White Privilege

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It might be useful to go back to the recent discussion on white privileges
and Peggy Macintosh's article. How many of these privileges do Jewish women
also benefit from now? I would think most. On the other hand African
American and Latino women face institutionalized racism and discrimination
on a day to day basis. The small number of African American and Latino women
on this list and in academia is but one example of this.

Victoria Pasley
Lane College
vpasley  AT    hotmail.com

--- Clare Holzman <clare.holzman  AT    VERIZON.NET> wrote:

> Later, I had to learn to recognize that I also enjoy
> white skin privilege
> and that to be a Jew in the United States today is
> not at all the same as
> to be an African American.

And just to add to that, the privelege of Jewish
"whiteness" (among Jews who are Ashkenazi, at least)is
a fairly recent phenomenon - it wasn't until the late
1960's that Jews began to be accepted, for example, to
Ivy League schools without quotas. Or accepted into
country clubs (and I should point out that there are
still country clubs which exclude Jews. Bob Dole
resigned from one such about two years ago, when he
"found out" that this was so).
But in any case, even many Ashkenazi Jews certainly
have physical markers indicating ethnicity. There's no
doubt that a person can look at me and identify me as
a  Jew. And indeed, that happens often, and growing
up, well, - there's only so many times "Jew-bitch" and
"you know you're going to hell" can be amusing for
their ignorance. And Jews still get violently
assaulted for their ethnicity. And our houses  and
places of worship still get vandalized.
It's true that we do have, in some parts of the
country, much more privelege than other people of
color. But, there are also places we don't.
And don't forget, either, that this largely applies
only to the USA. Try being a Jew in, for example,
France, or Ukraine, or most other countries in the
world. In those places, Jewishness is without question
an ethnic, racial AND religious identity, and there's
no way to escape it, for Jews of whatever background,
Ashkenazi or no.

Alana Suskin
alanamscat  AT    yahoo.com

Oh, and also, we are ignoring the many people of other
colors who have either tried or succeeded at "passing"
as white.
Scientifically speaking,as I said previously, none of
the "races" have any validity. Thre really isn't any
such thing. It's a social classification that
different societies think they can make on the basis
of some or a collection of outstanding features. In
our understanding, it seems to be that even a drop of
parental gene of a certain race makes the person "of
that race." Which is clearly, on the face of it,
bizarre, since if it was really any kind of scientific
classification, a drop of "white" blood would make you
white, and races wouldn't cease to exist based upon
chaging mores of society. Just a case in point, the
average African American would not be considered so in
Brazil, where "black" maeans someone much darker than
the average American of African descent (as I
understand).

Passing, as a phenomenon, gives the lie both to the
very idea of race, and also to the suggestion that
Jewish features are ssomehow exempted from racial
categorizing because some Jews have succeeded as
obtaining privelege in white society.

Alana Suskin
alanamscat  AT    yahoo.com

--- Sally Markowitz <smarkowi  AT    WILLAMETTE.EDU> wrote:
> Simply to assume that Ashkenazi Jews are white, and
> that Judaism is merely
> a religion, is to engage in a kind of historical
> amnesia that ignores an
> essential period
>
> I have recently noticed that some Jews are eager to
> be classified as
> white; I have also heard a number of converts to
> Judaism insist
> that Jewishness is a religion. 

I haven't been following this thread as closely as I should, so I hope
that i am not repeating what has already been said. You don't have to
leave the country to realize that as  Jewish person we might consider
ourselves white, but many don't. Having taught for eight years in a
small town in Louisiana, I know first hand that the Klan as well as
skinheads consider us Mudpeople, as I experienced first hand when I
walked into a class only to find that students, unhappy with my
interpretation of the civil war, had written White Power on the
blackboard. Moreover, in our congregation, Nahalat Shalom, there are
African American Jews, Yeminite Jews, Hispanic Jews, Latin American
Jews, none of which literally are white
Benay Blend
blend  AT    nm.net

Speaking of whiteness as a category that instills privilege is not
myopic, as Daphne Patai charges.   What else is it?  A middle class man
who identifies as gay and white in America does not encounter the same
types of discrimination as impoverished folks who would also be
considered white except they're too broke to construct an acceptably
"white" identity, no matter what their sexual orientation.  Nor does it
imply some mystification of the non-white marker, although many of the
values associated with whiteness (and/through
protestantism)--individualism, materialism, sexual repression, control
of nature, denial of death and the body--are hardly conducive to
personal or social health.

As proof of whiteness as a privileged sign, notice that in the united
states we have racist classifications for whites who do not fit the
stereotype of superiority due to economic class.  They are called
"trailer trash" or "white trash," or "redneck" or "hillbilly," all of
which I argue are ways of making disparaging racial designations against
people who would otherwise fit the construction of whiteness that is
taken as a genetic reality in the U.S.

In California, when I grew up in the 60s and 70s, I learned there where
whites (all of us whose families had subsumed any racial or ethnic
marker like Italian, Polish, or Lithuanian--from Yarkunas to York in my
family's case-- under the general rubric of whiteness, or who were
already Anglo in origin), and then there were mexicans and blacks and
asians--the Others, par excellence.  Jews were a rare oddity in my
suburb, so much so that when my friend Nanci Feldman moved from Chicago
and joined our school in fifth grade she had to give a little
presentation on Jewishness.  We still laugh about it.

 Whiteness was not contested as a category, nor was the idea that whites
were superior.  So I had no experience with non-white whiteness (except
through Monty Python's incessant skewering of French, Scottish, Irish)
until I moved to Texas where my students constantly tried to convince me
of the real difference between them (apparent whites) and white trash,
whom they conceived of as genetically different .  The evidence they
offered always pointed to class rather than race, poor teeth, dirty
diapers, cheap housing, offensive smells, but I couldn't convince many
of them of this.  Their inability to see this obvious reality speaks to
the hold that whiteness continues to have on every body in the U.S., the
existence of other forms of discrimination here and around the globe
notwithstanding.

Diana "York" Blaine
dblaine  AT    usc.edu

Wow, does all this mean that before women got the vote they too were
"non-white"?  I've seen little on this discussion that actually contests my
assertion that non-white and white are  being used as  metaphors for
oppressed vs. dominant/oppressor. This may work in certain circles in
America but is pretty irrelevant for the rest of the world and its own
systems of discrimination and creating hierarchies.

Remember that old article "the student as nigger"?  Another case of
metaphorical use of racial categories to make a point.
DP
---------------------------------
daphne.patai  AT    spanport.umass.edu

Many forms I've filled out, and possibly some used by your university, ask
for "racial" or "ethnic" designation, possibly in order to give preference to
minorities, or for allocation of certain funds.  There is a place for "white"
or "caucasian"  There are designations for many other "racial" minorities
including of course African American, Hispanic (or Latino/a) to Aleut. There
is also a category "Other." But I have never seen a category for "Jewish" (or
for "Semetic" for that matter). As an ethnic Jew, I never felt comfortable
checking "white" and so usually opted for "other."   Is this an appropriate
response?  And why do you suppose "Jewish" is not included in such lists?

Judith Laura
Ashira  AT    aol.com

Judith, I have precisely the same reaction, and I deliberately do check
"other" on such forms (and, as I said in a previous post, my mother used to
be instructed to check "Asian" because she was born in Palestine).  As I and
others here have proven, there are myriad ways in which Jews are definitely
not "really white." Some of those reasons may be "metaphors" for social or
religious inferiority, as Daphne Patai has said.  But some reasons are most
definitely racial, not just metaphors; there is still a perception among
many that to be Jewish means to belong to "a people" connected by *genetic*
as well as cultural history.  Sometimes this is seen as a good thing (many
Jews were charmed to hear recent news reports that DNA testing suggests that
all Jews share common ancestors).  Sometimes the racial aspects of
Jewishness are seen as a bad thing (as when we're called "mud people" by
white supremacists).  These are not metaphors, Daphne.  These are the very
terms of race:  genetics, ancestry, DNA, physiognomy.

One term for the racial category to which Jews belong is "semites."  What
few people realize is that Arabs, too, are semites.  What are Arab-Americans
supposed to call themselves on forms that ask for race?  When I am asked to
identify my race, I say "other" and, if asked to elaborate, I say "Middle
Eastern."  I personally consider all semites to be of one race, despite our
staggering political problems with each other. Some Israelis feel the same
way; my brother, an Israeli since birth, tells me that it's common in Israel
to refer to Arabs as "our cousins," a rather grim piece of irony given the
circumstances.

When Jews refuse to call themselves "white," they are not merely thinking of
whiteness as an abstract metaphor for privilege. (How could they, given that
European Jews enjoy a fairly high amount of privilege in this country?) It
is only when I compare myself to the races whose visual differences are more
pronounced -- African-Americans, Latinos and Asians -- that I consider
myself relatively "white."  When not comparing myself to them, however, I am
left with the longstanding discourses of race by which Jews are definitely a
"distinct people," and not merely a different flavor of white.  To
complicate the matter further, consider the fact that even many Ashkenazi
Jews are not very white.  I have dark brown hair and eyes, and olive skin,
all of which routinely got me mistaken for Latina when I was growing up in
LA.  Why on earth _would_ I ever consider myself white?  Only someone
defining "white" as a metaphor for "more or less privileged," as Daphne
claims, could think that.

Ilana Nash
Bowling Green State University

"White" and "non-white" in this discussion *are meant to* apply specifically
to the US and other countries whose custom and law were based on similar
"racial" ideologies, e.g. Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa.  These
categories in the US have always been cultural and legal categories
justified by alleged heritable biological difference, but only very vaguely
tied to actual biological differences. (Sex is not race, it is sex --
women's inferiority was based on alleged biological difference, but
obviously that difference is not heritable, since parents of both sexes have
children of both sexes.)

You no doubt are aware that people whose ancestry was 75-85% European were
classified as "non-white" by law in the US at one time, and that in South
Africa full siblings were sometimes given different racial classifications.
The Nazis similarly had lists of criteria for identifying and racially
classifying Jews, even, in some cases, those who had converted to
Christianity and attempted to assimilate.  The argument that the Irish in
the US were at one time "non-white" is based on the original Anglo-American
perception of the Irish as inherently "different from us" and unassimilable
based on characteristics that were said to be biologically based and
heritable -- "racial."  In this sense, Jews were also "non-white" through
much of American history, and whether they have fully become white at the
present time is at least debatable.

Are these classifications all "metaphors"?  No, they are real in their
social and legal consequences.  They are not just ways of speaking about the
issues, which is what I understand a metaphor to be.  I'm sorry, but I just
don't see what is so hard to grasp about this.

  -- Gina

> As an ethnic Jew, I never felt comfortable
> checking "white" and so usually opted for "other."   Is this an
> appropriate response?  And why do you suppose "Jewish" is not
> included in such lists? Judith Laura  Ashira  AT    aol.com

First -- no, it's not an appropriate response because when these forms ask
for race they are not asking about whether or not one is Jewish, but
rather whether one is identifiable as white, African-American, and the
other categories you list.  This data is collected for different reasons,
but government forms need to follow the census regulations for the purpose
of being able to track racial discrimination.  For example, if a college
shows a very low number of people of color, and a student of color who is
denied admittance feels s/he should have gotten in and contests this
decision, it would be possible to research this and find out if the
college is in fact discriminating against students of color in admission
decisions.  If someone who has "white-skin privilege" checks the "other"
box, it would inflate the number of people considered to be "of color" at
that school, and would not provide the necessary information to anyone
wanting to research racial discrimination at that school.  (I'm
oversimplifying here, but you get the point:  if white people, even those
of us whose whiteness has been historically questionable, identify as
people of color or as "other", we can skew the results and make it look as
though more people of color have a higher income level, live in wealthier
neighborhoods, etc. than is really the case -- of course this is assuming
that white privilege means one has a higher income level and so on.)
"Jewish" is not considered to be a race by the U.S. government.

Second -- should "Jewish" be on the forms?  It depends.  The forms aren't
designed as a place for people to feel comfortable stating their
identities, but rather to collect information in such a way that the
majority of people will understand the categories and where they fit in.
Many Arab-Americans recently testified before Congress, asking for an
Arab-American category to be added to the Census; multiracial
organizations also asked for a multiracial category.  A lot of people
don't feel they fit the current categories, so perhaps they need to be
changed.

On another note, I think there is a difference between white-skin
privilege and whiteness, itself.  I would have to agree somewhat with
Daphne that whiteness here is being used to talk about power, and while I
don't think this is necessarily inappropriate -- because isn't that the
whole point of whiteness in the first place, to claim power? -- I do think
that we need to get back to the discussion of white-skin privilege, which
pretty much all of the Jews I know enjoy in the present time (including
those of us out here in SD, where we might not be thought of by Christians
as quite as white as they are).  (If no Jews are white, then how can a
journal do a special issue on Jews of color?)

I do think that there is a whole strata of whiteness among so-called
"white ethnics," with blond, fair, blue-eyed people being the "most
white," and darker skinned and darker haired people being "less white."
And this is not constant, either historically or in terms of location.
But there is a difference between both the historical and current
experiences in the U.S. of white ethnic groups on the one hand and people
of color on the other, and I think this needs to be clarified.

Jessica Nathanson

Jessica Nathanson
Doctoral Candidate, American Studies
Concentration in Women's Studies
State University of New York at Buffalo
janathanson  AT    yahoo.com
http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~jan3

> The forms aren't
>designed as a place for people to feel comfortable stating their
>identities, but rather to collect information in such a way that the
>majority of people will understand the categories and where they fit in.

But they don't do that. Doctrinal "norms" define Algerians and Omanis and
Lebanese as "Caucasian," but does that make sense to them (even if they
have a degree in anthropology)? My partner is an Iraqi Jew, and she was
genuinely puzzled as to what category she should put on the US census form.
None fit. The wave of racist violence against people who appear to be Arab
and/or Muslim (often mistakenly as in the case of the Sikhs) shows that the
"Caucasian" designation is meaningless as a predictor of racial
discrimination, or its lack. (The term "racial" here being based entirely
on perception and negative treatment).

I agree with the comments about the historical racialized conception of
Jews in Europe, and would only add that the Spanish Inquisition insisted on
this already by 1500, with its watchword "limpieza de sangre": blood
purity. By which was meant, no Jewish ancestors. Even conversion was not
protection.

Max Dashu   <maxdashu  AT    LMI.net>
<www.suppressedhistories.net>
Global Women's Studies

Hi All! I do have to agree with Daphne about 
> non-white and white are  being used as metaphors for
> oppressed vs. dominant/oppressor. This may work in 
> certain circles in America but is pretty irrelevant
> for the rest of the world and its own systems of discrimination
> and creating hierarchies

I am an Indian national and all my readings and experience tells me
that in South Asia, GENDER and CLASS are the main lines of
oppression and privilege, even though we do suffer from what certain
Western critics have labelled the _Babu complex_ which refers to a
slave mentality in the face of whiteness. presumably due to our
history of British domination. I am new to this list and as such
will welcome any suggestions anyone would want to make to me in
person about list postings, content or format wise.

Garima.
missgari  AT    rediffmail.com

Daphne Patai says "I've seen little on this discussion that actually
contests my
assertion that non-white and white are being used as  metaphors for
oppressed vs. dominant/oppressor."

I've seen nothing from her that explains why, in the racist hierarchy of
the United States which is predicated on the superiority of whites, that
whiteness should not be critiqued as a metaphor for dominance, since
that is exactly what it is.  Unless she thinks it is an actual gentetic
racial category of course....

Diana York Blaine
dblaine  AT    usc.edu

Re Ilana's statement:

When Jews refuse to call themselves "white," they are not merely
thinking of whiteness as an abstract metaphor for privilege. (How
could they, given that European Jews enjoy a fairly high amount of
privilege in this country?) It is only when I compare myself to the
races whose visual differences are more pronounced --
African-Americans, Latinos and Asians -- that I consider myself
relatively "white."


In the last chapter of my book (Out)Classed Women: Contemporary Chicana
Writers . . .Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000, I cite and analyze the critiques
of white "mainstream" Anglo-European "Miss Ann" feminists by some Chicana
critics (and elsewhere by some African American critics) in which Jewish
American feminists are subsumed as if we had been here participating in the
feminist movements and in the broader  history of a racist U.S. from the
17th c onward,and had the same background, etc.-- without any distinctions
made, or perhaps because they are unaware of our essential, crucial
difference from whites, Christian, Anglo-European, mainstream U.S.

When did the Jewish parents, grandparents, of and Jewish American feminists
come here?
What was happening to us where we were all around the world?
 How were we treated everywhere for many centuries?  Oppression and genocide
for millenia.

White-skinned privilege here in the U.S. since World War II is, as it has
been everywhere else, highlycontingent at best, in pockets, and always  at
the price of our identity.

To acquire this privilege, we must assimilate to the customs and practises
of our hosts in infinite ways.  Just to mention a few: acting and sounding
like them, restraining our gestures, changing our names, pretending to go
along with the Christmas conversations and Easter customs, or hiding out in
our homes during these times, as I do rather than be subjected endlessly and
everywhere I go to: "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Easter" and asked about my
gift situation or eggs, with the assumption that everyone is Christian.   I
do this now rather than attempt to explain that my group does not celebrate
these holidays. I get stares, glares, and horror:  "How could you deprive
your poor children of these holidays?"

A student of mine once told the class that he and his wife were in Japan on
Thanksgiving and just horrified not to be able to find  a restaurant
anywhere in Tokyo that had Thanksgiving turkey and all the trimmings!

Millions upon millions of Africans were oppressed and enslaved for five
centuries; Indians experienced genocide.

In my book I was not comparing oppressions, just  pointing out to these
African American and Chicana critics that as a matter of fact most Jewish
American feminists had a different background, different history, and
different experience from whites that resulted in Jews identifying
themselves as outsiders, non-whites as a "minority group" in relation to
other "minorities" (because of persecution in host countries.  Not for five
centuries, but for millenia--and everywhere-- to this day).

 Tobin Belzer points out that despite their small numbers compared to
"mainstream" feminists,  leaders of the second-wave feminist movement were
predominantly Jewish American
Perhaps their ardor in the feminist cause stemmed to a large extent from
their identification with "outsiders," "others," "the downtrodden."
 Perhaps this is also why many Jewish American second-wave  feminists are
now struggling so vehemently against some current critiques, some current
revisionist histories, that perceive the second-wave feminist movement as
predominantly a "(wo)monolithic" racist  white mainstream bourgeois
movement.

What such historians, such critics see are vast, undifferentiated numbers of
white second-wave feminists now in positions of power because they are white
and therefore skin privileged to begin with.

Again, they do not perceive a crucial distinction between mainstream and
Jewish American feminists on the basis of skin privilege when they make the
powerful claim that whereas all whites have choice on the basis of skin in
this racist, classed culture, people of color are denied have such a luxury.

Sure!  Most Jews or Arabs, or, as a matter of fact,  light/white skinned
members of other groups like African Americans and Chicanas and Latinas
themselves  certainly do have this luxury of being privileged by skin color!
But only if we're willing to pay the price of  denying WHO we are, if we
"passed" or became "vendidas" (sell-outs).

No matter how white-skinned many of us appear,  the instant after we
acknowledge being Jewish or Arab or African American or Chicana, etc., in
this culture (or most cultures) our skin privilege is removed, we are
perceived through different eyes, and we are then subject to persecution and
oppression.

For many Jewish Americans, like  other "white skinned" groups, our skin
privilege can only be enjoyed if we give up our identity, our "difference"
from whites and hide out with "the mainstream."

 In our case, our population is small, and there wouldn't be any Jews left
if we were forced to or yielded to the temptation to do that.
For example, look what happened in China when some European Jews fled to
this host country in the 16th century. China, like the U.S. did not
persecute its Jews.  How many Chinese are left today who are still Jewish or
know that their ancestors were? This is what will happen in our
comparatively hospitable host country, the U.S., has begun to happen.

Much as I love this country,  I am only the first-generation born here of my
family that fled from the Pogroms and as a result became the only known
family survivors of the Holocaust in Europe.  I therefore still say "host
country" because  so far very few countries on this earth historically have
remained hospitable  to Jews even if they began out that way and permitted
those who have come there equality as citizens.

Dr. Phillipa Kafka
Professor Emerita
Kean University
pkafka  AT    lvcm.com

Racism may evolve to rationalize oppression (as Edmund Morgan argues
so beautifully in _American Slavery/American Freedom), but that does
not mean white/nonwhite is merely a metaphor for "oppressed vs.
dominant/oppressor, any more than other signs are "merely"
representations of some "real" situation.  Racial constructions like
"white/nonwhite" complicate the oppressed/oppressor relationship by
taking on a cultural, social, economic, and political life of their
own.  These constructions can bar poor or working class white people
from power as effectively as they can bar nonwhite people from power.
As the fictional politician Bullworth noted:  "White people have more
in common with black people than either of them do with rich people."
As the death of the American populist movement in the late 19th
century demonstrated, the white/nonwhite construction of race forced
white Populists to choose between racial identification and class
identification.  That working class whites chose racial
identification and thus participated in squashing their own nascent
political party and in disfranchising themselves from their own
political process is testament to the power, the non-metaphorical
nature, of race in the U.S.

The "white/nonwhite" model of racism is not the most common racist
construction in the world (though the US is not alone in embracing
it).  In Latin America the model is more on the level of
"white/degrees of white descending according to factors including
skin color,  economic class and social position." On both continents,
however, the people with the darkest skins most often comprise the
lowest class -- indicating that "whiteness" and the (differently
defined) lack thereof is a factor in the construction of at least one
kind of "oppressed vs. dominant/oppressor" relationship in a another
at all metaphorical manner.  This is quite different from 2nd
generation metaphors like "the student as nigger."

It is important to distinguish between types of oppressed/oppressor
relations, and to be able to perceive and study the different
patterns of enforcement and rationalization that oppressors evolve to
maintain their power. Unless we understand "oppression" as a complex
descriptor -- a three-dimensional location within a culture where one
can be simultaneously oppressed and oppressor in varying degrees --
we will be trapped in a binary that forces us to define people as
either "oppressed" OR "oppressor," a situation that feminists of
color have frequently decried.   It is, I believe, also at the heart
of the conversation on this list about the "whiteness" or
"nonwhiteness" of American Jews.

One of the strengths of the binary white/nonwhite division (from the
whites-in-power perspective) is that it plunges minorities into
whiter- (or blacker-) than-thou contests.  So energy is spent trying
to determine the whiteness or nonwhiteness of, say, Jews, when we
might be far better off simply discussing the changing location of
Jewish identity within this culture, and the ways in which Jews have
been and are simultaneously oppressors and oppressed.  By using this
method we could acknowledge the real power of  white/nonwhite
categories in the U.S. (and in some other cultures), while refusing
to embrace them in our own feminist work.

Kali Tal
kali  AT    kalital.com

Well, Diane, the problem of using "whiteness" as a metaphor for dominance
and oppression is illustrated by the demonstration we've just had on the
list of the  eagerness with which some  white  Jewish feminists  scurry to
separate themselves from the evil designation.  And, inasmuch as oppression
and dominance occur in so many cultures and settings, it also invites a
mental shorthand that I find inaccurate and unhealthy.  The problem is not
that some whites behaves in an oppressive  way; it's that some humans -- and
they can be found in many different contexts and in all colors and times --
behave that way.

What's wrong with identity politics is that it suggests the identity itself
is either the problem or the solution.  I very much doubt that this is true.
Certainly it's a way of explaining the world fairly easily, and of
justifying oneself and blaming others - which is perhaps a source of
gratification and even selfhood for some -- but it's not an explanation that
serves anyone well in the long run, unless one's objective is in fact to
aggravate group tensions.

All the examples of asserting group villainy have been pretty horrific ones.
Why should a modern-day person want to use this dismal technique, even if
reversing it or changing the valences in some way or other??

Daphne
---------------------------------
daphne.patai  AT    spanport.umass.edu

It seems like many of us have similar experiences, and we end up agreeing on
various things. It just seems that ethnicity as a factor in the chosen novels
was raised to show that social networks led some people to positions of
social prominence as published writers (eg speakers) for the women's
movement, and others not--maybe Piercy's story was similar to Rich's, and
Shulman's, who  could use connections to publish when others who were
situated in different social locations couldn't or didn't. Like I studied
with Alix Shulman at NYU, so that helped me, made me feel I was part of it
all, as did the meetings of the Feminist Writers Guild where I actually saw
Adrienne Rich in the same room, and the Women's Salon where I actually talked
with Kate Millet--these social connections put me in a place where I felt
that I too could contribute as a writer, although with much less stature and
impact of course....and Audre Lorde having gone to school with Diane DiPrima
led her easily to being published by Diane with Poet's Press, actually before
any feminist press existed to publish her I think.

What cr was, consicousness raising, was that we each took a question, and
small groups met and each woman went around the room and had a set amount of
time, say five minutes each, to answer the question, and each got to talk
entirely on the topic--first sexuality, first consciousness of gender, and so
on. These small groups met regularly; and theory developed out of that, as we
looked into ourselves and our collective histories and generated insights;
and then some novels, and position papers too; that is what I meant by
consciousness raising novels of the seventies--specifically novels that grew
out of those small group experiences. Or that could be taught as having
developed as logical extensions, organic outgrowths of those small groups and
the kind of environment they created.

But debating who was in those groups, and what race and ethnicity they were,
and all that--really comes down to, doesn't it, where each of us was in the
period. I was in NYC, and there was a "multiculturalism" (not a word then)
but perhaps in Georgia, or Atlanta, or Texas, or Oregon--there wasn't, and
perhaps there really was a feel of separate women's movements in other
places--and a separate white women's movement, and so on.

The specific environment those groups created also created a prediliction for
a certain kind of writing, a certain kind of thinking, a certain kind of
experience. Later this was called various things--essentialist,
anti-intellectual, and yet, it also created a distaste for certain kinds of
writing that later emerged, from women who hadn't been through these kinds of
groups, that was later perceived by women who had gone through these groups,
as being replete with jargon. I have seen differences among women scholars
and colleagues emerge on campuses based on different relations to this, that
were unstated. The fierceness of claiming those early days, and so on,
reminds me of the fierceness of the debates in the left of that time, the
groups of people who would quote either Marx or Lenin at each other, each
group swearing authenticity. That is in effect what we do ever time we slip
into this charged zone, in my view.

Back to ethnicity, on a more scholarly note, there has been work done I think
in People of the Book on how it was because of their Jewish identity that
many of the early feminist writers starting writing their tracts--because
they didn't benefit by assimilation the way the Jewish men did, after the
war, because being Jewish, and not Christian, the women really didn't or
couldn't fit in--different modes of behavior, expectations, beauty standards
and all that.I have tried to teach Memoirs of an Ex Prom Queen and Small
Changes as part of Jewish American Lit, and was advised not to in my dept.
Then at an Association for Jewish Studies, listening to a presentation on
Jewish American Poetry, I pointed out all the poets referred to were men--and
was told by the male speaker that to be Jewish poetry, one had to be more
than Jewish, one had to address Jewish Themes, and yet, when I pointed out
that what he meant were themes of the Jewish Religion derived from the male
position in that religion, and this then meant women being largely
historically excluded from the Jewish religion couldn't write poetry on those
particular Jewish themes, but would have to write poetry on where they stood
on the margins of the religion, relating secularly, which is what the women I
was referring to did,  he huffed and guffawed, and went on--so here you
are--in the Jewish American lit class, dealing with this conservative
definition of the Jewish cannon, I could only assign those novels that I now
want to teach as CR novels, which might have grown out of a specifically
Jewish experience, as possible term paper novels, after the student had read
things that could be considered cannonically Jewish American literature--like
the Bread Givers, Paley, and Goodman, along with the work of the guys because
those women writers addressed the themes that the guys did even if from a
different perspective. Even assigning Stein was considered pushing it. I
couldn't make room for Bellow--and got criticized for not enough Roth and
Malamud as well, by students and faculty.

So, how is that related? Maybe addressing how the particular marginal
ethnicity of Jews-become-white-but-not-quite-as-evidenced-in-gender might be
a good theme for the cr course, and thanks to Diane for bringing it out.
Millet, too, was Irish Catholic. Before I worked at the National Council of
Churches, I thought all gentiles were the same. Yet as an ex-Jesuit pointed
out, after a Grail woman said something like "That's the way Protestants do
things," after a meeting, and I asked him what she meant, there were wars
between Protestants and Catholics. Perhaps Millett's degree of
dis-association from the British from her years as an Irish Catholic allowed
her a particular distance to light in to D.H. Lawrence and Spenser etc that a
Protestant wouldn't have had. I don't know. Please no one jump on me--I am
just thinking along these tracks, of looking at the marginalization of
various ethnicities and seeing how women occupying those marginal places
might have had more arrows to sling at establishment foes. Or the sharpness
of the feminist blows strengthened by previous conscious or unconscious
venoms. Something like that.

Maybe to pick up the threads here--there are differences among the large
group perceived as white by others, that are just as important to the members
of that large group as the differences among all the members of the large
group perceived as black by others. The Jamaican research assistant who works
for me perceives herself very differently from those who have grown up in
Cleveland Afro American; my students who are African in my African American
Lit classes do not understand why they are followed around in the malls by
policemen just because they are young black males.

batyawein  AT    aol.com, Cleveland Heights

 "all fingers on the left hand feel different; to the right hand they all
seem left. "

This was the full title; significant I think--ties to the discussion, and
also, to the American Anth. Assoc. statement on race that points out there
are more differences within groups that are identified as different from each
other and more similarities across racial groups than genetic differences
between racial groups--because race is social not racial--something like
that. Its a one page hand out I use whenever I teach Black Masterpieces which
is an African American experience diversity fulfillment class through
literature that many white students do not like to take.

Batya Weinbaum Cleveland hts batyawein  AT    aol.com

Daphne implies that I am responsible for the propagation of the word
"white."  Phew!  How bizarre is that??   Quite the opposite is true of
course.  I believe that by insisting on deconstrucing the term and
thereby proving it lacks any genetic accuracy that we can undermine its
effectiveness as a justification for oppression in the U.S.

Who would be against that??????

Diana York Blaine
dlbaine  AT    usc.edu

Diana, I wasn't implying that you're responsible for the propagation of  the
current use of "white."

I was merely responding to your query, directed *to me,*  as to why  - in
your own words - "whiteness should not be critiqued as a metaphor for
dominance, since that is exactly what it is."  I addressed my answer to you,
as I do here again.

Since you agree that whiteness is a metaphor for dominance, perhaps  you
will also agree that there is dominance without whiteness, whether
metaphorical or not.
DP

---------------------------------
daphne.patai  AT    spanport.umass.edu