(Jewish Group) The Privilege And Peril Of Being A White Jew In Today's America

[Behind the Aegis]

(THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!!)

Looking at my skin color, no one would say I wasn’t white.

I once even got a sunburn in London, and I think I’m incapable of tanning. Whiteness in America is a lot more than the color of your skin though. Whiteness is a metaphor for full inclusion and acceptance in American culture.

Yet as a Jewish woman with a big nose and uncontrollable frizzy hair — the question of my “whiteness” and privilege can’t be so easily answered by my skin color. Am I white enough for my identity to keep me safe?

I grew up on Eastern Long Island to a hippie Jewish family. My relatives were culturally Jewish intellectuals from the Lower East Side. I didn’t have a bat mitzvah and no one in my family went to synagogue regularly. Being Jewish didn’t mean much to me outside of eating latkes occasionally and listening to corporate lawyers praise Marx. My grandfather and his brothers were the children of immigrants living in poverty. Their experiences of being Jewish in New York involved getting beaten up everyday and desperately wanting to assimilate into WASP-y America. My mother associated Judaism with patriarchy and rabbis telling her what to do as a child. And so I was raised without much formal Judaism. I only learned later how much my identity was shaped by being Jewish.

Due to my skin color, I have white privilege with law enforcement, with authority figures, in job interviews. Despite my obvious Jewish features, a casual glance won’t necessarily show my differentness to someone. I have never had trouble finding make up or buying nude colored things to match my skin. I did not grow up in fear that my brother or father would be shot by law enforcement, and “routine traffic stop” wasn’t a scary phrase.

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[leftynyc]

2. Very thoughtful questions being asked here

And something we see everyday as we at DU are more politically aware then the average. The hatred of us comes from both sides of the aisle for different reasons but resulting in the same thing - we're considered "other".