Even the words we choose to express the realities of our families can be loaded. At various times I've used different phrases, from "biracial" to "mixed race" to (even, long ago) "First World" and "Third World." Someone in my family has always objected to one or another descriptor: "Mixed race makes me feel like Read More
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Our "racial" language
February 19, 2013
5 Comments
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Feb 19, 2013 9:40 AM EST
I so agree. It's funny, outwardly when you look at me I'm a white woman, plain and simple but when people ask what I am or say "are you Jewish?" (which brings up a whole other discussion) I say "I'm a Russian, Polish, Hungarian, American Jew, a eastern european mutt" and I get the oddest looks, like somehow that is too many things or I should just say I'm a Jew or I'm white. I'm a 2nd and 3rd generation American, a child of a child of immigrants and I'm all those things and I'm proud of them all. It would be easy to just say American but I'm a mixture of all my family and I'm proud. Now what I'd really like to say when people say "Are you Jewish?" or "You don't or do look Jewish" is "Well, you don't look like an anti-Semite but you are one. What exactly does a Jew look like? Do you think my black cousins, who are Jewish, look Jewish or do you just assume they are only Jewish because they married into the family, which by the way they didn't, they were born into the family just like me, their list of what they "are" includes the Russian, Polish, American and Jew, I think the Hungarian is from my Dad's side so they don't have that in their list, though I don't know what their list is." It is a great question and topic for discussion and we all know that we are in no way in a "post racial" anything.
- Amy
Feb 19, 2013 9:46 AM EST
Thanks! I appreciate all the detail you posted and especially love your mental observation: "You don't look like an anti-Semite..." Worth much dialogue.
- Joan Lester
Feb 19, 2013 11:23 AM EST
I love the question "Where are you from?" and when I answer the U.S., they say "No, really, where?" Meaning I don't fit their idea of American, whatever that is. And why does it matter anyway?
- marissa
Feb 19, 2013 4:01 PM EST
my daughter used to answer the question by saying "i'm half jewish, half black, half berkeley and half new york" that's before she learned about fractions and fractiousness.
- kathy sloane
Feb 19, 2013 7:35 PM EST
well, that made as much sense as any other "proportions" people might cite...as if we were divisible!
- Joan Lester