intersectionality

A not so diasporic dialogue

Awhile back, friends invited me to a writers group. Although I told them that I wasn’t quite the right fit for the group, they convinced me to go.

The meeting was nearby. I enjoyed walking on a cold, dark and starry night. Yet, the meeting’s “gatekeeper” told me that I wasn’t eligible for their future gatherings, as I didn’t (yet) write or edit in their genre. Instead, she invited me to another writers event in October. (I’m not on the social media lists for these types of things, as I tend to focus on writing deadlines and my household – and I’m introverted.)

The event, titled Diaspora Dialogues, took place on a Friday and Saturday. Although it might been possible for me to attend some parts of it, I saw only one gathering that interested me. Called Vulnerability and the Public Space, it boasted a live podcast, but it was held on Saturday afternoon. As someone who writes on religious issues in the public sphere, it seemed relevant. However, I saw no way that I could pull off attending – Saturday is a family day for us. After we go to services, I’m often feeding everyone a big lunch and playing with kids afterwards. (In an ideal world, we’d even take a nap!) To go, I’d have to have given up my day off and commit to attending on Shabbat.

This “diaspora” event, which seemed designed for Canadians of colour, was scheduled at a time when Muslims might be busy (Friday afternoon) and on Shabbat, when Jewish families might be busy with family or synagogue or both. It wasn’t inclusive of religious diversity. It excluded any person who might be both religiously observant and a Canadian minority.

Even the event’s title puzzled me, as the first dictionary definition for diaspora usually references the historical dispersal of the Jewish people outside of Israel. The “scattering of a people outside their original country to other places” is a secondary definition. So, OK, this was a secondary use of the definition, fine.

I resolved my personal conflict. I emailed one of the organizers to point out the discrepancy. Although I write about vulnerable religious issues, often in the public space, I wouldn’t be able to attend this “diaspora” event, as its timing excluded Canadian religious minorities. No matter, though, perhaps I could access the podcast online later? Where, I asked her, could I locate the podcast link?

I received no reply. The podcast never appeared online.

We celebrate our religious freedom on Chanukah. It’s the chance to rededicate our spaces to Jewish practice. However, the holiday’s origins are a tale of struggle between minorities and the majority: Jewish assimilationists, religious fundamentalists and the Seleucid empire’s religious majority (aka the Greeks, or the Assyrians). We remind ourselves of this in each generation – we can’t take religious freedom or Jewish practice for granted.

There has been a huge rise in antisemitic activity. Identifiable Jews or Israelis are now often targeted, assaulted and harassed throughout the world.

A far more subtle and insidious change has also happened in terms of Jewish identity. Now, U.S. President Donald Trump has decided, via presidential order, to define Jewish students as an ethnic or racialized “national”group that, theoretically, can’t be discriminated against. Yet, the definition alone is a worrying precedent.

Take a look around you at any Chanukah event. We’re not one race by any (purely artificial and historic) definitions. We aren’t one homogenous ethnic group, even if we might have been thousands of years ago. Just ask those who argue about doughnuts versus latkes or other holiday foods. What or who defines us? We’re now facing new identity definitions – as delineated from the outside.

We are a diaspora religious minority group that evolves and changes. We haven’t disappeared despite changing definitions.

Chanukah’s a minor holiday on our calendar. It celebrates clinging to our freedoms in a dark world. It relies on a subtle understanding that not all discrimination is based on racism. It implies that religious, ethnic or racial background alone doesn’t solely define someone’s minority status.

A true acknowledgement and respect for religious freedom is one that practises intersectionality instead.

What is intersectionality? Our identities – racial, sexual, class, gender, religion, nationality, etc. – are complex and changing. We are each the result of several roads, always under construction, that meet in one huge intersection.

As Jewish North Americans, living in the Diaspora, we’re more than one ethnicity, gender or race. Together, we celebrate our tradition and identity as a triumph over adversity. We just may have to celebrate with an understanding that we’re no longer included in some folks’ definition of diaspora and, hence, excluded from the narrative. Heck, I cannot even access the podcast about the narrative!

Wishing you a very happy, inclusive Chanukah from my family to yours. Have a great winter break, one where you feel included! May it be full of light, joy and peace.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. Check her out on Instagram @yrnspinner or at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Prejudiced reasoning

On June 24, as part of gay pride festivities taking place in cities around the world, an incident occurred at a “dyke march” in Chicago that rightfully caught the attention of people everywhere. A group of Jews who were attending the event with rainbow pride flags emblazoned with the Star of David were asked to leave.

There are at least two galling aspects to this incident. The first and most obvious is the unabashed bigotry of throwing people out of what is ostensibly a human rights march because they belong to an identifiable group. The second is the misrepresentation of victim and victimizer – Jews were asked to leave because some other participants might feel “triggered” or “unsafe.”

To understand the reasoning, such as it is, we need to recognize how concepts of minority and human rights have altered in recent years – and how these changes bode ill for Jews.

Among the varied forms of antisemitism is one that sees Jews as the embodiment of privilege. This is because antisemitism differs from many other forms of discrimination in part by how the perpetrators view their target. White supremacy, which also seems to be having a renaissance in the United States, is a strain of discrimination that allows the perpetrator to feel better about themselves by positioning themselves (in their minds) above members of another group. Antisemitism, at present at least, differs in that the perpetrators often attribute to Jews a sense of superiority. Review the comments section of almost any news story involving Jews and see how ubiquitous the term “Chosen people” is in the screeds of antisemites. There is a prevalent idea that Jews think they are better than other people – and deserve to be brought down a notch.

In Chicago, people who see themselves as victims turned what limited power they had onto a group that they miscategorized through a crude and racist ideological lens: the powerful Jews may oppress Palestinians and control Hollywood, Washington, the banks, the media and what not, but, at the very least, we can promote equality and justice by kicking them out of our dyke march. There is actually a logic to it, if you recognize the prejudiced reasoning behind it.

Economic inequality experienced by minorities, police violence, systemic discrimination, growing social intolerance, a rise of open racism and xenophobia and a vast range of other problems are real. The idea that anyone was “unsafe” because Jews were present in a lesbian march is not. This type of thinking diminishes the credibility of these movements. It also undermines the foundation of the entire social justice movement, which talks constantly about “allies.” When it comes to Jews, it seems, talk is all it is.

Beyond the binaries

The concept of intersectionality recognizes that multiple forms of oppression and discrimination can impact individuals at the same time. For example, African-Americans experience systemically and socially both economic disadvantage and racial discrimination. Black women face an addition layer of intersectional oppression and black LGBTQ people add homophobia to the mix.

Intersectionality can be problematic for the Jewish community. As we have discussed in this space previously and will again, despite historical realities, Jewish people are often perceived by others as an advantaged, rather than a disadvantaged, minority. It does not take long on the sort of online forums where the term intersectionality is commonly used before stereotypes of Jewish power show up. Similarly, Zionism is seen by some not as the realization of an indigenous rights movement for self-determination that it is, but rather as a form of colonialism.

In one of the most self-evident examples of intersectionality’s potential blind spots, the intersection of Palestinian rights and gay rights begets ludicrousness like Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, which makes common cause with extremists who throw homosexuals off roofs in order to condemn the perceived colonialism and myriad other “sins” of Zionism. Very frequently, in the discourse found in some far-left circles, antisemitism is dismissed because it does not fit the ideology of those who determine where the intersections are. Or, rather, it is made to not fit.

This is too bad, because selecting which humans are eligible for inclusion in a human rights movement based on immutable characteristic is, by definition, a human rights movement founded on false premises.

Of course, social theory and the real world are disparate points on a spectrum. A beautiful real-world example of something we might term intersectionality took place last week here in Vancouver.

Bernard Richard, British Columbia’s Representative for Children and Youth, spoke at the ceremony for the awarding of this year’s Janusz Korczak Medal for Children’s Rights Advocacy. He observed that it might be difficult for some people to see the parallels between a Jewish Pole who died in the Holocaust and a social worker and activist who is a Canadian First Nations woman. But the inspiring intersection of these two lives makes eminent sense.

Dr. Janusz Korczak, as regular readers know, was a hero of the Holocaust who chose to accompany the 200 children in the care of his orphanage to their deaths in Treblinka, despite the Nazis offering him a reprieve. But he is a hero not only for the way he died, but for the work of his life. Seen as the originator of the children’s rights movement, Korczak insisted on the recognition of children’s innate humanity – rather than merely their potential – and insisted on seeing children as individuals fully deserving of respect and self-determination.

Far away in time and place, Dr. Cindy Blackstock insisted on the rights of indigenous Canadian children. A human rights complaint she initiated, which took nine years to wend its way through the byzantine structures of federal institutions, resulted in a January 2016 decision that Canada has consistently discriminated against the 165,000 aboriginal children who live on reserves, and their families, by systemically underfunding services to those children and youth based solely on their identities.

Blackstock was awarded the annual Korczak medal for exemplifying the values of Korczak in advancing children’s rights.

In her acceptance speech, Blackstock spoke of walking in the footsteps of ancestors and others who came before. Korczak and Blackstock are both models for all who seek to advance the condition of children in the world. It is impossible to imagine what future greatness may be inspired by their examples. A Polish Jewish man, Korczak effectively invented a concept that is now entrenched in United Nations testaments to the rights of the child, affecting the lives of potentially every child on earth. An indigenous Canadian woman, Blackstock shepherded a human rights challenge that will improve the lives of every child living on reserves in Canada, and their families.

Someday, who knows when or where, these two examples will inspire some other individual to stand up where injustice and inequality intersect with some other group of people. Then that individual will themselves become a model for others.