Open letter because it was addressed to Ms. Mandel and also to anyone who hopefully might actually be interested in doing something besides sitting around justifying their professional existence by trying to cough up something that might look to some check writers like some kind of "plan" or "way forward" or "Four Steps Toward a More Equitable, Inclusive, Fair, Sustainable..."? Thanks for the Pissaro. It had a cleansing effect.
Absolutely, I assume that the whole summit could have been subtitled "How We Appear to Fix a Problem That We Helped Cause." This is a Biden Administration project after all. But I'm trying to be responsible today.
Least I can do on the Pissarro - a little reminder of why we bother.
The barely hidden sarcasm underneath all of the requisite etiquette of that open letter! You must've been rolling on the floor! You chose a good painting from an artist who was as uneven as he was prolific.
Bravo. "Jews of color." Feh. Now we have to prove that we're not all white, therefore we can't be evil white colonizers, where in the past we were expected to prove that we were white? What tripe.
Ever since someone I know who is working with the board of the Jewish Museum in New York told me that they were looking for Jews "of color," I've scoffed at the notion that just being Jewish isn't ethnic enough, that we are too close to whiteness to be ok in the current climate.
When this person said that the Jewish Museum was looking for Jews "of color," I said, "so you're talking about people with one Jewish parent and one parent "of color," then? She said yes, basically. So we have to dilute our Jewishness to one half, and to mix it with "color" to be righteous enough for the Jewish Museum. I'm really disgusted by this. My nieces, who are Jewish on their father's side and Chinese on their mother's side would fit the bill, but they are very anti-Israel right now, and are always spouting off about the "genocide" in Gaza, so I doubt they'd be interested in getting involved with the Jewish Museum.
As you (Franklin) and I have discussed, I feel more Jewish now than I ever have, and I'm completely secular.
I hear you. I started feeling pretty Jewish during the "racial reckoning" of 2020. I reckoned that if someone was going to make me pick a side, I'm picking mine.
The Jewish Museum is just pathetic. The last time I was in NYC the only show I could have written about there was of Marta Minujín, whom they described as "born in 1943 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to an immigrant family partly descended from Russian Jews." I'm actually surprised that the museum had the cojones to put up Zoya Cherkassky.
The Jewish Museum is playing a losing game, which is not only foolish but demeaning and will only get it less respect, not more. So yes, it's pretty pathetic.
Aryanism is a screwball theory that misconstrued the Indo-European linguistic classification as a noble ethnic cohort, and concluded that Germans were their true descendants. In fact, the Germans are not an ethnic cohort. Swedes are, and Poles are, and Germans are their mixture.
White supremacy doesn't refer to Germans, does it? It's all tied into Aryanism though. Let's see: White people should have no racial identity, or if so, it's ersatz nobility, nothing really, because if they look out for their interests they're – wait for it – Nazis.
Okay, but Ms. Mandel and Rabbi Pinckey just might think you are racist (eek!) for denying their blackness, their victimhood, their safe spaces and lived experience. They just might identify with Hamas and then link you with Israel. Who knows? So, that kinda sorta makes you into a kind of white supremacist doesn't it? I'm just trying to follow your logic about individual personhood vs. fake race identity.
Your problem, it seems to me, is that concepts like racism, white supremacy, Aryanism, et. al., are all so vague they can mean anything an entitled victim/parasite group wants them to mean. And they can change over time, as we are seeing. And in real time, very, very quickly and in unexpected ways.
I know you want to distance yourself and Jews in general from the evil whites, Franklin, but the blacks, apparently, aren't having it. To them, you are, and will always be "white."
They not only change over time, they're not agreed upon at any point in time. The 1855 publication in which de Gobineau set out to demonstrate the superiority of the white race in comparison to the other extant two (yellow and black!) is unequivocally philosemitic.
The point is that Aryanism is not a coherent of understanding of race, and neither is the progressive grouping of "white" and "of color."
Whether Jews are white is a political question, not an anthropological one. And my standing answer to anyone trying to pin me down about it is "I am whichever race pisses you off."
"The point is that Aryanism is not a coherent of understanding of race"
Why not use the term "perceived kinship?" Rachel Dolezal thought (and maybe still thinks) she's black. The NAACP thought so too until they didn't. So, "race" works both ways. The spiritual center of the group will accept or reject a person on a kind of sliding scale, it's all intuitive and done in the way one looks at a work of art. There's an immediate sub-cortex impact, followed by a period of reflection.
What I have problems with is the same thing you have fairly recently come to discover. I liked your article on RISD but I guess you thought I was a Nazi. LOL. Teachable moment: Blacks don't make very good weapons because they go off in any direction.
Just ask the raving NGO libs in Washington, DC, filing lawsuits to stop "diversity" in their neighorhoods:
"As is the case on U Street, the administration’s vision has provoked a contentious debate, with supporters arguing that the affordable housing would help diversify a neighborhood with a history of excluding Black Washingtonians."
Quite so, Franklin, but while you may well hope for the best, I assume you're not holding your breath. Generally speaking, we're talking about a perversion of reason fueled by delusions of virtue, or more precisely, of moral superiority. There is a quasi-religious element to it, and most definitely a "validation" of an imagined self which is no doubt exceedingly satisfying, not to say masturbatory.
Excellent
Open letter because it was addressed to Ms. Mandel and also to anyone who hopefully might actually be interested in doing something besides sitting around justifying their professional existence by trying to cough up something that might look to some check writers like some kind of "plan" or "way forward" or "Four Steps Toward a More Equitable, Inclusive, Fair, Sustainable..."? Thanks for the Pissaro. It had a cleansing effect.
Absolutely, I assume that the whole summit could have been subtitled "How We Appear to Fix a Problem That We Helped Cause." This is a Biden Administration project after all. But I'm trying to be responsible today.
Least I can do on the Pissarro - a little reminder of why we bother.
The barely hidden sarcasm underneath all of the requisite etiquette of that open letter! You must've been rolling on the floor! You chose a good painting from an artist who was as uneven as he was prolific.
Don't read sarcasm into it - it was code-switching. There's a time and a place.
Pissarro really demonstrates that the only way forward is forward, if you know what I mean.
As I read the letter, I was imagining Eddie Haskell talking to Mrs. Cleaver. Anyway, I rolled on the floor enough for both of us. { ;-)
Bravo. "Jews of color." Feh. Now we have to prove that we're not all white, therefore we can't be evil white colonizers, where in the past we were expected to prove that we were white? What tripe.
Ever since someone I know who is working with the board of the Jewish Museum in New York told me that they were looking for Jews "of color," I've scoffed at the notion that just being Jewish isn't ethnic enough, that we are too close to whiteness to be ok in the current climate.
When she said this
[Oops, I wasn't done.]
When this person said that the Jewish Museum was looking for Jews "of color," I said, "so you're talking about people with one Jewish parent and one parent "of color," then? She said yes, basically. So we have to dilute our Jewishness to one half, and to mix it with "color" to be righteous enough for the Jewish Museum. I'm really disgusted by this. My nieces, who are Jewish on their father's side and Chinese on their mother's side would fit the bill, but they are very anti-Israel right now, and are always spouting off about the "genocide" in Gaza, so I doubt they'd be interested in getting involved with the Jewish Museum.
As you (Franklin) and I have discussed, I feel more Jewish now than I ever have, and I'm completely secular.
I hear you. I started feeling pretty Jewish during the "racial reckoning" of 2020. I reckoned that if someone was going to make me pick a side, I'm picking mine.
The Jewish Museum is just pathetic. The last time I was in NYC the only show I could have written about there was of Marta Minujín, whom they described as "born in 1943 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to an immigrant family partly descended from Russian Jews." I'm actually surprised that the museum had the cojones to put up Zoya Cherkassky.
The Jewish Museum is playing a losing game, which is not only foolish but demeaning and will only get it less respect, not more. So yes, it's pretty pathetic.
"It is an artifact of what amounts to a progressive analog of Aryanism."
Franklin, can you please tell us what Aryanism means?
– confused, lonely and freaked out
Aryanism is a screwball theory that misconstrued the Indo-European linguistic classification as a noble ethnic cohort, and concluded that Germans were their true descendants. In fact, the Germans are not an ethnic cohort. Swedes are, and Poles are, and Germans are their mixture.
White supremacy doesn't refer to Germans, does it? It's all tied into Aryanism though. Let's see: White people should have no racial identity, or if so, it's ersatz nobility, nothing really, because if they look out for their interests they're – wait for it – Nazis.
Okay, but Ms. Mandel and Rabbi Pinckey just might think you are racist (eek!) for denying their blackness, their victimhood, their safe spaces and lived experience. They just might identify with Hamas and then link you with Israel. Who knows? So, that kinda sorta makes you into a kind of white supremacist doesn't it? I'm just trying to follow your logic about individual personhood vs. fake race identity.
Your problem, it seems to me, is that concepts like racism, white supremacy, Aryanism, et. al., are all so vague they can mean anything an entitled victim/parasite group wants them to mean. And they can change over time, as we are seeing. And in real time, very, very quickly and in unexpected ways.
I know you want to distance yourself and Jews in general from the evil whites, Franklin, but the blacks, apparently, aren't having it. To them, you are, and will always be "white."
They not only change over time, they're not agreed upon at any point in time. The 1855 publication in which de Gobineau set out to demonstrate the superiority of the white race in comparison to the other extant two (yellow and black!) is unequivocally philosemitic.
The point is that Aryanism is not a coherent of understanding of race, and neither is the progressive grouping of "white" and "of color."
Whether Jews are white is a political question, not an anthropological one. And my standing answer to anyone trying to pin me down about it is "I am whichever race pisses you off."
"The point is that Aryanism is not a coherent of understanding of race"
Why not use the term "perceived kinship?" Rachel Dolezal thought (and maybe still thinks) she's black. The NAACP thought so too until they didn't. So, "race" works both ways. The spiritual center of the group will accept or reject a person on a kind of sliding scale, it's all intuitive and done in the way one looks at a work of art. There's an immediate sub-cortex impact, followed by a period of reflection.
What I have problems with is the same thing you have fairly recently come to discover. I liked your article on RISD but I guess you thought I was a Nazi. LOL. Teachable moment: Blacks don't make very good weapons because they go off in any direction.
Just ask the raving NGO libs in Washington, DC, filing lawsuits to stop "diversity" in their neighorhoods:
"As is the case on U Street, the administration’s vision has provoked a contentious debate, with supporters arguing that the affordable housing would help diversify a neighborhood with a history of excluding Black Washingtonians."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/02/20/bowser-u-street-housing-plan/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=wp_dmv7&wpsirc=nl_dmv7&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3cd48df%2F65d7362ba9320f59516ade88%2F596a4702ade4e20ee3700280%2F29%2F53%2F65d7362ba9320f59516ade88
Another:
https://dcist.com/story/23/07/06/gwu-dorm-shelter-for-medically-vulnerable-brooke-pinto/
All of a sudden quality of life issues become very important. Who knew?
OK, so I couldn't resist:
https://i.redd.it/i930bobttmq21.jpg
Quite so, Franklin, but while you may well hope for the best, I assume you're not holding your breath. Generally speaking, we're talking about a perversion of reason fueled by delusions of virtue, or more precisely, of moral superiority. There is a quasi-religious element to it, and most definitely a "validation" of an imagined self which is no doubt exceedingly satisfying, not to say masturbatory.
A reply would surprise me.