Thread by @jessfromonline

there's discourse, so: a thread w/ sources on holocaust & jewish whiteness. tl;dr is that:

1. whiteness is a shifting boundary
2. jewish victims of the holocaust were not white
3. many survivors & descendants have 'become' white
4. holocaust exceptionalism is a real problem

starting at the last point:the words of irena klepfisz, jewish lesbian-feminist, socialist, child survivor of the warsaw ghetto, in her essay "Resisting and Surviving America"

about holocaust narrativization and cheapening of the holocaust by jews & non-jews

again, from irena, in "Yom Hashoah, Yom Yerushalayim," her essay about her remarks at the 45th anniversary of the warsaw ghetto uprising, where she, a survivor, raised the violence committed against palestinians

unwillingness to make comparisons cheapens it, and yet, it's thorny

what these readings highlight is that the holocaust of american memory & american media is not the holocaust of reality. my point is sharing it is that: it is reasonable to bristle at holocaust exceptionalism, at the way it's taught to the exclusion of other genocides, and so on.

but it is not because jewish victims of the holocaust were white. even if they might be white now. and it's vital to understand that, because jewish non-whiteness (and the end of it, for some jews) is vital to understand why and how it happened.

https://twitter.com/jessfromonline/status/1255895779102920704

jews w/ light skin, prior to the 1950s, in most places, were not white. included in the photos are primary source evidence.

from "The Jewish Nose: Are Jews White? Or, The History of the Nose Job" by Sander Gilman & "How did Jews become white folks?" by Karen Brodkin sacks

as a helpful aside: we have to always remember that race is not 'real.' no one is 'of' a race. only race science says race is real and identifiable. racial relations are real, and they change. this is from "White Logic and White Methods" by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and Tukufu Zuberi

"Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life" by Barbara J. Fields and Karen Elise Fields is also useful on this point

people can be white in a country & cease to be white by coming to america (see america's problems around the categorization of latinos into white/Black)

back to jews: light-skinned jewish victims of the holocaust were not white. the nazi project did not viewed them as white, applied race science to them. they imported sciences & legal frameworks about Black americans from american eugenics institutes to use on the 'Jewish race.'

but in 1920s-1950s america, something happened: eastern euorpean jews had experience in in-demand trades and started small businesses, gathered money to go to college, fought in WWII and received GI bill rewards, and Shelley v. Kraemer let them buy (cheap) homes in white suburbs

all those screenshots come from "How did Jews become white folks?" by Karen Brodkin Sacks, which overviews this detailed, nuanced process better than tweets can

it took a combination of many historical circumstances to both allow and pressure jews to leave their racialization

suburbanization is key, and was partially by force! both Black and Jewish city neighborhoods were destroyed. but only one could buy suburb homes.

though it's also worth remembering: and it destroyed jewish culture and caused jewish suicides. whitening is a destructive process.

previous tweet, the first quote is from Karen Brodkin Sacks, again, the second is from @homeandfreedom's "Offers We Couldn't Refuse": aprilrosenblum.com/offers

my point in sharing all of this history is to say: it's not wrong that white jews in america, today, are white, or have benefited from whiteness. they have, tremendously!

and it's ALSO not wrong to say that the exceptional treatment of holocaust history vs. other genocides is

about the way that light skinned jews are now seen as white, because it is! but that is a *post*-holocaust process. in fact, the link is important:

the process of whitening jews created an opportunity to take a *racial* genocide and remove any analysis of its racial character!

the holocaust exceptionalism of american education, the oft-repeated 'why do we only learn anne frank' complaint, is actually about *removing* the racial element! to make a special case of jews, to refuse to connect it to other racial genocides, precisely through and because

the fact that now that white jews have gained whiteness in most places, the white people writing that history can perform a sleight of hand that erases the racial nature of that genocide so that we dont & cant make connections!

which is why we *have* to make those connections!

there are many jews complicit in this process. see the irena klepfisz, above, on that subject.

but by & large, it's not jews writing that history. jews don't run the american gov., write the textbooks, administrate the school systems. and it *is* antisemitic to claim they do.

we must demand a school curriculum and a culture that teaches anti-Black genocides, genocides in the global south, and so on. we must demand the holocaust no longer be exceptional. but we don't do that by calling the holocaust white-on-white or diminishing anne frank.

we do it by demanding *better* holocaust education that recognizes its racial character, that connects it to american eugenics, that doesn't exceptionalize and makes comparisons. we demand to learn other genocides with it, and in as much detail, and compare, and connect.

in general, american education is broken. the way we engage with history is broken. here's a quote from a book that's also relevant to jewish race relations which happens to simultaneously envision a better model for education.

https://twitter.com/jessfromonline/status/1253029983196495874

i bring in that quote because it strikes at the underlying issue: education should encourage people to investigate their own conditions and how history contributes. 'why are we reading anne frank again' is a symptom of this, which uses white jews as a scapegoat for the problem.

this scapegoating is in fact a classic antisemitic move! "The Past Didn't Go Anywhere" by @homeandfreedom highlights that this process of scapegoating is definitional to antisemitism. you can read it here: aprilrosenblum.com/thepast

and this highlights that the path out of this is not a continued scapegoating of white jews. by highlighting this antisemitism, we actually put ourselves in a better position to identify the root mechanisms of racism and false consciousness in american education & culture.

getting out requires the left learn about, recognize & fight antisemitism, and it requires white jews to recognize their own exceptionalism & unfair advantages that come w/ whiteness & to fight against racism (and there's a long way to go there)

but these must happen *together*

thread making a similar point, also worth reading

https://twitter.com/degendering/status/1255899103478808578?s=21

https://twitter.com/degendering/status/1255899103478808578

there's also a secondary element of this, connected to post-WWII zionism, the 'success' of the zionist project in transforming white jews into a european people-with-state, the ways that jews through israel became integral to the US imperial project in the middle east, and how

the holocaust is narritavized after the fact into a justification for all of this, but writing and sourcing just the pieces above took an hour and i honestly don't have the time or energy to write that thread. just worth noting that it's an element of this too.