Trying to Jew Me Down? I Hope You Have Your Verbal Boxing Gloves OnMay 03 '05 (Updated May 05 '05) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line That this should not be rated. Discussion is fine in the comment section; anger is not. Epinions doesn't allow these words so they must be objectionable!
A little history. When drdevience suggested a write off on political correctness I didn’t want to participate. I didn‘t want to think that hard. However as I read the essays and the comments I couldn‘t stop thinking. In order to quell that I had to write. As a 10 year old I sent $10 to CARE in my mom‘s name for Mother‘s Day. It was around that time that I decided I wanted to be a Social Worker. I wanted to “do good.“ I wanted to contribute to society; to make it a better place; to make sure my children‘s planet was the best it could be. It isn‘t. I think that a lot of hatred in the world is due to the inability of many to respect class differences; color differences, religious differences, sexual preference differences; political differences and all the isms there are. In addition the hatred is due to a society that applauds some groups and denies others; a society that seems to enjoy watching the gap grow. I am a person who is political. I believe in political correctness. Why? Because I truly believe it is a way to alleviate hatred. I want to be a person who is inclusive not exclusive. When I asked a professor what the difference was between calling a person colored versus people of color she told me that colored is exclusionary; people of color is not. I could understand that. I thought that it was good to be color blind (At 20 I dated a man with parents from Cape Verde and was told that if I married him I would be disowned.) until I had another professor who taught me differently. He told me a story that went like this: A man and his young son were in a store. The son saw another man and said to his dad, "Daddy that man is black." The dad answered, "Shhh he will hear you and it is not nice to comment on that." The man of color said, "That’s ok. I am black. I want you to notice my color. My color is what makes me who I am." So I try now not to be color blind but rather to embrace others‘ colors, ethnicities and whatever differences they have from me. The following was posted: "Non-gays get majorly bent out of shape when they hear this word, fa g (Sorry Mobi - I tried VIEW SOURCE. For some reason it won't work - and has not in the past- on my computer.) yet the majority of the Gay community does not. Why is that?" My question is What study did this come from? I would like to see the statistics on this research. For that matter, my daughter is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Sociology. Perhaps I can ask her to pull up some studies. Oh there aren‘t any? Hmm...then how do you know this? I am an American Jew. I identify myself as such. My grandparents were from Latvia. The reason I react when people lump Jew with Black, Irish, etc. is a very simple one. Jew (Judaism) is a religion as Catholicism is a religion. Black is a color as is white, Irish is a country and thus a culture and ethnicity as is Italian or Israeli. I know a person who identifies himself as a Black Jew. If you lump the above together where does he fall in? Or does it not matter? Could there be an Italian Jew? Of course! So I try to educate people that using Jewish with Italian is mixing up religion with ethnicity. It makes me a religion. I am an American. You may be English and your religion is Protestant. I hope this clarifies what I consider an important distinction. I am a Jew. If you told me that I don‘t mind the word Kikke I would tell you that you are dead wrong. Six million Jews later, I do mind the word Kyke. "kikke (kaIk) slang. Also kyke. kikke has one k. 1. n. An offensive name for a Jew. 2. adj. Something Jewish in origin or ownership (also kikkey). 3. n. A grasping, dishonest if also shrewd person (irrespective of race)." http://kpearson.faculty.tcnj.edu/Dictionary/kikke.htm I mind being discriminated against; I mind being told that I am the first Jew someone has met unless they say it because they want to learn; I mind that people think the country/world celebrates Christmas when some people celebrate no holidays at all let alone other holidays. I mind when people, not knowing I‘m Jewish use the term “to Jew down.“ We had a neighbor once who was talking with us and used the term. She didn‘t know we were Jewish. I am embarrassed to say I didn‘t take her to task. That is the last time I chose to ignore ignorance. Because that is what it is. Ignorance. Can I turn that term into something funny? I can if I so choose. That is something else I learned in graduate school. The victimized group uses terms that are unacceptable for others to use. Thus you may hear people who are gay (Please note that I use the term people who are gay rather than gay people. I will get into that in a moment.) using the term fa g about themselves; you may hear me calling myself a Jap (Jewish American Princess) but when others use terms that are by nature derogatory (Jap conjures up what to you? Something positive or negative? Fa g conjures up what to you? Something positive or negative? Niggger (two gs) now what does that conjure up? Yet rappers use the word all the time.) it is just that, derogatory. We will never make headway in this world if we continue to use derogatory terms about each other. On to my use of people who are gay; people of color, a child who is handicapped rather than colored people or a handicapped child. I use those terms as do others because they are not exclusionary and not limiting. A child is much more than his or her handicap. Yet when you identify a child as the handicapped child that is what he or she becomes. Thus the child who is handicapped or has a handicap means that the child is not the handicap; that is just one part of the child. This is nothing new for me. I have been waging this battle for years and years. Even before the term political correctness was known. As a kid I had an aunt who used the term colored all the time. I asked her what color the person was. Well what color was he? Purple, blue, green, does it matter to anyone? The country‘s administration is a right wing one. We have no separation of church and state. We are afraid that this administration can ban marriages between people of color and people not of color; they can ban marriages between religious groups. They are already in our bedrooms, why not take it a step farther? It is a scary thought but those of us who are minorities are scared. Humor doesn‘t take away the fear. Making fun of us or asking that we make fun of ourselves by using terms that have historically been negatives is not the way to go. The way to go is to respect each other and that can‘t be done with using derogatory terms. I once wrote an essay about why I don‘t like the word tolerance. An excerpt: "People who are tolerated know that they are only being tolerated. They are not respected; let‘s face it; you really do not want to hear what they have to say. What I am asking in this editorial is for you not to tolerate me, but to understand me. I am not asking for you to let me speak because you have to, but to let me speak because you want to hear what I have to say. I am not asking for your pity, I do not want to put you on a pedestal and I don‘t want you to put me on a pedestal. I want us to respect each other for what we have to contribute to society, to our families, to each other, to ourselves. I want you to walk next to me, not in front of me. In the 60‘s we had a saying. It was "Fighting for peace is like f*cking for chastity." I say that attempting to use words that have been hurtful in an attempt to alleviate prejudice is like shooting oneself in the foot. Why would we want to do that anyway? It just isn‘t funny.  |
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