Hi Folx,
Another rant has been published….
Today I’d like to engage on the subject of racial mixing, which has, by many, been termed (rather unfairly) “miscegenation.” The term’s Wikipedia page explains how it is a bit of a misnomer, as the term does not, or at least claims not to, suggest any biological phenomenon associated with racial mixtures, but rather a socially-constructed can of worms. I will NOT be claiming to speak of anything biological, because frankly, I consider that racist, at least coming from a stringent and strict social sciences undergrad at DU!
Racial mixing has one of the most brutal histories, especially in the Americas. In the Spanish empire of (roughly) the 16th/17th Centuries and beyond, a very rigid caste system was created. This system, as Wikipedia would have us believe, at least allowed for SOME growth and cultivation of bureaucracy for the ‘pure-bred’ civilizations of the Americas (the indigenous ones), albeit less so than in Spain proper. With that said, there were tens of thousands of human beings left out of the equation: the ‘mixed-bloods.’ Spain had a particular distaste of mixed-race individuals, especially those mixed between white European ancestries and indigenous First Nation and/or enslaved African ancestries.
Somebody in Spain, at the time, developed this intricate caste system, which placed Spanish Europeans at the top, and all others directly below. The pecking order, as codified into the law of Spanish America, included people of several ancestries, including those who were pure-bred indigenous, pure-bred African, and pure-bred Iberian/European immigrant. Specific classifications were assigned to every ethnicity between which the Spanish cared to distinguish; it was like playing God. “Casta” was the name assigned to the ‘mixed-breeds’ of the Americas: the mestiz@, the crioll@, the mulat@, the zamb@, the castiz@.
And it is not only in the Americas where racial admixtures have formed horrifying colonial histories and legacies. In apartheid South Africa (mirroring Nazi Germany), laws codified a racial caste system and stigmatized racial impurity by requiring that citizens be registered according to their racial background: white, black, or “Coloured”. (After all, requiring certificates of “white” blood was not much different than requiring those of “Aryan” blood, as was an obligation for members of the Hitler Youth.) To this day, South African law, as well as the country’s general identity politics, is informed by blood-quantum ancestry. The remains of a caste system still exist…
One thing that strikes me about both of these examples is that most of the racial categories I speak of were INVENTED by the white colonizers of both South Africa and Spanish America. And it is not the first time that racial categories were invented by the privileged group, in order to systematically subjugate the oppressed one. This can happen indirectly. Some reports tell us that what happened in Rwanda in 1994 was arguably part of a racially-based caste system that was meddled-with, but also in some capacity, created, by European colonizers. From Wikipedia:
When the European colonists conducted censuses, they wanted to identify the people throughout Rwanda-Burundi according to a simple classification scheme. They defined “Tutsi” as anyone owning more than ten cows (a sign of wealth) or with the physical feature of a longer nose, commonly associated with the Tutsi. The Europeans noticed that some Rwandans had noses they thought characteristic of their people, so they created historical and racial theories to explain why some Africans inherited such features. Early 20th-century Europeans believed the physical feature meant that some of the Tutsi had Caucasian or European ancestry, perhaps by migrations from Ethiopia, what was called the Hamitic Theory. According to their racially based ideas, they thought the Tutsi were a “superior” people of a primarily Horn African and/or North African ancestry; descent from Arabs of the Middle East was also suggested. In addition, some Tutsi believed they were descended from the ancient Israelites and had a mystical connection to Israel.[2] The Europeans considered the majority Hutu to be characteristic Bantu people of Central African and Sub-Saharan origin.
The thought that the Belgians meddled so heavily in Rwandan society is horrifying, to put it bluntly. Privileging Tutsis over Hutus (partially because of their alleged whiteness, however imaginary), they were the ones, as far as I’m concerned, just as responsible for the 1994 genocide as the paramilitary thugs who carried the massacres out. And after seeing three examples of European colonizations at their low points, I can hardly say that I’m surprised when I see histories and current-event realities pointing to manufactured categories of racial identity.
But the good news is, there is hope! Tales of reclamation, when it comes to manufactured racial identities, are prolific. In other words, these categories have been reclaimed, in many cases, as legitimate markers of culture and history. One such story is that of the famous lesbian-feminist chicana tejana author and queer theorist, Gloria Anzaldúa, and her 1987 book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, which is basically dedicated to reclaiming mestiza as a term in tejan@ identity politics, and placing it in historio-cultural context. I have not read it, but I plan to; for a Poli-Sci class at DU, we read an excerpted essay from the book, which has some great wisdoms to offer.
The essay speaks of la mestiza, a character in our world who has, in a historical sense, been relegated to the margins of ethno-racial ‘legitimacy,’ has had to cope with a home on both sides of a metaphorical border. In a much more modern sense, the border becomes literal, as we are faced with the harsh realities of life as la Chicana, and her struggles to inhabit anything but what Anzaldúa calls “psychic restlessness,” the cognitive effect of her oppression.
When one reads Gloria’s tales of la conciencia de la mestiza, and feels the ‘dualities of oppressor and oppressed,’ especially as a Jew in America, it hits home. And let’s be clear: I am not likening my oppression as a white Jew to the much harsher oppression that tejanas like Anzaldúa experience daily. My intention, rather, is to speak to the similarities of the Jewish and Mestiza experience(s).
Jews globally, like mestizas and others of racially mixed backgrounds, often have trouble fitting in! For us Jews, this ‘psychic restlessness’ often stems from an inability to justify the crimes of Israeli apartheid, whilst still remaining deeply connected to the faith and culture of Judaism. Norman Finkelstein, the infamous professor, came to my university recently, and said it pretty well; I can’t quote it verbatim, because I don’t have a video recording, but it went something like this:
People are so flipping frustrated with Israel! They have a right to be, and they are catching on! Even the tame ones, the so-called “Left-Wing Zionists.” This just in: a man by the name of Peter Beinart writes in the New York Review of Books that American Jewish youth cannot take it any more, that the American Jewish Establishment has failed! Israel is losing its support because youth struggle to remain faithful to a Jewish state that commits such brutal violence to the Palestinians! Some of them are losing interest even; what a concept! Some of them are just plain pissed. And they want to remain Jewish, while all of this nonsense is being done in their name!
Now, I can tell you about the article by Beinart, but I trust that you can read it yourself. It’s pretty compelling, even to a radical anti-Zionist like me! I could also tell you about the Left-Wing Zionists, to whom, believe it or not, I am to a certain extent allied. But after exhaustively touring the histories of mixed race individuals, I’d like to bring it full circle, as I did in the last post.
Israeli society is one that mirrors that of Spanish America. There is a new-comer, or at least there is an ethnic group that is re-entering the land, in some capacity, one that has not been for a while: they are called Yehudim, Jews. These new-comers not only have a damaged consciousness from years of persecution, but they also come from all areas of the globe, and hence their heterogeneity speaks to a multi-cultural conciencia which all globally-aware Jews inhabit (there are very few of us these days). These new-comers are so disoriented, so distorted in their thinking, from years of inhabiting multiple borders, multiple fronteras, that they have instituted a new, ethnically-based, caste system. It is nothing you will find on Wikipedia, by the way. It is more hidden, almost invisible to the naked eye.
It all starts with Ashkenazim, or Jews of Eastern European ancestry, at the top. They were predominantly the victims of the Holocaust, so it only makes sense that they are treated best (NOT!). Next come the Sephardim (Jews descendant from those expelled from Spain), many of whom are also Mizrachim (Middle-Eastern, North-African, and “Oriental” Jews). Next come the Ethiopian Jews, and to follow, the real ‘scum of the Earth,’ the Palestinians (first those granted Israeli citizenship, then the indigenous, state-less Palestinians).
Some of you would object to my reasoning here, but if we look at the facts on the ground, it is true! For one, the group I traveled with to Israel continued on, after I was sent home, to play with the children at an Ethiopian Absorption Center near Jerusalem. Ethiopian. Absorption. Center! As if Ethiopians were not good enough to continue living as Jews in their own way, but now inside the Jewish state! As if they need to be absorbed before they are worthy of being treated fairly!
For two, widespread beliefs held by Jews inside Israel dictate that Palestinians should not be called Palestinians, but instead Aravim, Arabs. This affects the way that Jews of Arab descent are treated within the society. Not to mention the effect that being born both Arab and Jewish has on the individual’s conciencia, as Gloria might say. As a Jew, I can confidently say that pockets of Israeli society are based on the inherent inferiority of Mizrachi Jews. Some of whom are my own family, and are just as worthy of respect as any of us!
Finally, for three: Even though Arab Jews are lower on the pecking order, they still have more say on things like, oh, having a home in Israel-Palestine!! Building permits, immigration documents (between the West Bank and Gaza), and Jerusalem IDs are routinely denied to Palestinians both inside and out of Israel proper (sorta like the papeles that are denied to so many Mexican-American families). Hell, Palestinians are routinely denied a sense of identity and people-hood by Israelis themselves! This stuff is serious!
But friends, caste systems are hard to look for and easy to find, but even harder to explain in detail. My explanations do not come close to the one that might bring justice to the system of Ashkenazi supremacy within Israel and in the Occupied Territories; the one that might know fully how horrible it was to be Coloured under South African apartheid; the one that might look on Spanish America with a more intimate lens. And if searching for a new “Mestiza Conciousness” (in Gloria’s words) is the same as doing justice in Israel-Palestine, then I’ll be damned! But I know in my heart that the two struggles are similar, and if this intellectual discovery does not solidify in my mind the need for shared struggle between Jews and indigenous peoples worldwide, I don’t know what does.
These power-dynamics are deeply ingrained in us all, whether they are racial, ethnic, or national. Whether they are Mexican, Jewish, American, mestiza. May a day come when it doesn’t really matter who we all are, simply because of the fact that everyone has their basic needs met!
Thanx for listening.
Much love,
~Naftali
