5, Av, 5772
(It is my experience
that, as someone who has converted to Judaism – I am not a fan of the
Jew-by-choice moniker, btw – I see my journey to and through the mikveh as a
demarcation line from which aspects of Life can now be seen through a before-and-after
lens. The Holocaust/Shoah is one of those for me. At some future point, when I
think I have the strength to do so, I will try to tackle that subject as a
whole. Good luck with that, right? For right now, I can only process it through
tears and cries one piecemeal fragment at a time. This is one of those times.)
So there I was, two hours into a
three hour, twice-weekly summer session course on race, listening to a
discussion on nuances of the invention of race in the United States, when I
made a disturbing connection. In the
left hand margin of my notebook (a space I often reserve for practicing
Hebrew script whenever lectures become tedious) I began to write out all the identifying
markers of race that were being discussed. Our
latest chapter focused on the Invention
of Race as a social construct coinciding with the rise of capitalism,
especially in colonial (or, more accurately, colonized) North America. This
theory, at least in my mind, makes perfect sense. Capitalism needs labor to
thrive (i.e. – expand by making profit for profit’s sake). The Europeans who
had “discovered” the “new” world had systematically decimated the Native American
population through warfare and disease. (Later would come more warfare, broken treaties
and forced exodus) The ongoing system of indentured slavery just couldn’t keep
capitalism afloat – the poor who had either been kidnapped or bartered their
way to the USA via working contract would eventually be freed or could escape
and blend into the dominant population by virtue of their skin color. This simply
would not do.
Enter
the African Slave Trade, already a burgeoning labor market (or so it was
defined by the people of the time) for the colonies. Here was a seemingly
endless supply of relatively cheap labor that had some working knowledge of the
type of farming needed (especially in the South), could produce generation
after generation of manpower, conveniently had no legal standing or
representative voice and most importantly was readily identifiable. The text’s
hypothesizes that before Columbus ever stepped foot on American soil there was
no such thing as “black” or “white” (or Mexican, Asian or even Native American)
as racial descriptors. Up until then differences in people was seen through the
European-centric prism of “civilized vs. uncivilized”. But in the wake of
Columbus’ ‘discovery’ there came the colonies, the near extermination of the
indigenous peoples and the implementation of an economic system which demanded
cheap labor to maximize profit, and therefore an easily exploitable people was
needed to maintain it. As a result, a system of White Superiority/Domination and
Black Inferiority was installed.
What
follows is a slow adoption of institutionalized racism which becomes hidden
under the guise of generational “storytelling” which describes the differences
in “races” and its subsequent racial hierarchy as religion and then religiously
ordained, evolving into Manifest Destiny, followed by scientific justification
as “proven” through anthropology, biology and frighteningly, eugenics. (For the
Marxist theorists out there, you can think of it as a racial
FalseConsciousness which once again servies the bourgeoisie.) From this “storytelling” (in
addition to other sociological factors) emerges an ideology which in turn gives
birth to a number of “
slave codes” (later morphing into “black codes” which
will inform the
Jim Crow Laws). Non-whites are now framed as overall inferior
races, animalistic in nature, impossible to ever be fully civilized, given to
the most base human urges (especially sexual). They are animals to be used,
abused, even murdered without twinges of conscience. Laws emerge which separate
them from the rest of society. They cannot vote, own property or businesses. They
are not seen as having any legal agency. They must not intermingle socially
with the general public (therefore keeping the horrors of their lives as slaves
secret). White Supremacy enforces identification based upon a purity of
bloodlines (from which emerges the “one-drop rule”). Phenotype also becomes an
identifying marker. At one point the popular magazines of the time, relying on pseudo-science,
ponder what should be the answer to “The Race Question” or “The Black Question”. Eugenics is given serious consideration in
mainstream conversations.
Sound familiar?
I certainly
thought they did. As the classroom conversation continued I began writing down
all these aspects of racism in pre-Civil Rights’ United States, noting with
growing unease the similarities to The Nuremberg Laws of Germany circa 1930’s.
The connection shook me. I had been long socialized and taught through the
discourse of history textbooks and popular media that Nazi Germany was a social
aberration, an unlikely powder-keg of a compliant citizenship, fervent
militarized nationalism, an oppressive economics and of course long-standing antisemitism
that only needed the spark of insane charisma to ignite. That the
Holocaust/Shoah had not been repeated since seemed to prove the idea of
anomaly. (Yes, let’s admit right here and
now that there have been – and tragically continue to be – worldwide genocides.
I will not degrade the memories of those lost or the families shattered in any
of them by comparing who suffered more. That is not my point (and is a gratuitously
lurid discussion IMO). What I am hoping to relate here is that the framework of
the Holocaust is commonly portrayed as historically and socially anomalous and
the “fact” that it has not been repeated as such since would seem to bear that
out.)
Now I learn that there is a history of
institutionalized racism in the United States, often left critically unexamined
and therefore I will argue is purposely hidden, that not only pre-dates but
probably informed Nazi Germany. The “races” were certainly different but the
development of their antagonism and the mechanisms of how they played out bear
too much resemblance to be declared coincidental abnormalities.
(I am sure there are those out
there who will say, Steph – or whatever
my critics call me – do you really think
this is unique enough to be worth blog space and my time? Hel-lo, known this
for years! There are whole dissertations on the subject. Get thyself down to
your college bookstore already! To which I would reply that I do not doubt
this personal revelation is new. Little under the sun is, to paraphrase. For
me, the point is that even if this information is the most widely read chapter of
all college texts, it is still not readily accessible to the general population,
which I think it should be.)
