“I remember your grandfather leaving the house in blackface to perform at the local Jewish community center,” my mom told me. “They just didn’t know what it meant back then,” she explained, “not until after WW II.” As an activist involved in contemporary solidarity work across racial lines, I was shocked to discover this racist history in my near past. As an Ashkenazi Jew* (of European descent) whose grandparents immigrated to the US around the turn of the century, I don’t always see myself implicated in the American legacy of slavery, but I was forced to reconcile the fond memories of my jovial grandfather with this haunting image of him performing racial minstrelsy. Trying to make sense of this image, I began researching the history of Jewish blackface between WWI and WWII and was surprised to discover a connection between my current activism and this history of blackface: When we are not rooted in our Jewish identities, we risk stereotyping, appropriating, and over-identifying with other cultures.

To understand the complicated history of alliance, disconnection, and overlap between Ashkenazi Jews and African Americans in between the world wars, I turned to Eric Goldstein’s The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity, which considers how Jews negotiated competing claims on their identities and Michael Rogin’s Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot, which looks more specifically at the role of blackface in Americanizing Jews. As European Jewish immigrants arrived in the US, their presence intersected with the dominant black/white system of racial relations in various ways. At different times, Jews and African Americans were linked tightly together in American consciousness as evidenced by the case of Leo Frank (1913-1915), which sets the stage for Jewish-Black relations in between the wars. A Jewish factory manager in Georgia, Frank was accused of raping and murdering a white girl who worked in his factory. Frank was found guilty (in spite of flimsy evidence) and sentenced to death, but the Governor commuted his sentence to life in prison. A journalist warned in a headline: “The next Jew who does what Frank did is going to get exactly the same thing we give to Negro rapists” (Goldstein 43). Frank was then kidnapped from prison and lynched by a white mob.

In the wake of the Frank trial, Jews who followed the case became “increasingly sensitized both to the danger of comparing blacks and Jews and the possibilities of deflecting anti-Semitism by emphasizing their whiteness” (Goldstein 65). During the trial, Frank’s legal team repeatedly emphasized Frank’s whiteness by downplaying his Jewishness and tried to shift the blame onto a black janitor who was also implicated in the murder. Even as they tried to underscore their whiteness in this time between the wars, Jews were being held responsible for a variety of issues that troubled Americans including communism, immigration, and the rising tide of war in the 1930’s. Articles about “The Jewish Problem” proliferated in the press, and quotas and restrictions were enacted to limit the number of Jews allowed into universities, clubs, and neighborhoods.

Not surprisingly, Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants had a contradictory relationship to African Americans. On the one hand, identification with whiteness allowed Jews to experience “what it was like not to be the focus of national hostility and resentment” as they were in Europe (Goldstein 145). On the other hand, Jews identified with the suffering of African Americans and continued to display empathy for them. The most assertive statements of identification with African Americans in the US occurred in the Yiddish press where non-Jewish readers could not chance upon them. The Yiddish press roundly condemned segregation and racism by comparing race riots against African Americans to the pogroms against Jews in Europe. At the same time, the Yiddish press read Jewish blackface solely as a means of identification by saying about that Jews “knew how to sing the songs of the most cruelly wronged people in the world’s history” (Goldstein 154).

Blacking Out Jewish Identity in The Jazz Singer

In Blackface, White Noise, Rogin discusses how Jewish blackface plays out in The Jazz Singer, one of the first “talkie” films, which came out in 1927 and starred a Jewish actor, Al Jolson, whose life parallels that of the protagonist in the film. The film’s central character, Jakie Rabinowitz, the son of a cantor, is expected to follow in his father’s footsteps by becoming a cantor at their synagogue on Manhattan’s lower East Side. Jakie Rabinowitz, however, wants to sing jazz, which enrages his father, who, in turn, disowns him. (Al Jolson, also the son of a cantor, turned his back on tradition by performing in theater and film). After running away from home, Jakie changes his name to Jack Robin, finds himself a Christian girlfriend, and becomes a singing success on the stage, often performing in blackface. When his father is dying, Jack is called to take his place to sing Kol Nidre, a solemn song performed on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest of Jewish days. Forgoing an opening night appearance on the stage, Jack takes his father’s place in the synagogue, and his father forgives him before he dies. The film, however, ends with Jack performing “My Mammy” in blackface at the Winter Garden Theater (where Al Jolson often performed) with his mother and girlfriend in the audience. Singing directly to his mother, Jack gets down on one knee and sings a song about coming home to his “Mammy” in “Alabammy.”

In Rogin’s analysis, he argues that politically oriented Eastern Europe Jews in the US between WWI and WWII identified with African Americans as a persecuted, Diasporic people. While this identification often resulted in political solidarity, it also took the more problematic “form of either cultural or literal blackface as Jews attempted to become American by taking on black-derived music, along with the plantation myth of American belonging” (66). Witnessing anti-Semitism on the rise in both Europe and in the US, US Jews attempted to escape their shtetl pasts by using the mask of blackness. Thus their ability to re-make themselves in the New World as white came at the cost of African Americans, who had to remain immobile and fixed in stereotype.

In The Jazz Singer, Jakie leaves behind his immigrant past (represented by his dying father) through his performance of blackface. Interestingly, very few movies at this time made by Jews (and often starring Jews) actually represented Jewish themes; Jews in Hollywood generally succeeded by erasing Jewishness in their films. Jakie’s story, however, is definitely a Jewish story—one of assimilation. And as Rogin argues, Jack can only express his sadness about leaving his cultural motherland (the lower East Side and Eastern Europe) through a black-white racial lens by equating his Jewish mother with a Southern “mammy.” In the final “Mammy” scene from the film, the camera keeps cutting between Jack singing with great emotion and the face of his crying mother.

As Goldstein observes, Jewish blackface became a means to express emotions that could not be expressed as Jews; blackface obscures the performer’s Jewishness through stereotyping African Americans who became a mask for Jewish expression. This performance blends identification and admiration with racism. Many of the Jews, including Jolson, who performed in blackface, began their careers as Jewish comedians and turned to black material as their urge to assimilate made it less desirable to do comedy about Jewish themes and personas. Of course what they end up taking on isn’t actually African American material, but the white culture’s nostalgia for an even more racist past of very clearly defined racial roles. The “Mammy” stereotype grew out of the reality that African American mothers were often forced to nurse the master’s children during slavery (and then, post-slavery, forced to take care of them as servants) often at the cost of their relationships with their own children. This reality translated into the stereotype of the happy, loyal, desexualized “mammy” whose happiness made white people feel that slavery was a benevolent institution.

Unmasking Jewish Histories

How, then, does my Grandfather fit into all this? His father Max (my great grandfather) came to the US from Poland in 1900 as a shoemaker because his house in Warsaw was burned down in pogroms. Enjoying his life in the New World, Max didn’t want to send for his wife Cecilia and six year old son (my Grandfather) back in Warsaw, but family pressure intervened. When his family did arrive, Max was embarrassed by his wife’s Old World Yiddish speaking ways and began isolating her. He wouldn’t give Cecilia any money, and he didn’t want her to learn English. He apparently refused to let her eat when she was pregnant. The family story is that he drove her crazy, and then put her into an insane asylum. It’s unclear how much English Cecilia could even speak and how much of her diagnosed “craziness” was a result of being an isolated immigrant with limited language skills. Max then put my Grandfather and his sister into an orphanage until he remarried years later.

During my mom’s childhood, her father Maurice–always quick with a joke–never spoke about his childhood, and told both my mom and my aunt that their grandmother (Cecilia) was dead. As an adult, my mom found out that her father and his sister used to go visit their mother at the asylum–a secret that only came out after Cecilia’s death. As part of his own assimilation, Maurice obscured his own sad family history by refusing to let his children meet their grandmother.

Although I don’t know the circumstances surrounding my Grandfather’s use of blackface, I wonder how or whether his own sadness about the loss of his mother and motherland played into it; was he singing to a “mammy” or was he just trying, like his peers, to become a white American? Given that my Grandfather came to the US as a child on a boat from Poland, he certainly didn’t have a plantation past in the South. Neither did Al Jolson, also an immigrant from Eastern Europe, who was known for performing with and fighting discrimination against African Americans on Broadway and later in Hollywood. Was Maurice taking on white America’s nostalgic imagination for a racist past that Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe had little part in? What is gained and what gets erased by swapping out these histories? Taking on the history of American racism, Jews also lost connections to our own history and culture.

History Lessons for Solidarity Work

The image of Jews doing blackface represents a sad and pivotal moment in Ashkenazi Jewish American identity. At various moments because of historical cycles of anti-Semitism, Jews have been bribed with material privileges and public positions of limited power to appear as the visible face of an oppressive system. What does it mean that this time the face that they put on was blackface? In these exchanges, Jews are often encouraged to take on a middle “buffer” position, and thus get pitted against other oppressed groups. With blackface, Jews occupied the middle ground once again, this time the ground between African Americans and white Christian culture. We both chose and were encouraged to choose whiteness that came at a cost to our relationships with African Americans and disconnected us from our own culture.

As an adult, disconnected from my own family history, I began asking more questions about my Grandfather and learned even more about sadness and loss in his history. Most of his father Max’s siblings stayed in Poland, and most of my Grandfather’s cousins died in Auschwitz, probably around the same time that he was performing in blackface. It’s hard to fathom how both these things could be happening at the same time; in the US, Ashkenazi Jews were being encouraged to assimilate into whiteness, a process they probably accepted, in part, because in Europe they were being killed as a “race.”

The image of my Grandfather doing blackface embodies a moment when Ashkenazi Jews exchanged our deep connection to our cultures, histories and families in order to gain whiteness. While I want to be clear that blackface has obviously been the most damaging to its targets, African Americans, there has also been a cost to Ashkenazi Jews as well. We have inherited the privileges of assimilation—class and race privilege—as well as some incalculable losses–of culture, community and solidarity/connection with other oppressed people.

Through my involvement in Jewish anti-racist organizing over the last decade, I have come to realize that as Ashkenazi Jews who identify as white, we still face the dual dangers of distancing ourselves from other oppressed groups or over-identifying and appropriating their struggles. Jews doing blackface is an extreme example of this tendency: Ashkenazi Jews moved toward whiteness at the expense of African Americans while using the mask of “blackness” to explore alternative ways to express their emotions from the dominant white Christian culture. Because Ashkenazi Jews have more or less “achieved” whiteness, there is clearly still a tendency to distance ourselves and ignore other oppressed groups’ struggles.

But I have also seen the opposite force at work among anti-racist Ashkenazi Jewish activists. When we do not have any grounding in our own culture, however we define it, it is easy to over-identify with others’ struggles, whether those of Palestinians or other oppressed groups. In our attempts to build alliances, we sometimes overreach and take over other people’s struggles as a way to find culture and meaning for ourselves. At anti-Occupation protests, I have seen many Jews wearing Palestinian symbols, such as keffiyehs as a sign of solidarity. There is nothing inherently wrong with this as long as we are simultaneously working to make space for Palestinian voices in this conversation and not filling up all the space ourselves. I personally find it even more effective to see Jews wearing traditional Jewish symbols at these protests, thereby insisting that we can be our full Jewish selves as we stand up against the Israeli Occupation. Even as we reach out to work in solidarity, it is important stay rooted within our own histories and cultures, as complicated and compromising as they may be.

So while there is no simple lesson to be taken from this messy history of Jewish blackface, I believe that our challenge is to remain connected to Jewishness, whatever that means to us, even as we use our privileges to work toward ally-ship with others. Although I still feel a sense of shame when I picture my Grandfather in blackface, I also try to remember the historical context surrounding his losses and choices. As someone who has reaped the benefits of my ancestors’ compromises, I am lucky that I have the choice to attempt reaching toward solidarity, and resisting appropriation as part of my modern Jewish identity.

–
*Throughout this essay, I am referring to Jews of European descent who “became” white in the US through a process of assimilation at a particular historical moment. I recognize that not all Ashkenazi Jews identify as white; some folks are both Jewish and African American; and finally that Jews of color, including Jews with Sephardic and Mizrahi heritage, may have very different experiences.

My name is Chris, and I live with HIV.

I know some were here last year [on my Twitter timeline], so I’ll try not to bore you. I just want to remind us that we are here among you, living, thriving, sometimes barely surviving w HIV/AIDS. I’d like to tell my story: why I made choices I did and what I’ve learned–because I have learned a great deal about myself from this disease.

To start: I have been positive for 15 years. March 10, 2010 was  my anniversary. I am 41 yrs old. In fact, I was born exactly 1 week before Stonewall rebellion in NYC. I was born and raised in Boston in a working-class neighborhood. I grew up in uber-dysfunctional family: brother diagnosed as sociopath in teens, dad an alcoholic, mom mentally ill. It was hell in that family, I was a little “sissy” who knew at early age he was gay. I was OK with it but knew others wouldn’t be. I was terrorized as kid–ass kicked a lot. My city didn’t like femme boys. Also, I am mixed: dad was white, mom Latina….looong before mixed folks were cool.  :) We just were odd. So I grew up alone…and lonely. Went to college and  didn’t just come out of closet..

I blew the doors off hinges! I became popular…and, most importantly, saw that men were attracted to me. So I became BHOC–Big Homo On Campus–who also partied hard at clubs. I felt what I thought was acceptance for the first time. I was an activist, a feminist, just thinking I had to it together…but I was promiscuous. It filled a need. Men wanted me; I was desirable. Because of my background I mistook it for love. At 22 I was in my first relationship with an AIDS activist [and] always used condoms. Broke up after 3 years and saw a man I had dated briefly in college.

I still remember the night we met. His smile shut off every thinking part of my brain. I know you know those fine types–your brain disappears. He asked me home. I accepted after he asked my friends (we had a rule–we come together, we leave together.) They agreed–he was that fine. We went to my place & began to have sex. I noticed he wasn’t going to use condom. I thought about it but was afraid he would leave me. Yes, I was more afraid a man would leave than protecting myself.  We never talked about status until 3 months in…he said he was too scared. That made me pause…

I moved to Detroit and was in meeting where someone talked about HIV testing. I thought, “Let me go find out to stop worrying.” Got tested and went back three weeks later. I was working at a Catholic university & went to the center with friend who was a nun. (Yes, a nun.) A man walked in, sat down, and said “Results say you’re living with HIV”.

I said, “What?”

He repeated himself. He asked if I need hug. I said, “Hugging strange men is what got me this disease, so no thank you.”

He laughed and said: “I can tell you’ll be OK. You can tell in the first moment..”

I went downstairs, put my head in Sr. Beth’s lap, and cried. I said “What am I going to do?”

She said “Live, that’s what you’ll do.”

I got retested because the test was 99% accurate. It came back. The woman picked up wrong sheet and said I was negative…then said, “Oops.”

I was devastated.

I went home and called all my friends. Because of my past, I never believed people loved me. I found out they did. One friend called after I told her and said, “I am at airport to take care of you.” People reached out. But I was scared. I remember the first time I brushed teeth and bled. I said, “People will be scared of me.” I told all except my mom–my brother had died in jail and my dad died already—so it was just us two.  I couldn’t do that to her.

I moved to New Hampshire because I was convinced I would die. I worked at a very rural college—I had to reflect, think about my future. Dating there was hell: guys would fall for me and then say, “But I can’t deal with that.” I considered ending my life one night. I couldn’t stand the thought of being alone forever. I thought of my nan–she was just like Sophia Petrillo, a straight shooter. I pictured her saying, “No! Look at you. You will make some man the luckiest man in the world. You are too cute to go.” I went to bed and said, “No more pity.”

I went to get a doctorate and intensive therapy, which helped me to learn to love myself. It was hard–years of self-hate. Not about being gay though I felt so abnormal because of my past. Life was good, but I was lonely.

In 1999, I attended conference in Atlanta and sat next this guy. We started to talk, and I asked him if he was going to dance conference going that night. He said yes. I took disco nap.

I was talking to friends on the hotel veranda. I looked up, saw him, and my breath was taken away. He wasn’t like the “pretty boys” I had been with: here was an African American gay man who was shy, very Southern, and vulnerable. We danced that night and talked all night. I told him about my status, and he said “I’m a gay man, I knew this could happen. I don’t want best thing to end because of fear.” We hung out at the conference. At end, he asked where we’d go from this point. I said “I can’t imagine getting on a plane and never seeing you again.” I fell in love in 2 weeks and in a month knew we’d be together.

I finally went home and told my mom about my HIV status. She fell in my arms and said, “Don’t die, baby.” I said I wouldn’t.   We haven’t talked about it since. I love her, but she can’t be there for me. I have come to accept that.

HIV has been greatest gift for me. I’ve learned to face fear, conquer my doubts, and stand with my head high. I know I’m privileged when we look at people with HIV across globe. I have access to health care, good doctors, support. Many, many don’t have that. I have only been sick once–when my immune system destroyed its red blood cells in my fight with HIV. I take one medication twice a day.

But it impacts me today: many of you know I got great job offer in Canada. I went to psychiatric hospital because of depression and declined offer. My fear? I would die in Canada because I wouldn’t know how to access healthcare. I know that wasn’t rational, but I grew up in family that only went to hospitals to die. I’ve had to overcome deep fear to take care of myself. But I don’t know the other system.

I also found spirituality because of HIV. My birth dad is Jewish, but I never knew him. After finding out, I walked into synagogue, and my heart found a home. I have now been a Jew for 12 years….

People ask why I am open. I’m open because I want folks know: you know someone living with the disease. I am Dean of Intercultural Affairs at Bryn Mawr College, outside of Philadelphia. I talk to my students about this. If I can help one person remember: if zie walks out door, zie wasn’t worth it. That you are worthy of protection.

When I first saw Off and Running I was immediately taken, but then again, my own personal investment in the film’s subject matter was considerable. Like Avery, I’m an adopted Jew of color from New York City. I see only dualities in my maturation, which has been a series of racially charged incidents quelled by moments of encouragement by people and institutions that worked together in a bizarre alchemy to create me.

As a young child my parents sat me down and explained it was important for me to find a faith of which to be a part. I grew up in the predominantly liberal and Jewish bastion of New York City called the Upper West side and at the ripe age of 9, it was Judaism that I felt most connected to; it was what I knew best. I began to attend a Schul after school where we were taught stories from the Bible, Yiddish and about our history and culture. I liked the friends I made and the stories I heard at Schul. The formation of my Jewish identity at that age was informed by Schul where there were transnationally adopted Jews to my right and left and by my neighborhood where I felt my family the apotheosis of what the 21st century family looked like. At 9 years old, I thought being bi-racial and Jewish was a magical marriage of identities.

At 13 years old, in the planning stages of my Bat Mitzvah, my Hebrew School teacher called a meeting at his home to discuss details. He opened his door to see me, my father who is an Ashkenazi Jew and my black mother. Upon seeing my family, without asking, he regrettably informed us that the synagogue, would not allow me to perform the right of passage in their temple because my mother wasn’t a Jew. My wily mother, coyly and smarmily responded “oh, but her mother is Jewish.”

Yes, it turns out my biological mother is a white Ashkenazi Jew.

And with these words, my Hebrew school teacher, as though I was caught in the Woody Allen version of my own life as a film, threw his hands into the air and exclaimed “it’s Bashert [it’s destiny] then! You’ll have your Bat Mitzvah in the Temple!” In that moment I felt a definitive rage. I wanted desperately to be a part of the Upper West Side’s most exclusive and popular clique, Judaism, but felt what would prove to be an indelible stake in this idea of blackness, something pitted against Jewishness. And so there it was, in the home of my Hebrew School teacher that the two were separated, like oil and water.

I was Black and Jewish but I couldn’t be both, I couldn’t be a Black Jew.

I chose not to have a Bat Mitzvah. I did not want play into the manipulations of the Jewish matrilineal system, making me Jewish because my adoptive mother, my actual mother, was not Jewish. My Jewish “blood line” felt tenuous and foreign and I did not want to take part in a brand of Judaism that did not accept that I was Jewish because my father was Jewish. And so I began to create my own rules.

My Jewish identity became an amalgamation of the cultural extensions of the religion. I ate bagels from Murray’s Sturgeon Shop on 90th and Broadway, sang Yiddish songs and memorialized the Holocaust in the “Culturally Jewish” Camp Kinderland and attended Seders at my aunts house. But my connection to the religion was jaded and superficial. It was as though I wore a “Jewish” badge when I felt as though it would benefit or help me to fit in better, but didn’t believe in it at my core, having been turned away because of my race. I could wear Judaism like a person wears a cloak, removing it when I came into my room, putting it on to perform for others.

Last December my roommate decided to throw a Shabbos dinner. It was also the first night of Chanukah. I created a makeshift Menorah in our kitchen, since we did not have one. When I emerged from the kitchen with my creation, I stood in front of it like a proud mother. I quieted the small living room and began to recite the prayer. Most people, even the one or two that weren’t Jewish knew (at least) some of it, the beginning, “Barukh atah Adonai” being the loudest, but by the third verse, the one that you recite only on the Friday of Chanukah, all but three of the twenty people dropped out; me, my roommate and one young man.

After it was over I began to exit the room and was stopped by the same young man that had accompanied me in the last verse.

He insisted, “You’re not Jewish, are you?”

I replied calmly, coolly “Yes, yes I am.”

He replied “But you’re not like, Jewish, Jewish, right? I mean, you don’t look Jewish.”

I walked out of the room. But not without overhearing him whisper to his friend “I mean, c’mon, give me a break, she looks Indian or something, did Sara teach her that prayer do you think?” I left the house after that. It was the first time I’d cried since the day I left my Hebrew School Teacher’s house and written off any formal tie to Judaism. It was then that I realized I was unable to remove my imaginary cloak. The cloak, the performance of Judaism, turned out to be a projection of real desire to feel accepted. I realized I the liberal isolation I had grown up with was not a reflection of race in America and if I wanted to be Jewish I had to make a concerted effort to make people accept me as such.

A few short weeks later I watched Off and Running. In it was one young woman’s unapologetically raw quest to join all identities. Instead of pushing her Judaism away, only allowing it to appear when convenient and comfortable like I had, Avery did not let it go. She allowed Judaism in, steadfast that it was a part of her fabric just as her blackness was becoming. Avery had an incisive understanding that identity is a construction, her blackness another layer of herself that she needed to explore and take from to create. In one of the most poignant moments in the film a therapist asks her “Do you feel black?” to which Avery responds “African-American? I don’t know what that means.” Avery’s transparent and unadulterated battle to find confluence urged me to do the same.

In the time since watching Off and Running I have approached my blackness and my Judaism as two of many other parts working together. I have encountered many Jews of Color who are doing the same. In a recent New York Times article well-known African-American Jewish blogger, Ma Nishtena, asserts that he eats his “gefilte fish as his mother prepares it, seasoned with Jamaican peppers and spices,” harvesting a Judaism that unites his other identities. The documentary Off and Running comes during a moment where American Jewry is at a crossroads. Its face, like Ma Nishtena’s mother’s gefilte fish, is sprinkled with color. The lockstep of conservative American Jewry needs to streamline their identities to complement the generally shifting American consciousness, away from exclusivity, toward sprinkled gefilte fish.

Editor’s Note: Off and Running airs tonight, at 7 PM ET, on PBS. It is also available on Netflix. – LDP

By Deputy Editor Thea Lim

I am from Toronto, though I now live in Houston.  I get most of my Toronto community news through Facebook, and I have been watching with disgust and amazement for the past two months as my Facebook feed has filled up with reports about Pride Toronto, Blackness Yes! – a community organization that celebrates black queer and trans history – and Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA).

Long story short: Pride Toronto, which is an internationally famous week-long celebration of queer and trans pride, has made conscious or unconscious attempts to curtail the wholehearted participation of queer and trans folks of colour and their allies in Pride. They have attempted to relocate and shrink black-identified spaces, and they have banned QuAIA from participation in Pride 2010.  This year queer & trans people of colour (QTPOC) and their allies may participate in Pride, but only as long as they check their histories and politics at the door.  Short story long? Hang on to your hats, this is an epic tale.

Blackness Yes!

The first news I heard of this mess was in April, when the Blackness Yes! Blockorama party was asked to move by the Pride Toronto organizing committee for the third time in 4 years.

Blackness Yes! organizer Syrus M. Ware describes Blockorama and Blackness Yes!:

Since 1998 Blockorama has been a party at Pride where black queer and trans folks, their allies, supporters and people who love them came together to say no to homophobia in black communities and no to racism in LGBTQ communities. To say Blackness Yes at Pride – loud and proud…We have built Blockorama out of love, through sweat and toiling. For 12 years, we have claimed space, resisted erasure, found community, shared memories, built bridges, embraced sexuality, and found home. Blockorama is not just a party or a stage at Pride. It is a meeting place for black queer and trans people across North America- Blockorama is the largest space of its kind at any Pride festival on the continent.

Yet Pride Toronto has multiple times tried to move Blockorama further away from the main events, or relocated the party to smaller spaces that will not fit the huge crowds Blockorama draws.  Blockorama is a hugely important part of Pride, not only a black space where queer black folks go to party, but also a space that has always been immensely welcoming to non-black folks of colour.  Pride Toronto’s moves – whether or not they are racist – indicate a lack of sensitivity, care or even basic awareness of the size and meaning of Blockorama.

University of Toronto professor Rinaldo Walcott wrote this letter to the Pride Toronto organizing committee, upon news that Blockorama was to be moved again:

…at the same time that Pride Toronto has moved Blocko three times, Pride Toronto has also taken on the mantle of global human rights as its signature issue.

It is in fact the discrepancy between Pride Toronto’s treatment of local black communities participation in pride events and its attempt to position itself as a global player in the LGBTQ global rights movement that I find particularly offensive, disrespectful and unmindful of the very communities residing here that Pride Toronto would seek to champion overseas.

How can this be? How could it be that Pride Toronto did not see this ethical dilemma before it? Is it because Blocko is the last non-commercial space at pride? Is it because like much else in this country Pride Toronto too believes that black people as a constituency can be ignored? These are genuine questions, not accusations.

…We will not as black people here and globally stand to be exploited by white folks who now want it to appear that all is well at home, but not elsewhere.

On April 13 Blackness Yes! held a community meeting to protest these moves.  Deviant Productions, an alternative youth media collective, made a video of the meeting:

You can read a transcript of the video here.

In many ways this community mobilisation was successful.  3 days after the meeting, Pride Toronto agreed not to relocate Blockorama to a smaller venue for this year, and agreed to work with Blockorama, starting in July, to put a stop to the yearly migrations and find a permanent home for Blocko at Pride.

However negotiations are stalled around the matter of a dancefloor. This is a queer dance party, after all.

Blockorama site coordinator Syrus M. Ware says of the Blockorama site for this year: “Where we have been put is lovingly refered to as the ‘swamp’”: Blockorama requires temporary flooring in the park to ensure the safety and accessibility of its dance space.  Pride Toronto agreed to find funding for said dancefloor, but it is two weeks to the party and the money has yet to come through.

Ware says, “The sponsorship ask has still not been sent to me. I worry that this will not come through this year –  it does not seem to be one of Pride’s priorities. We have not yet been contacted about a date to plan for a better site for next year…we will wait and see what happens on the day of.”

He continues, “We have deliberated very long and very hard about whether or not to pull out of Pride this year. After our meeting, we met and strategized with QuAIA…We have decided to stay in the festival for this year- but we dont know about next year. We are committed to creating space to celebrate and shout Blackness Yes!, and we will do this with or without Pride Toronto.”

Israeli Apartheid

At the very same time as they were dealing with Blockorama drama, Pride Toronto was doing some shady dealing around another group of QTPOC and their allies. A letter dated April 14th (as in, the day after the Blockorama meeting) from the City of Toronto’s executive director of culture detailed a conversation where Pride Toronto’s board discussed ways to ban Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) from marching in the Pride parade. On May 25, Pride Toronto announced that QuAIA would not be allowed to march in the parade or participate in Pride, due to the City of Toronto’s complaints over the term “Israeli Apartheid”:

…the participation of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) may contravene the City’s own anti-discrimination policies in relation to “place of origin” and that Pride Toronto, as a recipient of City of Toronto funding, is required to adhere to said policies…

QuAIA states that they use the word “apartheid” because it is the best way to describe a system of differentiated (queer) rights based on race. On their website they explain:

Today, in response to increasing criticism of its occupation of Palestine, Israel is cultivating an image of itself as an oasis of gay tolerance in the Middle East. As queers, we recognize that homophobia exists in Israel, Palestine, and across all borders. But queer Palestinians face the additional challenge of living under occupation, subject to Israeli state violence and control. Israel’s apartheid system extends gay rights only to some, based on race.

QuAIA is a diverse group, their membership including Jewish, Muslim, Arab, Palestinian and white queer and trans folks.

This ban hinges entirely on language – QuAIA would be allowed to participate in Pride and even articulate solidarity with queer Palestinians, if only they would stop using the word “apartheid.”  After expressing her distaste for the ban, Ellie Kirzner, editor of a leftist entertainment weekly in Toronto wrote:

I think it’s time to try the window; Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, change the name of your organization…I fear the use of [the word "apartheid"] has unmindfully offered a lever to the other side. It’s time to declare less and deliver more…Would the sky fall if Queers Against Israeli Apartheid became Queers Against the Occupation? Or Queers for Mideast Justice? Or just about anything that would advance the plot on behalf of Palestinians?

While I understand Kirzner’s just-do-whatever-works-for-the-movement approach, doesn’t the kerfuffle kicked up by a single, shocking word – because again, it is about the word, not the existence of the group all together – mean that we should talk about why this word upsets us so much?

In the world history of oppression, we often like to attach fixed definitions with specific illustrations to fluid terms. And so our definitions are too small to capture our terms; we have the language to describe our world, but we don’t know how to use it. For example, we attach “American slavery until 1865″ to “racism” – so anything that happens in America that isn’t on the level of the enslavement of others based on race, cannot be racism. Or we attach “assault in a darkened place by a stranger” to “rape,” so that when a woman is attacked by a man she trusts, it cannot be rape. Or we attach “South Africa before 1994″ to “apartheid”, so that anything that does not involve the worldwide horror at South African apartheid, cannot be the systematic separation of rights by race – even when it is.  Oppression, racism and systemic cruelty are ideas and machines that work by changing shape.  If we hope to confront and dismantle them, we need to blow open our definitions.

Depressingly, money is at the heart of Pride Toronto decision to ban QuAIA. From the CBC:

The use of the words has put the Pride organizers on a collision course with the City of Toronto, which says the name of the group ‘Queers Against Israeli Apartheid’ violates its anti-discrimination policy.

In 2009, the city gave the Pride festival $121,000 to help defray costs.

Xtra! quotes Pride Toronto board co-chair Genevieve D’Iorio:

D’Iorio says city and corporate sponsors are threatening to pull funding, and banning the phrase “Israeli apartheid” is the best position PT organizers could take. Pride simply wouldn’t happen, she says, without the city’s financial and in-kind support.

Pro-Israeli groups in Toronto have been pushing for QuAIA’s ban since last year; the May 25 decision has been on the table since last November.  A group called Reclaiming Our Pride argued that QuAIA was a “disgruntled group using Pride as a platform to further their own political agenda…only groups supporting gay rights can be in the parades.”  This stance seems to miss the point that QuAIA’s mandate is to support gay communities in Palestine (key word: gay).  The whole “this Palestine stuff is diluting my parade” line is unpleasantly close to the whole “anti-racism is making feminism lose its focus” argument that we are all so tired of hearing.  Both gay rights activists who only want to talk about sexuality, and feminists who only want to talk about gender, forget that there are many women and queer & trans folks who are also…people of colour. You can only parcel out sexuality and race when your worldview is imbued with white privilege.

Lobbyists who pushed for the banning of QuAIA have also complained that QuAIA is trying to make Pride “political.” Yet the nature of Pride is political to begin with and that is inescapable: pride celebrations exist around the world to celebrate and take space for a identity that is political because it is politically marginalised.  And yet in Toronto Pride is contorting itself to betray its own purpose, as it attempts to silence members of its community when Pride is supposed to be about coming out into the open.  In an gruesomely ironic turn, the slogan for this year’s Pride Week is “You Belong.”

And the commercialisation, depoliticisation and white-ification of Prides worldwide has become a matter of grave concern. San Francisco has an alterna pride called Gay Shame; this year in Toronto a counter-Pride celebration called Take Back the Dyke has been set up in order to, organizer piKe Krpan says, return Pride to its political roots and reject the commercialism, police escorts and censorship policies of Pride Toronto. On Sunday, an international group called No Homonationalism announced that superstar academic Judith Butler has refused her Zivilcourage (civil courage) Prize from Pride Berlin, saying

the parade had become too commercial, and ignor[ed] the problems of racism and the doublediscrimination suffered by homosexual or transsexual migrants.

3 days after Pride Toronto announced their decision to ban QuAIA, the grand marshal for this year’s Pride parade stepped down. Dr Alan Li wrote:

I was a keynote speaker at the second Pride celebration in 1982. I thus remember very clearly our communityʼs battles against censorship that attempted to invalidate our concerns, minimize our struggles and silence our voices. I remember struggles to ensure that the many diverse voices in our community were heard.

Prideʼs recent decision to ban the term “Israeli Apartheid” and thus prohibit the participation of the group Queers Against Israeli Apartheid from participating in Pride celebrations this year is a slap in the face to our history of diverse voices. Prideʼs choice to take preemptive step to censor our own communitiesʼ voices and concerns in response to political and corporate pressure shows a lack of backbone to stand up for principles of inclusiveness and anti-oppression.

In early June, 23 recipients of Pride Toronto awards – honoured dykes, grand marshals, special award honourees and international grand marshals – returned their awards in protest of Pride Toronto’s banning of QuAIA.  You can read a full list of their statements here.  This is a video of the event, also from Deviant Productions:

A surprising addition to the list of honourees returning their awards is Matthew Cutler, who identifies as a Liberal Zionist and makes the argument for why the term “Israeli Apartheid” should be allowed in the parade, despite the fact that it causes distress to some members of the Toronto queer and trans community. At 3:48 he states:

[The] use of a term “Israeli apartheid” continues to offend me, but has led me to conversations Israel, Palestine and the Middle East…conversations which have helped me to become a more engaged and informed Liberal Zionist. [I return my award] with the hope that generations of young people like myself will continue to be offended, will continue to grow learn and discuss difficult ideas and issues…

The Guardian (a UK paper – news of Pride Toronto’s ban  has reached far) makes similar criticism:

At a time when many countries are becoming more critical of Israel’s policies, Canada seems to be moving in the opposite direction. A general reluctance to engage in open debate about the Palestinian issue is exacerbated by pro-Israel groups’ efforts to shut down discussion…Since the beginning of 2010, the federal government has systematically cut funding to Arab-Canadian organisations and to UN relief works in Gaza. In March, the Ontario provincial legislature issued a unanimous condemnation of Israeli Apartheid Week, while the federal government considered introducing a similar motion.

However, self-censorship reached new heights last month when Toronto’s Pride Committee – which organises one of the world’s largest gay pride celebrations – announced it would be banning use of the term “Israeli apartheid” at the festivities…But when asked, neither Pride Toronto nor Giorgio Mammoliti – the Toronto city councillor mainly involved – could explain in detail what was discriminatory about describing Israel’s privileging of its Jewish citizens over others as a form or racism and apartheid.

QuAIA plan to march in the Pride parade anyways.

Sticking Together

While news of the active exclusion of queer and trans folks of colour and their allies from Pride Toronto has made me feel depressed and tired – this is my hometown, and many of those excluded are people I love – I also have been deeply moved by the mobilisation of my community, and the solidarity across communities of colour.

Ware from Blockorama told me a grisly tale about attempts to fracture Toronto’s QTPOC communities:  ”We were approached by many ‘Blocko supporters’ after [our April 13 meeting]…the most concerning was an ally from TD Canada Trust.  This ally has been a great supporter of Blocko…during the weekend of April 19, 2010, while we were considering whether or not to accept Pride’s offer and to stay in the festival or not, we were contacted by the TD rep. They indicated that they would offer us their full support, but wanted to know first, ‘what was our position on QuAIA.’”

In other words Blockorama were offered funding that they desperately needed to keep their black-identified party afloat, in exchange for breaking rank with a queer Muslim, Arab and Jewish group. Ware says TD’s support would’ve been enormous for Blockorama, to the point of putting pressure on Pride to treat Blockorama better, since TD is a huge sponsor of the entire Pride celebration.

Blockorama declined TD’s offer. Ware and Blackness Yes! say

Our liberation and freedom will not come at the expense of another communities. We stand in solidarity with QuAIA and all of the other groups marginalized within Pride and also broader LGBTTI2QQ organizing.

Blockorama and QuAIA have been working on a Pride Community Contract together to strategise a way forward.

What truly depresses me is how the battles that both Blockorama and QuAIA are fighting are just so normal. Which is why I called this post “an everyday epic battle” – all this debacle with Pride Toronto is typical of the struggles that people of colour face every single day to make themselves a space, even within supposedly inclusive spaces. The insensitivity, meanness, attempts to divide and the silencing are cruelly banal.

But it also warms my little heart that these everyday violent putdowns so often meet a Fight: a kicking and screaming refusal to back down, and a determination to stick together.

–
Apologies that transcripts are not available for the posted videos. I contacted the creators of the videos and they hope to have transcripts eventually, so I will come back and add them in if that is possible at a later date.

Thanks to Elisha, Syrus, piKe, Alexis and Michelle for all their help with this piece!

UPDATE: The Blockorama Displaced video now has a transcript. Thanks Lali and Deviant Productions!

UPDATE:

23 June 8:30 pm: Pride Toronto has lifted its ban on “Israeli Apartheid.” From Xtra:

Pride Toronto (PT) has reversed its May board resolution banning the term “Israeli Apartheid” and will instead require all participants to sign and abide by the City of Toronto’s non-discrimination policy.

Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA) — the target of the ban — has declared a victory and congratulated the queer community for pushing PT to reverse its censorship decision

“This is a victory for the Palestine solidarity movement, which has faced censorship and bullying tactics from the Israel lobby for far too long,” said QuAIA member Tim McCaskell in the release…

Brad Fraser, another member of the coalition, says that the ban would not have been lifted had it not been for the popular revolt of queer people over the last month.

“It’s a tremendous victory for anyone who dared to speak out,” says Fraser.

I just wanted to tip our readers in the L.A. area off about the West Coast premiere of After The Cup: Sons of Sakhnin United, which has been garnering praise around the documentary circuit for its’ story about Bnei Sakhnin F.C., a football team based out of the city of Sakhnin, an Israeli town that is home to more than 25,000 Arab Israelis. The team’s roster is comprised of both Arabs and Jews, and though some elements in the film hew close to more traditional “underdog” fare – because Sakhnin is a small club, for example, its’ facilities aren’t as modern as its’ competitors – it does change up the formula in one significant way: After The Cup deals with Sakhnin in the season after it won the Israeli Premier League’s championship, the State Cup. Slight spoiler here: the team soon finds it really is harder to stay on top than to get there.

Unfortunately, I can’t make the premiere – I live too far away – but if any of our readers can catch it this weekend, I’d be interested in getting your take on the film in this thread.

Reader Ilana tipped us to this Details article back in December – sadly it got lost in the holiday shuffle. But wow, is this article a winner:

White friend: Are you offended [by the article]?

Ilana (Jewish): Um, yes. I don’t like it when people fetishize ethnic groups, especially one to which I belong.

White friend: I think a lot of people in that article do fetishize jews, but don’t you think it’s possible that some people just consistently find themselves attracted to Jews/African Americans/ French people, etc?

Korean friend: Ilana – I hate it too…I feel as if they treat my group as a bunch of ‘toys’ =(

White friend: No one should be treated like a toy, and if anyone ever treats someone like an object then they’re racist, creepy and morally wrong.

Ilana: Agreed!

Korean friend: I think it’s possible, sure, but I also think that if someone finds themselves consistently attracted to an ethnic group not their own, they must examine the possible reasons behind that attraction- any latent racism… Even a positive stereotype can be harmful. I know this only too well.

White Friend: I don’t see how that’s a terrible thing unless they have latent racism or are motivated by a stereotype. (For me, it only seems to take a nerdy guy with glasses, humor and awkwardness.) My father’s friend has always dated African American women and there’s nothing like that in him. There’s always some weird amount of racial awkwardness in a cross … See More ethnic attraction, but I don’t see how anyone involved is doing something wrong, or has something wrong with them if it’s a consistent fixture in their lives. If they have a happy, healthy loving relationship, then why make them feel guilty about it?

Ilana: I am a huge proponent of interracial relationships, so long as everyone in the equation is happy and healthy. The issue, as I said, is consistent attraction regardless of personal attributes- if, for example, a white man is a serial dater of Asian women (to the exclusion of other women), it’s a little weird. There’s a big difference between being equal-opportunity and fetishizing someone.

White friend: I don’t want you to think I’m an asshole. I’m just really interested in sexual fetishes from a psychological perspective. What about a preferred set of physical attributes?

Ilana: I don’t think you’re an asshole. Given that I don’t have any background in psychology, sexual or otherwise… Preferred set of physical attributes? That’s tricky. I guess it depends on whether you associate your ideas about what kind of person the individual is with what they look like (i.e., “black men are all really aggressive and good in bed”), and apply those assumptions across the board.

White friend: Now I completely agree with you- if someone doesn’t pick and choose and will go after anything that’s breathing as long as he/she fits into their racial fantasy is a weirdo and a sexual predator waiting to burst open. That article was written in a disgusting way.

Granted, conversations about sex and race are generally difficult – everyone has different things they will accept or tolerate in relationships, and one person’s idea of fetish is someone else’s coincidence.  However, where Details fails (yet again!) is by trying to slot sexuality into easily digestible bits of stereotype.

At the airport bookstore, I immediately overlooked Bruce Willis’ and Emma Hemings’ smoldering stares on the cover of this month’s W. My attention went directly to the top left: “Meet the Neighbors: the Persian Conquest of Beverly Hills.”

Knowing the history of glossies and their historic portrayal of racial ethnicities more as props than as cover stories, I was simultaneously worried and intrigued—how would W fare as documenters rather than voyeurs?

A patio party introduces us to the Persians of Beverly Hills: with lounging guests, designer duds in the pool, and lavish tents, the spread is vaguely reminiscent of a harem bath scene combined with a Sultan’s caravan theme. The font for “The Persian Conquest” is done in an Arabesque font, with sinewy flourishes and random dots evocative of the Aladdin soundtrack. “Here we go,” I say to myself.

But reading the introduction, I learn that these aren’t just any Persians W is profiling—they’re Persian Jews, who are a large part of Los Angeles’ huge Iranian diaspora.

The use of the term “Persian” didn’t surprise me much. A large segment of Iranian immigrants and subsequent generations use “Persian” rather than “Iranian,” for varying political, ethnic, and ideological reasons. But with Persian Jews, the use is given another dimension: “Persian” does not connote any specific religion, whereas the term “Iranian” definitely conjures images of Shi’a Islam: ayatollahs, chadors, and the Islamic Revolution of 1979.  “Persian” also conjures images of lazy cats, sumptuous carpets, and fat sultans surrounded by glittering palaces—stereotypical images of an Orientalist fantasy, but one that most likely suits Persian Jews better than menacing stereotypes of dour women in chadors and grim-faced Khomeini.

The story, written by Kevin West, gives a brief history of Persian Jews’ presence in L.A., from when many families first fled to the city during and after the Islamic Revolution, to the present day, when the Persian Jewish community wields serious business and political clout. But for the most part, this isn’t a rags-to-riches story: West notes that,

“Although disposed, the thousands of Iranian Jews who flocked to Beverly Hills in the coming years had assets most immigrants lack: advanced education, business experience and, in the majority of cases, some cash in overseas accounts.”

The embarrassment of riches image is fortified with lavish pictures of local heavyweights and symbols of the fortunes they’ve amassed. One image shows a “Persian Palace,” the nickname given to huge, ostentatious houses built and designed by Persians in their new home. Another image is the sweeping view of Los Angeles from Sam Nazarian’s penthouse, or his “$1.6 million Bugatti Veyron”.

While W is a luxury magazine, all of this wealth made me uncomfortable. Of course, W would never profile an ethnicity that wasn’t rich, but I had to wonder why they would profile any specific group at all. West chartered the difficulties that the Persian Jewish community has gone through: racial tension with others in the community, religious tension with other Jewish groups, etc. It was almost as if W wanted to dispel stereotypes about Persian Jews.

But the road to hell is paved with good intentions, right? In attempting to dispel stereotypes, W simply backed them up: showy images of wealth and references to media and real estate empires are uncomfortably close to the stereotypes of “rich Jews” and “Jews running the media and the banks.”
The Persian side of things didn’t fare much better, either:

“Thanks to their wealth and numbers, Persians didn’t need to adapt. Instead, they developed a self-sufficient Farsi-speaking enclave, complete with grocery stores, restaurants, and even taxi services. And, rather than courting the local social establishment, rich Persians stuck to their own social world, which revolved around lavish 1,000-person bar mitzvahs and weddings.”

The article has combined the rich Jewish stereotype with the filthy rich Persian stereotype, and wrapped it up with a gilded segregated bow.
And it gets better: one of the article’s central themes deals with the new generation of Persian Jews in Los Angeles, the born-and-breds. West repeatedly draws generational differences: describing the immigrant generation as miserly (“…since the older generation by and large has not adopted the American ethic—and tax strategy—of giving money to nonprofits.”) and clannish, whereas the younger generation is more “Americanized,” and thus more generous, social, and acceptable.
But is the article doing all the stereotyping? West references Parviz Nazarian, the first in Beverly Hills to build a “Persian Palace,” saying that, “A different all-American motto, however, has been fully embraced by the Nazarians and many other Persian families who have earned fortunes here: If you’re got it, flaunt it.” It wasn’t W who purchased Bugattis or constructed homes that look like “a particularly frothy wedding cake propped up by a forest of fluted columns.” Have rich Persian Jews internalized their own stereotype?

No. Anyone who has money uses it. And herein lies the problem: applying the term “rich” to a specific ethnicity implies that this community’s money is somehow unearned or unacceptable. While being showy with it is optional, the Persian Jewish community has worked hard, and spend their money no differently than musicians with platinum albums or white moneyed families. One man’s Bugatti is another man’s tricked-out  ’67 Pontiac Parisienne.

W doesn’t make much of an attempt to demystify the Persian Jews of Beverly Hills: though the article traces the community’s history, difficulties, and hardships, the takeaway message has nothing to do with tradition or how the community has bolstered the area. The magazine plays up luxurious, powerful images of Persians and Jews, and the major messages are of stereotypes.

Starring Liev Schrieber and Daniel Craig, directed by Edward Zwick, Defiance tells the story of the Bielskis, Jews who fought the Nazis in the woods of what is now Belarus. Zwick is Jewish. Schreiber is Jewish and has done a number of Jewish-themed projects lately, including the relatively unsuccessful adaptation of the novel Everything is Illuminated and starring on Broadway as Alan Berg in a revival of Talk Radio. I found Defiance moving, but also entertaining. It swells with action in the best tradition of Hollywood. For some people, this is a problem. The most commonly expressed fear of directors making films about the Holocaust is that they will trivialize and exploit the tragedy. Ralph Seliger complains about historical inaccuracies and that the Bielskis are cheapened as “the image of Hollywood heroes.” My concern is different. There were six Holocaust films out at one time, but given the history of how Hollywood has depicted Jews and the Holocaust – and the way in which I understand antisemitism as shaping that depiction – Defiance was the only one I had any interest in seeing.

Perhaps embarrassed by the number of Holocaust movies out at once, Humorist Joel Stein wrote a satirical column in December for the LA Times a short while back that parodies the common myth that The Jews run Hollywood:

As a proud Jew, I want America to know about our accomplishment. Yes, we control Hollywood. Without us, you’d be flipping between “The 700 Club” and “Davey and Goliath” on TV all day.

So I’ve taken it upon myself to re-convince America that Jews run Hollywood by launching a public relations campaign, because that’s what we do best. I’m weighing several slogans, including: “Hollywood: More Jewish than ever!”; “Hollywood: From the people who brought you the Bible”; and “Hollywood: If you enjoy TV and movies, then you probably like Jews after all.”

I thought that the piece was funny and subversively camp. However, I’m also concerned he’s playing with fire. It was no surprise to me when the top Google hit for Stein’s piece was a white supremacist website. The problem with such views, even when they seem pro-Jewish, is in the way it treats us collectively. That “we.” “The Jews.” It focuses on who is making movies at the expense of any discussion of the movies they actually make. I have never run a Hollywood studio, and neither has any Jew I’ve ever known. And those machers (that’s Yiddish) in Hollywood are more than just Jewish. No matter how tempting it is to attribute to them some sort of “Jewish worldview,” the way they see movie-making probably owes more to being Hollywood bigshots than to being Jewish. It owes at least as much to their American-ness. It certainly owes more than anything to the American-ness of their primary audiences, who still scream about the Unamerican “Hollywood agenda.”

But let me explain, instead, what’s true about what some antisemites say. Antisemitism has never completely relied on keeping Jews poor. Though excluded from respectability, there have often in history been outside routes to affluence open to at least some few Jews. Hollywood is a typical example. At the time of Hollywood’s founding, Jews faced difficulties working in many respectable professions. The world over, acting has always been mostly disreputable, associated with prostitution figuratively and literally. So many white Americans who could have competed in the founding of Hollywood avoided it. Other minorities lacked the resources to take the same risks.

At the same time, many Jews had an affinity for theater that came from a daily experience of “passing” as non-Jews. Actor Daniel Day Lewis once explained that his first acting job was to fit into his London neighborhood by hiding, among other differences, his Jewishness. (This is similar to the affinity for theater common in gay communities.) Jews also had an urge to contribute to American culture so we could prove our own American-ness. And so Jews really were dominate in the creation of Hollywood. Since it’s creation, there have always been lots of Jew in Hollywood at the highest levels. And as actors and directors.

The fact that there was a large Jewish presence in Hollywood may have kept us away from too many noxiously antisemitic depictions of Jews, but it hasn’t meant that Hollywood has been part of a real discussion on antisemitism. In the run-up to World War II, while the America First movement polemicized about Jewish power and “kikes in Hollywood” driving us to war, Jewish filmmakers avoided calling attention to themselves. They feared fueling stories of Jewish conspiracy and power. Only United Artists, owned by three of the most powerful actors in the business – Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Mary Pickford – dared with Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Because of the film, rumors persist today that Chaplin was Jewish. He himself tended to answer the accusations with a noble “it wouldn’t matter if I were,” but he was actually from a secular Christian background.

Despite a significant Jewish presence, or rather because of it, Hollywood shied away from anything overtly Jewish for a long time. A few films, like Gentlemen’s Agreement were entirely uncontroversial, and went overboard trying to erase differences to appeal to a majority audience. There wasn’t any acknowledgment that Jews have a right to be different without being viewed as Unamerican. And the film gives the impression, by the end, that it has solved the problem of antisemitism.

On the other hand, when Jews have appeared explicitly as Jews onscreen (big and small), they fit an over-determined mold. There’s a long history of viewing Jewish men as weak and feminine. There was even a belief at one time that Jewish men menstruated. This stereotype is still alive in Hollywood. Think Woody Allen: meek, timid, un-masculine, neurotic, intellectual. When I was growing up, L.A. Law was prominent. It might be hard to remember today, but for several years it was the biggest show on television. Unlike the other attorneys on the show –who were womanizers, who did criminal law, who were masculine, who were played by Jimmy Smits and Corbin Berson– the Stuart Markowitz character was a tax attorney who never had to appear in court. I don’t just remember his character – I also remember him a good foot and a half shorter than his wife. One of the few episodes I remember made fun of the idea of him having sex: after a heart attack, his doctor told him not to just avoid positions that would be too strenuous.

David Schwimmer, before Friends made him famous, was told he was “too ethnic” for leading roles, but he was certainly able to play nerdy and Jewish. Michael Cera’s character in Juno, Paulie Bleeker, is Jewish (note a Hebrew ABCs poster in his room). When Juno describes this guy who has almost no words in the entire script as the funniest guy she knows, I cringed.

And the real proof of the stereotypes Jews find themselves under in Hollywood is the complete absence of alternatives.

Tony Curtis (born Bernard Schwartz) was too tough, so he played Italians. Henry Winkler, better known as the Fonz, played Italian for that role. Harvey Keitel played Italians. If at all assertive or aggressive, even actresses get the same treatment. Estelle Getty, with a comedy style straight from the borscht belt, played an Italian, Sophia Petrillo on The Golden Girls. Rhea Perlman played Carla Tortelli on Cheers, though she played “the nice girl,” as described in the episode title where she first appears, Zena Sherman on Taxi.

When the Jewish characters in Knocked Up started talking about Steven Spielberg’s Munich – “If any of us get laid tonight, it’s because of Eric Bana in Munich” – that meant something to a lot of people who could relate to never seeing representations of themselves on screen.

The problem with analyzing these stereotype, though, is that the alternative is often silence. Speaking out about these representations could mean that filmmakers decide it is too much of a risk to put Jews in films. Simply removing Jews from screens might be worse than allowing these flawed images to stand – and the stereotypes sometime serves a purpose for Jews.

While the character of Wormser from Revenge of the Nerds wasn’t explicitly Jewish, that’s how non-Jewish actor Andrew Cassese thought of the character. I find Cassese’s perception of Wormser to be deeply offensive. On the other hand, the folks at Heeb magazine apparently appreciate the homage. Some Jews read some examples as stereotypes while others read the same example as signifying Jewishness from within the closet. I introduced the stereotype with Woody Allen, but I love his movies. It’s complicated trying to draw the line between the stuff that’s merely stereotype and the stuff that uses stereotype cleverly to create a double address. Actually, much of the best stuff is camp that’s beyond my ability to explain, but let me point you to Mel Brooks’s “Hitler Rap.”

Like gays in Hollywood, Jews made films that could be read from a Jewish perspective by those in the know, but which passed by most of America without comment. Forgetting Sarah Marshall offers an excellent, recent example. For many viewers, the names Rachel and Sarah (with an h) aren’t notable, but to me, these are very much Jewish names. I doubt many viewers ever noticed the last names of these characters – Jansen and Marshall. Those are very un-Jewish. Being aware of who made the film and of certain themes that are important to Jews in art, clues like the names of characters gave me a way of reading the film that probably never occurred to most viewers. Rachel, played by the Jewish actress Mila Kunis, has dark hair and skin. Sarah is blond and fair-skinned. So there is some ambiguity to both, but Rachel is ‘more Jewish’ than Sarah. Aldous Snow -marked as strongly white by his name and his English accent- is successful in many ways, despite being an idiot, because he is white. On the other hand, Peter’s problems relate to being Jewish. The Mormon newlyweds emphasize the relationship between religious background, social inclusion, and sexuality. The film becomes a commentary on the more common theme, found in Woody Allen movies and Philip Roth novels as well as There’s Something About Mary, where the Jewish male assimilates by embracing gentile women. Here, success is found in embracing Jewishness. This is often lost on audiences who miss the double address – the quiet nod to Jewish viewers of a mainstream movie.

But can -or should- there be a double address in a Holocaust film?

Of course, the Holocaust was a major event in Western History, and there are lots of stories to tell. The problem isn’t that any particular film decenters the Jewish experience, but that so many of them do while making a different set of claims. Though it had a Catholic protagonist, the media reports surrounding Schindler’s List were all about how Spielberg was Jewish and how Jewish audiences cried at screenings. Sinking further, both Valkyrie and The Reader decenter Jews to rehabilitate mass murderers. (More on those two films in a bit.)

The best Holocaust films, like The Counterfeiters, are anything but life-affirming. They refuse to present the Holocaust as a heartwarming story for the whole family. That has a lot to do with being European films. Europe has a strong history of public funding of film as art, and so European films are less pressured to turn a profit. Hollywood, by contrast, is addicted to sugary endings, and would never make a film quite like that. Additionally, while Europe experienced WWII as an unmitigated disaster, the US has always seen itself as the hero of the story.

Films like 1961′s Judgment at Nuremberg with Spencer Tracy, about the trial of Nazi leaders, thus emphasized an American leadership role in the world. That film, because it showed documentary footage from the camps, was important for creating a sense of the atrocity that had occurred far away. It did not shy away from blaming the German people who were, with very few exceptions, at best (seriously, At Best), willfully ignorant of what it had done. It pushed for idealism over a pragmatism that shifted blame during the rebuilding of Germany. And it pushed powerfully for a moral and liberal America.

But there are no Jewish characters. There is no mention of Jews that isn’t among a larger list. If any group is singled out as a victim of the Nazis, it is the Communists. The least repentant of the defendents explains the necessity of what was done to protect Germany from Bolsheviks. In the wake of McCarthyism, it makes sense that this should be in the subtext of the film, but rather it replaces what should be the text.

Of the recent crop of Holocaust-based movies, two films stand out. Valkrie because of it’s big budget and marketing and The Reader because of its Oscar nominations and the award given to Kate Winslet.

Valkyrie, in keeping with Hollywood’s typical optimism, depicts the Good German. Who cares if the German heroes of the story weren’t actually such nice people? This parody of the trailer sums up many of the problems. The plot to assassinate Hitler was so that he could be replaced with a better military leader – not to stop the Holocaust, but to win the war. The Tom Cruise character, von Stauffenberger, was in reality as antisemitic and nasty as you would expect a high ranking Nazi to be.

The Reader, parodied here as The Hot Illiterate Nazi, is also about a Good German. Ron Rosenbaum’s excellent article, an impassioned plea against giving an Oscar to the film, explains the “essential metaphorical thrust is to exculpate Nazi-era Germans from knowing complicity in the Final Solution.” Historian Deborah Lipstadt calls The Reader pernicious. “This is a rewriting of history. It is, simply put, soft core denial.”

Against all this baggage, Defiance shines as something never before seen from Hollywood. It’s got Jews as action heroes. Daniel Craig, who also plays James Bond, stars as a Jewish character. It would be better if we could get a Jewish actor to play James Bond, but it’s pretty awesome that James Bond plays a Jew.

As for historical inaccuracies, Seliger complains that the historical Soviet commander Pachenko was quite kind toward the Bielskis. But the film has no other Soviets but Pachenko’s unit, and it’s appropriate to depict Soviets the Bielskis could not trust 100%. Stalin’s Soviet Union was deeply antisemitic. In fact, much of contemporary antisemitism in the West derives its form from Stalinist propaganda. The most common thing Jews said, around the world, in response to the Holocaust was “no one lifted a finger to help us.” It would be a mistake to exaggerate how much the Soviets helped by portraying Pachenko more accurately but still allowing him to stand for the Soviet Union. Instead the film sticks closer to a broader Jewish perception. But historical inaccuracy is just a small part of complaining about a Hollywood that tells rousing stories, one with genuine action heroes.

Unlike other minority groups, the problems with the way Jews have been portrayed in Hollywood don’t stem from a lack of Jewish filmmakers. The problem isn’t to get more Jews behind the lens or at the writers’ table. The problem isn’t even quite a lack of Jewish characters on screens. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem – one more analogous to colonialism than racism. There aren’t very many Jewish characters that are both positive and openly Jewish.

And in order to solve the problem, that is what needs to change.

I finally got around to watching AmericanEast this weekend. Full disclosure: I had originally read Tariq Nelson’s review, which was a pretty good rundown.

AmericanEast is an attempt at mainstreaming American Muslims and attempts to portray the struggles Muslims face in the United States. In my opinion, they overdid it and never established a coherent plot. And on top of that, I found that the characters had no depth and some were cartoonish caricatures.

The movie centers on Mustafa, an Egyptian immigrant who owns a café in a heavily Middle Eastern part of Los Angeles. His life, and the lives of several close to him, is one problem or tragedy after another: at one point during the movie, I asked myself whether anything good was ever going to happen to anyone.

Mustafa has a sister, Salwah. Tariq outlines her character:

Salwah Marzouke, Mustafa’s sister, was a nurse that styled hair in the back of her brother’s restaurant and was arranged to marry her cousin Sabir. However she did not like him and they did not get married. But the cousin was never informed (at least not on camera) and the story was dropped. Salwah was also interested in a doctor at her hospital who was not Muslim.

The movie stresses over and over that marrying Salwah off is Mustafa’s duty (or so he believes). Sabir comes from Egypt to marry Salwah and take him back home with her, although she is less than excited (that’s an understatement) about this arrangement. Even though she often fights with her brother, she gives off major submissive, dutiful vibes that plague many female Muslim characters in the form of wide-eyed, helpless stares contrasted with humbly averted eyes and lowered chin.

She is attracted to a white, non-Muslim doctor who works with her at the hospital, and after the arranged marriage “thing” magically goes away, she agrees to let him cook Japanese food for her at his house. They start getting hot and heavy, but Salwah asks him to stop suddenly. She nervously apologizes, stammering that she thought she could “do this” but she can’t, and gives him the whole “it’s not you, it’s me, you wouldn’t understand” before rushing out.

Because Salwah’s character isn’t developed enough for us to know what she’s thinking (did she realize that she’s just not that into him? Did she decide that he was going too fast for her, and maybe she’d like to begin again under different circumstances? Did she think that maybe she should give Sabir a chance? Or maybe she realized she was on her period?), the viewer must fall back on the dutiful vibes and assume that she’s backing out of sex or maybe a relationship with this doctor out of an obligation to culture or religion or tradition, despite the fact that one of her friends stated that Salwah is “no Virgin Mary” earlier in the movie.

Salwah’s inclusion in the movie symbolizes The Great (and imaginary) Conflict between America and the “Muslim World” or a clash between tradition and modernity. The movie sets up these false dichotomies through Salwah, having her arranged marriage illustrate tradition (which is often synonymous with religion) and her career and brief date illustrate “modernity.” The burden of “marrying her off” is a traditional one her brother feels he must carry, although she is not interested in being such a burden. In fact, because Salwah has two jobs and supports Mustafa and his rapidly failing café, it is he who is the burden.

Mustafa also has a daughter. Tariq explains her role in the movie:

Leila Marzouke, was Mustafa’s dope smoking/dawah giving daughter. She had a scene that was like an infomercial in which she is talking about Islam and Middle Eastern history with her friend while smoking marijuana. That seemed to be her only purpose in the movie. Came off as very forced and as if the movie was preaching to the audience.

I definitely agree with Tariq’s analysis of her character, and have serious issues with the cartoony “history/philosophy” lesson about Islam and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. First, having all the Arabs in the movie be portrayed as brown dudes with turbans and huge noses was incredibly off-putting.

Second, condensing an entire region’s millennia of history into a cartoon is mistake enough, but so is leaving out everyone but American, Israeli and Arab players, as if Kurdish Saladin was the only non-Arab/non-Israeli/non-American to make a significant difference in the area’s politics. Whatev.

What irked me the most, however, was when the Crusades were over, and supposedly everyone was cool. The cartoon showed Christian and Muslim man alike at a huge party, complete with camels and I Dream of Jeannie-inspired women ornaments. Camels and bellydancers. Really? Perhaps here’s where I should remind you that this movie is intended to break down stereotypes. I guess that doesn’t extend to racial or sexist ones.

But, as Tariq says, this is the largest reason for Leila’s inclusion in the movie. The other main reason is to get ordered around by her father (“Leila, see what the customer wants”) or serve as a catalyst for escalating troubles for her father (like when she irritates a consistently rude café regular, who then yells at her father).

In fact, women in general seem to be nothing more than props or catalysts in this movie. Murad, an anti-Jewish café regular, uses women to establish a connection with Jewish Sam as they smoke a hookah pipe: “The best sex I ever had was with a Jewish girl and a Muslim girl at the same time. You know how people fight over Jerusalem? That’s how they fought over my dick.”

Classy. And it also helps break down the stereotype that Arabs and Muslims are sexist pigs who have little regard for women. Oh, wait…

Despite the fact that this movie really did bother me long after I saw it, the aim of Hesham Izzawy, the director, was a noble one. The movie, however exaggerated and exclusive of women, does highlight issues and problems that Middle Eastern Americans and Muslim Americans often face in a country whose mainstream gives us “War on Terror” products like 24 and Obsession, which vilify Muslims and Middle Eastern people through flat characterizations of “angry bearded terrorist #1” or “captive veiled woman #5”.

The movie does so while addressing uniquely American issues. Fikri, a café regular, states that all this hatred toward Muslims and Middle Eastern people is because of our newness: “This happened to the Italians, the Irish, the Jewish when they were new here. Now we’re the new ones.” A definitely interesting and relevant historic observation that hints at a brighter future.

Ray Hanania might be a little more rosy on his assessment of the movie and it’s impact than I (the film wasn’t picked up by theaters), but I believe that this movie, written and directed by Arabs and Muslims, and featuring a large Middle Eastern American cast, is part of a larger media movement by Middle Eastern Americans and Muslims designed to mainstream themselves into America’s culture. Television shows, movies, books, and comedy tours featuring Middle Eastern Americans and Muslim Americans are actively working to get their voices heard and represented. Though the waves of immigrants from Ireland and Italy had to wait for generations to be accepted into the mainstream, Middle Eastern and Muslim Americans like Izzawy are refusing to play the same waiting game.

(Sarah Silverman’s video for the Great Schlep)

There’s a thing you might have heard about, The Great Schlep.

Behind it is an organization called Jews Vote. Looking at their bios at Jewsvote.org, they look like pretty great guys. One’s the son of a partisan. There’s a video with Sarah Silverman (see above). If you’ve heard of the project, it was probably from a link to the video.

I like Sarah Silverman.

Sometimes, she fails at what she’s trying to do, and sometimes I think that she needs to put a little more thought into it, but mostly I think a lot of the criticism she gets in undeserved. She does obnoxious, self-absorbed characters you’re not supposed to like. I can understand that it can be hard to get into, but the joke is consistently about herself. On her most infamous joke, I agree with Kate Rigg. The character Silverman portrays doesn’t understand that the word ‘chink’ is still racist even in the context is ‘I love chinks,’ but I don’t think it would be a joke unless both Silverman and the audience both understood otherwise. She wouldn’t have written it if it weren’t about that juxtaposition. I say that mostly to point out that I’ll give Silverman more room than most Racialicious readers would.

However, I have a bit of a problem with her video for The Great Schlep. Not with the goals of getting people to vote for Obama or visit their grandparents. Please, do vote for Obama. And visit your grandparents. I can tell you most Jews are soundly behind those goals. Looking at my own family, my grandfather certainly would have voted for Obama. My grandmother, who said a few racist things in her day, I think would have voted for Obama. My mother and uncle (both in their 60s) will be voting for Obama. I asked my aunt about the campaing, and she started ranting about Palin. And the elderly Jews I know here in New York will all be voting for Obama.

But, when the Silverman video is offered for a general (not exclusively Jewish) audience, which I’ve certainly seen a lot, I feel a need to interrogate it further. As Jackie Mason (who’s rarely the voice of sanity) pointed out, you shouldn’t really threaten to withhold your love from your grandparents to force them to vote the way you want, but to me that’s Sarah being Silverman. She also puts up an image of a large nose to illustrate the word “Jew.” But when she says the Jewish grandparents won’t vote for Barack Obama because he has a scary name that sounds Muslim, that strikes me as more genuine. Isn’t that the point of the entire Great Schlep project? If that’s not the motivation, then why the video at all? And though I don’t think the Jewish nose is meant to racialize Jews, is it perhaps meant to remind us of antisemitism? Well, according to Jewsvote.org:

Everyone knows that Jews vote. By some estimates, 80% of Jews are registered to vote. Among registered voters, Jews tend to vote at twice the rate of the typical voter. In certain swing states, Jewish votes can make a significant difference between victory and defeat.

In presidential elections, when choosing between a more progressive candidate and a more conservative candidate, Jews overwhelmingly choose the more progressive candidate. Between 1924 and 2004, Jews have given their vote to the more progressive candidates at an average rate of 76 percent. In fact, none of the more conservative candidates has ever mustered more than 40 percent of the Jewish vote, while more than half received less than 20 percent. But do Jews really make a significant difference between victory and defeat?

Given this history, why is Barack Obama hovering at 60 percent of the Jewish vote, according to three separate polls? Is this all the product of a highly effective rumor campaign, spread through Jewish networks often by well-meaning individuals concerned that they information they received was true? Or is there something more?

I think that confirms me suspicions that this well-meaning project is based on some distorted ideas.

It seems born under duress. There’s been, as usual, a lot of focus on the Jewish vote during this campaign season. Some terrible, some merely bad. I’ve asked a few people about it, and I’ve been disappointed to hear that some people actually think Jews will vote for McCain. It seems the project aims to prove that Jews will vote for Obama, but it’s like when someone says Obama isn’t a Muslim – I don’t want the conversation ending there.

Some of those facts from Jewsvote are, to the best of my knowledge, reasonable. I don’t know how much more likely Jews are to vote, but I think we do, for various reasons, tend to participate in civic duties like voting in high numbers. And there are many more Jews in Florida than Omaha (though I have no idea what other swing states they might be thinking of). But have Jews ever made the difference between victory and defeat. Jewish votes don’t count less than anyone else’s (butterfly ballots excepted, though an information campaign can’t do anything about that), but I think that’s pushing things a little too far.

There is, of course, a long history of antisemitism that imagines Jews as controlling the countries in which we live. Recently, when SNL did a skit depicting George Soros as “owner” of the Democratic party that pissed a lot of people off. (That image with the flags is genuine Nazi propaganda.) Or, to quote from a more rabid antisemite:

Throughout the centuries, Jewish bankers bought for themselves some real reputations of backers and financers of wars [2] and even one communist revolution [3]. Though rich Jews had been happily financing wars using their assets, Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States, found a far more sophisticated way to finance the wars perpetrated by his ideological brothers Libby and Wolfowitz.

When I’ve talked to people who try to convince me that Jews really do have outsized power, they often point to Florida’s Jews. It’s not a careful study of Florida politics, but the “every stereotype has a grain of truth” school of logic. It ignores the rest of Florida and the rest of the nation. Even though Jews might be especially likely to vote, and we might be concentrated in just a few places, there still just aren’t that many of us, only about 6 million Jews total in the US. Further, Jewish citizens of America are treated as a special interest group rather than as Americans. Jewish voting is not seen as an exercise in democracy, but as a lever of Jewish control.

It’s also true, as Jewsvote notes, that we tend toward left/liberal politics, so Democrats since FDR have been able to rely on the Jewish vote. (Of course, if our vote is so reliable, it’s hard to imagine how we ‘swing’ any vote.) And it is true that Obama’s support among Jews this year is less than Democrats could count on in the past. But when Hillary Clinton was still in the race, she wasn’t doing too much better. Polls pitting each candidate against McCain showed that 61% of Jewish voters would vote for Obama while Clinton could have counted on 66%.

So instead of asking what is it about Obama that makes Jews less likely to vote for him, it seems that we ought to ask what it is about McCain that makes Jews more likely to vote for him.

That seems obvious to me. It’s the same reason so many Republicans threatened to abstain from voting if McCain was the nominee: he’s not from the evangelical wing of the Republican party. His conservatism is mainly about economic matters. While that doesn’t mesh well with what most Jews consider to be Jewish values, it’s nowhere near as scary as the evangelical dogwhistles of Bush’s campaigning. McCain is from a school of individual liberty conservatism that’s completely at odds with the fundamentalist and evangelical segments of the right-wing. Though Palin is trying especially hard to undermine that trust, there are real reasons most Jews don’t view McCain the same way we view other Republicans. In fact, during the time when the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bills were a hot topic, most Americans had a similar view of McCain.

So let’s something straight. I haven’t seen any indication that elderly Jews are less likely to vote for Obama than elderly non-Jews. I can believe that elderly people of every racial and ethnic group might be less likely to vote for Obama.

Unsurprisingly, there exist elderly Jews, but why focus on Jews?