Steve, I agree with almost everything you have written on these issues. Regarding your conversation with Anita, let's point out that bringing in the Israel-Palestine conflict as proof that racism is involved in Gay's firing is itself evidence of bringing only one, simplistic conceptual tool- racism!!!!- to complex situations that require…
Steve, I agree with almost everything you have written on these issues. Regarding your conversation with Anita, let's point out that bringing in the Israel-Palestine conflict as proof that racism is involved in Gay's firing is itself evidence of bringing only one, simplistic conceptual tool- racism!!!!- to complex situations that require nuance and yes, that dreaded word, context.
Because whatever else the Israel-Palestine conflict is about, it sure as heck is not reducible to Kendi-style racial categorizations. There are black Israelis, and light-skinned Arabs, and Asian migrant workers who were targeted and killed in the Oct 7th attacks. The most right-wing Israelis are often the descendants of refugees from the Arab expulsions in '47 and '48, who are indistinguishable from "people of color."
None of what I'm writing implies support for Bibi and his coalition; I'm simply pointing out at if you look at Israel and Palestine and can only apply weird American ideas about race, you don't understand much if anything about the conflict, even if you're Amnesty International. Why would you think such a person is capable of nuance around something like "black person with important job happens to suck at it and gets fired?" Because the one thing university presidents can never do is piss off the donors, no matter what. If you do that, by definition, you suck at your (real) job.
"Because whatever else the Israel-Palestine conflict is about, it sure as heck is not reducible to Kendi-style racial categorizations"
It's not reducible to Kendi-style categorisations, but there certainly is a Jew/Arab dichotomy. I think Anita is using racism in that very broad sense. It's kind of like when Whoopi Goldberg had to sit on the naughty step because she said Hitler's persecution of the Jews was "not about racism but man's inhumanity to man."
As all of these words get bent and twisted to fit the agendas of whoever is trying to stir up emotional outrage, I think we'll see more and more stuff like this. I find it infuriating.
Yes, I agree. Perhaps what I should have written is something like: the Israel-Palestine conflict isn't at all comprehensible if "racism" is defined as "skin color." But if it's a Jew/Arab (um, and Persian) conflict, then it's not about "race" at all in the modern American usage.
What was particularly weird about the Whoopi Goldberg episode was that for the Nazis, exterminating my relatives in Germany and Ukraine was precisely about <race> as they understood the term.
I don't mean to hijack this thread to make it about something else, so let me validate your comment about plagiarism by noting that earlier this year I finished a professional (not academic) doctoral thesis and I am 100 percent confident that there's no plagiarism in it. Maybe I put a footnote (there were hundreds) in the wrong place, but on no page will you find blocks of text that somebody else wrote. This makes me entirely unsympathetic to the "everybody does it" argument. Had I done what Gay did, the school (which I doubt you've ever heard of) would have tossed me out on my ass.
"I don't mean to hijack this thread to make it about something else"
No, not a hijack at all, I think it's an interesting point. And yes, while we could all debate the specifics of the word "racism," I think you're right that Anita brings Israel Palestine into the conversation because she is only able to look at the world through a single ideological framework. I wrote an article about that actually😄
Steve, I agree with almost everything you have written on these issues. Regarding your conversation with Anita, let's point out that bringing in the Israel-Palestine conflict as proof that racism is involved in Gay's firing is itself evidence of bringing only one, simplistic conceptual tool- racism!!!!- to complex situations that require nuance and yes, that dreaded word, context.
Because whatever else the Israel-Palestine conflict is about, it sure as heck is not reducible to Kendi-style racial categorizations. There are black Israelis, and light-skinned Arabs, and Asian migrant workers who were targeted and killed in the Oct 7th attacks. The most right-wing Israelis are often the descendants of refugees from the Arab expulsions in '47 and '48, who are indistinguishable from "people of color."
None of what I'm writing implies support for Bibi and his coalition; I'm simply pointing out at if you look at Israel and Palestine and can only apply weird American ideas about race, you don't understand much if anything about the conflict, even if you're Amnesty International. Why would you think such a person is capable of nuance around something like "black person with important job happens to suck at it and gets fired?" Because the one thing university presidents can never do is piss off the donors, no matter what. If you do that, by definition, you suck at your (real) job.
"Because whatever else the Israel-Palestine conflict is about, it sure as heck is not reducible to Kendi-style racial categorizations"
It's not reducible to Kendi-style categorisations, but there certainly is a Jew/Arab dichotomy. I think Anita is using racism in that very broad sense. It's kind of like when Whoopi Goldberg had to sit on the naughty step because she said Hitler's persecution of the Jews was "not about racism but man's inhumanity to man."
As all of these words get bent and twisted to fit the agendas of whoever is trying to stir up emotional outrage, I think we'll see more and more stuff like this. I find it infuriating.
Yes, I agree. Perhaps what I should have written is something like: the Israel-Palestine conflict isn't at all comprehensible if "racism" is defined as "skin color." But if it's a Jew/Arab (um, and Persian) conflict, then it's not about "race" at all in the modern American usage.
What was particularly weird about the Whoopi Goldberg episode was that for the Nazis, exterminating my relatives in Germany and Ukraine was precisely about <race> as they understood the term.
I don't mean to hijack this thread to make it about something else, so let me validate your comment about plagiarism by noting that earlier this year I finished a professional (not academic) doctoral thesis and I am 100 percent confident that there's no plagiarism in it. Maybe I put a footnote (there were hundreds) in the wrong place, but on no page will you find blocks of text that somebody else wrote. This makes me entirely unsympathetic to the "everybody does it" argument. Had I done what Gay did, the school (which I doubt you've ever heard of) would have tossed me out on my ass.
"I don't mean to hijack this thread to make it about something else"
No, not a hijack at all, I think it's an interesting point. And yes, while we could all debate the specifics of the word "racism," I think you're right that Anita brings Israel Palestine into the conversation because she is only able to look at the world through a single ideological framework. I wrote an article about that actually😄