(no subject)
I ran into another mother from the synagogue the other day. She was explaining why her sons weren't in Hebrew school yet. They are in fourth and fifth grade in school. "There just aren't very many kids of color," the mother said. "J would be the only kid of color in his class and I don't want him to be the only one."
I really, really felt like saying to her, "Then you should not have adopted African-American children and decided to raise them as Jews." I think that it's great for her to adopt African-American kids, but she can't expect that there will always be other "people of color" (as she says) at all of the Jewish things they do. If her big value is for her boys never to feel like they are the only ones, they should be raised in the religion of her African-American partner. I think she has an expectation that they won't be the only ones wherever they go and that just isn't the way that it is. I think that it's almost dangerous the way that she is encouraging them to expect other African-American kids in Jewish settings. She's sending them the message that if they are in a situation where they are the only African-Americans, they don't really belong there. The truth is that most of the time they will be the only ones. I think that instead of teaching her kids to expect not to be the only one, she should teach her kids how to handle being the only one. Then they will be extra-happy when there is another "person of color" in that room full of Jews.
Personally, I think there's nothing wrong with being the only one in the room. I am always the only one in the room. Sometimes I am the only Jew. Sometimes I am the only queer person, sometimes I am the only mixed race person. I will never, ever walk into a room full of people like me. There's no club of Japanese Jewish Lesbians. I like this. I've always liked this about myself and the older I get the more profoundly I understand how alone in the world I am.
Then coffeeandink started posting about common and hidden knowledge. Those are the cultural assumptions that are considered common knowledge in the group but are unfamiliar to people outside the group. oyceter describes it this way:
Your holidays, the ones that you travel miles away to celebrate, are always the ones people forget about. Your history, the one where you trace back where your ancestors came from, is never taught in class.You have to explain what you're eating. You have to sit there and feel dumb that you don't get a reference when everyone else in the room does, or face their disbelief when you say that you don't get it. But when you mention something from your culture, everyone shuts up and doesn't know what to say, since they don't know what it is.
It's not people denying you a job or refusing a loan, but it's still isolating and painful. ... You don't speak the same language. Or not knowing your family history of cancer or diabetes because the Holocaust means you lost entire branches of family. Not being able to find cooking shows that talk about the food you usually eat at home.
The idea here is, though, that there is some place you can go back to - easily or not - where there are other people who share your cultural understandings. I only began to feel like this, as if I wanted to have a room full of people like me, when I was in my 20s. I had been living in Washington DC for several years and my brother came to visit. I was surprised at how happy I was to see him. We are not close. I don't get that rush of happiness to see him the way that I get with G, even. But seeing him in Washington, someone who looked both Japanese and Jewish, made me miss living in a place where people would look at me and know that I'm mixed race. I didn't know how much I'd missed having a few people, perhaps enough to fill a room, who looked like me and my brother.
Our parents both grew up in rooms full of people who looked like them. They has no idea how to be mixed race, and they never even attempted to teach me and my brother how to handle being mixed race. What they did teach us was that we belonged. If it's a room full of Jews, we were told that we belonged in that room full of Jews as much as anyone else in the room. When it was a room (or a house) full of Japanese-Americans, my parents gave us the message that we fully belonged in that room, too. When I came out, I had a whole new set of rooms I belonged in. Even if I bring two other sets of cultural assumptions in the door with me, I belong in that queer room as much as I belong in the Jew room and the Japanese-American room.
What concerns me about that other mother is that she is sending her sons the message that they only belong in the Jewish room if there are other "people of color" in there as well. She's not teaching them that they belong in the Jewish room all the time, that it's their place no matter who else happens to be there at the time. She's teaching them that they don't always belong in the Jewish room.
Maybe I don't belong in any of those rooms. coffeeandink linked to a bunch of other posts where people named several things that are not common knowledge in the wider culture but are understood by people in a smaller culture. There were things in the Jewish one I didn't know and there were things in the queer one I didn't know.
(I put "people of color" in quotes because it's not a term I ever use. You might say that I am a person of color, just a that other mother's sons are people of color and it would give you the impression that I have something in common with them. I don't think I have much in common with them at all. "People of color" is shorthand for people who have common cultural knowledge that is not the majority common knowledge. If you use "people of color" in that context it is not inclusive enough. Those people are often not white, but sometimes they are.)
I really, really felt like saying to her, "Then you should not have adopted African-American children and decided to raise them as Jews." I think that it's great for her to adopt African-American kids, but she can't expect that there will always be other "people of color" (as she says) at all of the Jewish things they do. If her big value is for her boys never to feel like they are the only ones, they should be raised in the religion of her African-American partner. I think she has an expectation that they won't be the only ones wherever they go and that just isn't the way that it is. I think that it's almost dangerous the way that she is encouraging them to expect other African-American kids in Jewish settings. She's sending them the message that if they are in a situation where they are the only African-Americans, they don't really belong there. The truth is that most of the time they will be the only ones. I think that instead of teaching her kids to expect not to be the only one, she should teach her kids how to handle being the only one. Then they will be extra-happy when there is another "person of color" in that room full of Jews.
Personally, I think there's nothing wrong with being the only one in the room. I am always the only one in the room. Sometimes I am the only Jew. Sometimes I am the only queer person, sometimes I am the only mixed race person. I will never, ever walk into a room full of people like me. There's no club of Japanese Jewish Lesbians. I like this. I've always liked this about myself and the older I get the more profoundly I understand how alone in the world I am.
Then coffeeandink started posting about common and hidden knowledge. Those are the cultural assumptions that are considered common knowledge in the group but are unfamiliar to people outside the group. oyceter describes it this way:
Your holidays, the ones that you travel miles away to celebrate, are always the ones people forget about. Your history, the one where you trace back where your ancestors came from, is never taught in class.You have to explain what you're eating. You have to sit there and feel dumb that you don't get a reference when everyone else in the room does, or face their disbelief when you say that you don't get it. But when you mention something from your culture, everyone shuts up and doesn't know what to say, since they don't know what it is.
It's not people denying you a job or refusing a loan, but it's still isolating and painful. ... You don't speak the same language. Or not knowing your family history of cancer or diabetes because the Holocaust means you lost entire branches of family. Not being able to find cooking shows that talk about the food you usually eat at home.
The idea here is, though, that there is some place you can go back to - easily or not - where there are other people who share your cultural understandings. I only began to feel like this, as if I wanted to have a room full of people like me, when I was in my 20s. I had been living in Washington DC for several years and my brother came to visit. I was surprised at how happy I was to see him. We are not close. I don't get that rush of happiness to see him the way that I get with G, even. But seeing him in Washington, someone who looked both Japanese and Jewish, made me miss living in a place where people would look at me and know that I'm mixed race. I didn't know how much I'd missed having a few people, perhaps enough to fill a room, who looked like me and my brother.
Our parents both grew up in rooms full of people who looked like them. They has no idea how to be mixed race, and they never even attempted to teach me and my brother how to handle being mixed race. What they did teach us was that we belonged. If it's a room full of Jews, we were told that we belonged in that room full of Jews as much as anyone else in the room. When it was a room (or a house) full of Japanese-Americans, my parents gave us the message that we fully belonged in that room, too. When I came out, I had a whole new set of rooms I belonged in. Even if I bring two other sets of cultural assumptions in the door with me, I belong in that queer room as much as I belong in the Jew room and the Japanese-American room.
What concerns me about that other mother is that she is sending her sons the message that they only belong in the Jewish room if there are other "people of color" in there as well. She's not teaching them that they belong in the Jewish room all the time, that it's their place no matter who else happens to be there at the time. She's teaching them that they don't always belong in the Jewish room.
Maybe I don't belong in any of those rooms. coffeeandink linked to a bunch of other posts where people named several things that are not common knowledge in the wider culture but are understood by people in a smaller culture. There were things in the Jewish one I didn't know and there were things in the queer one I didn't know.
(I put "people of color" in quotes because it's not a term I ever use. You might say that I am a person of color, just a that other mother's sons are people of color and it would give you the impression that I have something in common with them. I don't think I have much in common with them at all. "People of color" is shorthand for people who have common cultural knowledge that is not the majority common knowledge. If you use "people of color" in that context it is not inclusive enough. Those people are often not white, but sometimes they are.)