the diaspora yeah ur gonna find them so everyone stfu please #bc im remembering this one vid of a palestinian guy who said that hes jewish and palestinian bc one of his parents is jewish and #zionists were calling him a liar...why is that hard to believe #in the 48 lands theres probably a small number of children like that too #the director of arnas children identified as a palestinian jew #idk why ppl find this so hard to grasp like no in gaza and the west bank ur not gonna find some but in the diaspora like yeah? #our identity is not incompatible its just a national/somewhat ethnic identity

[all-turkic]

What is the History and Community of Kazakh Americans?

The Kazakh American CommunityConclusionYou may also like The population of Kazakh Americans in the United States was estimated to be around 3,000 people in the 1960s. However, the Census 2000 puts the population size at less than 300 people. According to the American Community Survey in 2010-2012, there were more than 23,000 people born in Kazakhstan, but not all of them were of the same…

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#Central Asia #cultural heritage #Diaspora #Ethnic identity #Immigration #Integration #Kazakh Americans #Kazakhstan #Multiculturalism #US history

[ultfreakme]

Freeing Palestine is India's fight

I've seen lots of posts about how Western countries and their populations should be concerned for stopping the genocide in Palestine but Indians are involved in this as well.

India has a HUGE Islamophobia problem, from the day India became what it is, this country exists the way it does through conflict regarding religious majorities and it is a problem we must acknowledge.

Collective punishment has often been carried out indiscriminately against Muslims in India- Muslim people's houses in Madhya Pradesh have been demolished without warning. This has also happened in Uttar Pradesh and in 2023, Haryana(300 businesses and homes). These were all normal innocent civilians who had proper legal paperwork showing their purchase and ownership of their home and land, but the police did not care. In many of these instances the police stood by and were involved in demolition and all of these were under BJP-majority and ruled areas. The recent Ram Mandir was built on the demolished land of Babri Masjid(it was built in the 14th century before India as it was even a THING, its destruction & demolition on the claim that it was Ram's birth place is unfair). Hate crimes against Muslims run amok and there are multiple cases of violence against Muslims in India.

PM Modi of the BJP party has been consistent in maintaining positive relations with Benjamin Netanyahu and the occupying force of Israel. A majority of the military equipment for India comes from Israel, and India has constantly been neutral in UN council meetings when decisions regarding Israel are brought up. A spyware called Pegasus, developed by the occupying force of Israel was used to surveil politicians, journalists, activists etc severely breaching right to privacy and threatening freedom of speech.

Worse; India has been using the Israeli strategy of colonizing Palestine with Kashmir. Jammu & Kashmir is a union territory which basically means they are allowed to function independently on most fronts but India has been seeking to integrate J&K into itself and has been extremely hostile to its Muslim citizens and are currently intensifying their occupation efforts. There have been consistent internet and communication blackouts since 2018 and it is STILL ongoing.

India invited Israeli officials to Kashmir to open 'Centers of Excellence' which are supposedly for agricultural innovation but everyone in J&K are concerned and see it as India taking an opportunity to intensify its occupation with Israeli help.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, several Kashmiris told Middle East Eye the Israeli agriculture hubs would deepen India's occupation in the region and accelerate its settler-colonial project. "Earlier, we would draw the parallels between Kashmir and Palestine or India's intimate alliance with Israel. But now they are bringing Israel to the Valley in the form of these institutions - which will be "agro-oriented" in name - but we all know that Israel will physically help India in Kashmir to turn it into a proper Palestine," a Kashmiri academic based in Istanbul told Middle East Eye.

In 2016 Coalition of Civil Society said there are more than 8000 'disappearances' of people in J&K. There are mass graves with over 2000 bodies being found with these unlawful activities being attributed to the Indian Security Forces. That's just scratching the surface of decades of violence and human rights violations enacted by India.

BJP is not shy about its ties to the RSS and promotes Hindutva(I've seen people citing the literal meaning of the word as evidence that it is harmless but the word is a label given to an embraced by extreme right-wing groups who are open about their Islamaphobia. Meaning of the word becomes pointless when actions speak otherwise).

India is an occupying force on J&K, it's suppressing Muslims, demonizing them and further marginalizing them in the name of 'Hinduism'. It buys from Israel and endorses them. As Indians, it is key that we do whatever we can to stop the genocide because we are unwittingly being used to fuel this and are being radicalized to hate on our neighbors, the people we share our land and history with.

Even outside of the ways in which the current government is shamelessly supporting Israel, India's history is rife with colonization. The British had occupied us, forced us into fighting each other, into prioritizing meaningless differences to suppress each other. We were once starved by occupying forces, violated, killed. Our land is also covered in blood shed by colonization.

What are we doing if we don't speak up? If we don't stop this? Do not follow the propaganda conflating extreme right-wing ideologies with the identity of being Indian. Don't buy into the idea that India is "for Hindus", we are so ridiculously diverse, there are 100s of languages and religions in this country.

Free Jammu & Kashmir, free Palestine, stop Islamophobia.

#palestine #free gaza #desiblr #desi tumblr #gaza strip #free palestine #islamphobia #I have no special patriotism for my country but if that's the identity i'm forced into i'm going to stand up for Palestine #I am aware that Kashmiri Hindus have also experienced multiple hate crimes and were forced out and it had been classified as ethnic cleansi #but the fact that happened should only fuel you more to STOP the occupation & violence against muslims in J&K #absolutely nothing justifies genocide- nothing

[genericnam]

I have a science project:

So, I'm doing a science fair project on how differences in a person's identity can affect minor things about themselves (favorite color, in this case), and I want a big sample size, so I moved to the internet! Please fill out this form to the best of your ability!

Some choices that would be important for inclusion have been left out to have a smaller group of choices to make the statistics easier to show on a tiny little cardboard project sheet.

Regardless, here's the form: https://forms.gle/GKg3STRJTySDxv62A

Please reblog for further sample size

#science #science fair #science project #favorite color #lgbtq community #lgbtq #lgbtqia #queer #gender identity #ethnicity #sexuality #google forms #please reblog #reblog for sample size

[magnetothemagnificent]

Apologies if this questions sounds stupid or ignorant, but I'm genuinely trying to educate myself. Can Jews be Jewish *and* a different race, so does a Jewish identity supersede another racial identity? Just wondering because a lot of Ashkenazi Jews I know (in real life or online) push back against the idea that they are white. I've heard European Jews say that they are not considered white, do not have white privilege, etc. so they are not white. But I've also seen a lot of Jews of color identify with both their Jewish identity and their "racial" identity (ravenreveals on Instagram explains how she identifies as Black *and* Jewish, and one of my friends identifies as an Asian Jew). So is there a reason many European (Ashkenazi?) Jews don't identify as white/identify as only Jewish? I'm sorry if this is offensive in any way, this isn't my intent :)

Sorry it took me so long to answer, I am swamped with asks haha

Yes, it's possible to be Jewish and a different race, as Judaism isn't a race, but an ethnoreligion, or even better described as a tribal nation.

Now, first I'm going to push back on you equating European with Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi is a specific term referring to Jews whose ancestors settled in the Rhine valley after the Roman expulsion from Judea. Many of these Jews eventually migrated eastward to Eastern Europe and Westward to British Isles, while others stayed in the Rhine valley region. But not all Jews whose ancestors settled in Europe are Ashkenazi.

There are Sephardi Jews, obviously, whose ancestors settled in the Iberian peninsula following the Roman expulsion, and then later migrated to North Africa, Northwestern Europe, Eastern Europe, and West Asia following the Spanish and Portugese inquistions.

There are also Italki Jews in Italy and Romaniote Jews in Greece, all of which are unique communities of Jews whose ancestors settled in Europe and who are not Ashkenazi.

Additionally, not all Ashkenazi Jews are racialized as white. Ashkenazi does not refer to your race, but rather who your ancestors are and/or what community traditions you follow. There are Ashkenazi Jews of every race.

The reason why lots of what-you-perceive-as-white Jews don't identify as white is because Judaism precedes the modern constructs of race (yes, race is a construct, not an immutable science) and because whiteness is highly subjective and fluid, just as non-whiteness is. Because race is a construct, which race a person is perceived as varies by where they are and by which people they are around.

Jewish "whiteness" is also conditional- and as Jews we don't like to leave ourselves vulnerable to shifting statuses. Jewish "white-passing-ness" can also be a tool of violence, either by denying the racial reality of antisemitism, or by being 'proof' that Jews are shape-shifting inflitrators of the white race. Hitler's Final Solution was total extermination precisely because he feared many Jews would pass as white and spread their Jewish blood among the Aryans, and so the total extermination of Jews was deemed as necessary, like one would exterminate a parasite.

This of course doesn't mean that no Jew has ever had access to the privilege afforded to whiteness. In the post-Holocaust era, many Jews have tried to successfully assimilate into whiteness to access even a little bit of privilege in order to protect themselves. I'm not going to lie and say that if I was pulled over at a traffic stop, my lighter complexion wouldn't give me more grace at the hands of the police officers than someone with darker skin would. Because yes, sometimes I am racialized as white and therefore access the privilege of whiteness.

But that doesn't mean I don't feel deeply uncomfortable when I'm filling out a form and the only options for race and even ethnicity are "white", "black", "hispanic", and "asian". Because while at the end of the day I'll check "white", it's only because I don't want to be accused of fraud (even though Middle Eastern or just Jewish would fit me better, but that's not an option). But that's just me. Some Jews are fine calling themselves "white Jews". Two Jews three opinions and all.

Someone introduced me to the phrase "racialized white/black/etc" a few years ago, and I think it makes much more sense. Because race is entirely dependent on perception and how others racialize you. I am not White, but sometimes I am racialized as white. Other times, I am racialized as "not-quite-white-but-we-don't-know-how-to-categorize-you-so-we're-just-going-to-try-and-guess-and-ask-wildly-invasive-questions".

At the end of the day, call Jews what they want to be called, and don't try and push labels on us. If a Jew doesn't want to be called white, don't call them white. Because race, ethnicity, religion, and all that is complicated, and Judaism predates all of that, so naturally Jews are going to have mixed feelings about it all.

#jumblr #race vs ethnicity vs haplogroup #judaism #jewish identity #jewish experience #if jew know jew know

[odinsblog]

Dear President Shafik,

We write as Jewish faculty of Columbia and Barnard in anticipation of your appearance before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 17, where you are expected to answer questions about antisemitism on campus. Based on the committee’s previous hearings, we are gravely concerned about the false narratives that frame these proceedings to entrap witnesses. We urge you, as the University president, to defend our shared commitment to universities as sites of learning, critical thinking, and knowledge production against this new McCarthyism.

Rather than being concerned with the safety and well-being of Jewish students on campuses, the committee is leveraging antisemitism in a wider effort to caricature and demonize universities as hotbeds of “woke indoctrination.” Its opportunistic use of antisemitism in a moment of crisis is expanding and strengthening longstanding efforts to undermine educational institutions. After launching attacks on public universities from Florida to South Dakota, this campaign has opened a new front against private institutions.

The prospect of Rep. Elise Stefanik, a member of congress with a history of espousing white nationalist politics, calling university presidents to account for alleged antisemitism on their campuses reveals these proceedings as disingenuous political theater.

In the face of these coordinated attacks on higher education, universities must insist on their freedom to research and teach inconvenient truths. This includes historical injustices and the contemporary structures that perpetuate them, regardless of whether these facts are politically inexpedient for certain interest groups.

To be sure, antisemitism is a grave concern that should be scrutinized alongside racism, sexism, Islamophobia, homophobia, and all other forms of hate. These hateful ideologies exist everywhere and we would be ignorant to believe that they don’t exist at Columbia. When antisemitism rears its head, it should be swiftly denounced, and its perpetrators held to account. However, it is absurd to claim that antisemitism—“discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews,” according to the Jerusalem Declaration’s definition—is rampant on Columbia’s campus. To argue that taking a stand against Israel’s war on Gaza is antisemitic is to pervert the meaning of the term.

Labeling pro-Palestinian expression as anti-Jewish hate speech requires a dangerous and false conflation of Zionism with Jewishness, of political ideology with identity. This conflation betrays a woefully inaccurate understanding—and disingenuous misrepresentation—of Jewish history, identity, and politics. It erases more than a century of debates among Jews themselves about the nature of a Jewish homeland in the biblical Land of Israel, including Israel’s status as a Jewish nation-state. It dismisses the experiences of the post-Zionist, non-Zionist, and anti-Zionist Jews who work, study, and live on our campus.

The political passions that arise from conflict in the Middle East may deeply unsettle students, faculty, and staff with opposing views. But feeling uncomfortable is not the same thing as being threatened or discriminated against. Free expression, which is fundamental to both academic inquiry and democracy, necessarily entails exposure to views that may be deeply disconcerting. We can support students who feel real and valid discomfort toward protests advocating for Palestinian liberation while also stating clearly and firmly that this discomfort is not an issue of safety.

As faculty, we dedicate ourselves and our classrooms to keeping every student safe from real harm, harassment, and discrimination. We commit to helping them learn to experience discomfort and even confrontation as part of the process of skill and knowledge acquisition—and to help them realize that ideas we oppose can be contested without being suppressed.

By exacting discipline, inviting police presence, and broadly surveilling its students for minor offenses, the University is betraying its educational mission. It has pursued drastic measures against students, including disciplinary proceedings and probation, for infractions like allegedly attending an unauthorized protest, or moving barricades to drape a flag on a statue. Real harassment and physical intimidation and violence on campus must be confronted seriously and its perpetrators held accountable. At the same time, the University should refrain whenever possible from using discipline and surveillance as means of addressing less serious harms, and should never use punitive measures to address conflicts over ideas and the feelings of discomfort that result. Where the University once embraced and defended students’ political expression, it now suppresses and disciplines it.

The University’s recent policies represent a dramatic change from historical practice, and the consequences are ruinous to our community and its principles. In the past, Columbia has periodically confronted attacks against pro-Palestinian speech, ranging from the vile slanders against Professor Edward Said to the reckless accusations from the David Project. But where for decades the University stood firm against smear campaigns targeting its professors, it has now voluntarily accepted the job of censoring its faculty in and outside the classroom.

Columbia’s commitment to free inquiry and robust disagreement is what makes it a world-class institution. Limiting academic freedom when it comes to questions of Israel and Palestine paves the way for limitations on other contested topics, from climate science to the history of slavery. What’s more, students must have the freedom to dissent, to make mistakes, to offend without intent, and to learn to repair harm done if necessary. Free expression is not only crucial to student development and education outside the classroom; the tradition of student protest has also played a vital role in American democracy. Columbia should be proud of having participated in nationwide student organizing that helped secure civil rights and reproductive rights and helped bring an end to the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa.

We express our support for the University and for higher education against the attacks likely to be leveled against them at the upcoming congressional hearing. We object to the weaponization of antisemitism. And we advocate for a campus where all students, Jewish, Palestinian, and all others, can learn and thrive in a climate of open, honest inquiry and rigorous debate.

Many members of our University community share our perspective, but they have not yet been heard. Columbia students, staff, alumni, and faculty can sign here to show your support for this letter’s message.

—Jewish faculty reject the weaponization of antisemitism

The 23 authors of this letter are Jewish faculty members of Barnard College and Columbia University. This letter derives from a much longer one by these same 23 faculty sent to President Shafik on April 5.

#politics #palestine #israel #columbia university #antisemitism #anti zionisim #antizionism #weaponized antisemitism #minouche shafik #anti zionism ≠ antisemitism #zionism #rafah #gaza #white supremacy #racism #barnard college #protests #israel is a terrorist state #war crimes #ethnic cleansing #weaponized identity politics #colonialism #imperialism #student protests #human rights #human rights violations #bds #boycott divest sanction #hasbara #idpol

[meteorherd]

being a grader has given me a very important lesson in practicing patience and empathy but i can only read "i explored a new culture for this diversity assignment by going to a different church than the one i went to my entire life as a wasp american" so many times

#வார்த்தைகள் #LIKE GIRL GO TO AN ETHNIC RESTAURANT AND TALK ABOUT IT IT IS LITERALLY THE SIMPLEST THING.... #this whole class is literally about national identity and immigration. and all these white kids suck ass unfortunately.