I hate that so much. I hate having to justify myself because of my ethnicity. Just because of who my parents are, I have to explain every time that no, I’m not Israeli, I don’t condone their actions.
I do truly sympathize with Palestinians in interviews who get hit with “Do you condemn Hamas?” at the beginning of every single one as a purity test. I get hit with “Do you condemn Israel?” in any conversation on this topic recently.
Some years ago I concluded that the essence of racism (and other such “-isms”) is the whole classifying people on things they were born with and which are not the product of their personal choices and then treating them as members of a category rather than as persons, something that’s anchored on an “they’re all the same” mindset.
The thing is, this means there really isn’t any such thing as “positive discrimination” because even a “positive” treatment for a category of people is still anchored on treating some people as a members of category which was not of their choosing, rather than as people.
So you end up with the strange effect that lots of people run around thinking of themselves as absolutelly not racist, yet categorizing others on things they were born with acting towards them as a “category” rather than “person”: in other words they’re prejudging other people because in their mind “they’re in a category” (in your case, somebody who as born from Jewish parents) - the very definition of prejudice - rather than starting from the only fair point when it comes to strangers (or on subjects not yet explored with that persion) in terms of expectations which is the tabula rasa.
And then, of course, on top of that you have the traditional racists.
I hate that so much. I hate having to justify myself because of my ethnicity. Just because of who my parents are, I have to explain every time that no, I’m not Israeli, I don’t condone their actions.
I do truly sympathize with Palestinians in interviews who get hit with “Do you condemn Hamas?” at the beginning of every single one as a purity test. I get hit with “Do you condemn Israel?” in any conversation on this topic recently.
Some years ago I concluded that the essence of racism (and other such “-isms”) is the whole classifying people on things they were born with and which are not the product of their personal choices and then treating them as members of a category rather than as persons, something that’s anchored on an “they’re all the same” mindset.
The thing is, this means there really isn’t any such thing as “positive discrimination” because even a “positive” treatment for a category of people is still anchored on treating some people as a members of category which was not of their choosing, rather than as people.
So you end up with the strange effect that lots of people run around thinking of themselves as absolutelly not racist, yet categorizing others on things they were born with acting towards them as a “category” rather than “person”: in other words they’re prejudging other people because in their mind “they’re in a category” (in your case, somebody who as born from Jewish parents) - the very definition of prejudice - rather than starting from the only fair point when it comes to strangers (or on subjects not yet explored with that persion) in terms of expectations which is the tabula rasa.
And then, of course, on top of that you have the traditional racists.