Woke Up This Morning

Over the past few days, there was an interesting series of developments in the Jewish communal world involving a video that lambasted so-called "woke antisemitism". 

The video was put out by a group called the "Combat Antisemitism Movement", a somewhat opaque but sprawling organization that counts a wide number of Jewish communal organizations as "partners" (though what level of connection constitutes a "partner" is obscure). It is different from typical fare attacking left antisemitism in that it doesn't primarily focus on anti-Zionist activity, but rather claims -- in a manner reminiscent of David Bernstein and his JILV* -- that various "woke" concepts, like the idea of systematic oppression, are major sources of contemporary antisemitism. It even strikingly takes some prominent far-right incidents of antisemitism (e.g., claims by the Goyim Defense League that "Kanye is Right", a White supremacist-created flyer arguing that "Ending white privilege starts with ending Jewish privilege") and tries to shift blame for them onto left-wing actors.

The video generated backlash. That's not surprising. What is surprising is the scope of it. Several major centrist Jewish players, including the Jewish Federations of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, announced they were withdrawing from CAM in response to the video. CAM, for its part, has taken the video offline "temporarily" due to "concerns raised by some of our partners, and with the aim of fostering a broad consensus."

That, to me, is noteworthy. It was not that long ago when hippie-punching was essentially a free activity in mainline Jewish institutions. You'd never see them backing off based on concerns that they were being too hostile to their left flank. Groups like CAM would positively revel in liberal tears. Backlash would be ignored, if not taken as proof of some sort of bizarre "evenhandedness", where Jewish groups accounted for the fact that most Jews were liberal by bending over backwards to show they could mock liberals with the best of them.

The response here suggests that things may be changing. As I wrote in Haaretz last week, we're in the unfamiliar situation of the Jewish conversation on antisemitism largely being directed by an alliance of the Jewish center and Jewish left, as opposed to the Jewish center and Jewish right. Certain old presumptions of what was and wasn't permissible, that relied on outdated notions of who the key constituencies were, are no longer present. Groups like CAM, who no doubt assumed that this sort of video would have met with the usual reception -- fulsome praise from the right, tacit acceptance from the center, and easily-ignored criticism from the left -- are now forced to reckon with a new reality. That is a very welcome thing to see.

* Bernstein, who authored a book titled "Woke Antisemitism", said that he had seen an initial script for the video but characterized the final product as something that "could have been stronger and more nuanced." Much of the video has more than coincidental echoes of Bernstein's argument -- including the choice to pin the "Jewish privilege" flyer on the left instead of the right.

Watching the Mainstream Jewish Community Stand Up to Lies About Ethnic Studies

When I saw Tablet Magazine had published a rapidly-going-viral article on the California Ethnic Studies curriculum, I felt a despairing sense of deja vu. I had already seen some other hit jobs on the curriculum floating around the Jewish media, and I knew that many of the claims undergirding the attacks were misleading if not false. Yet I assumed we were in for another scenario where the bad faith right-wing outrage machine, capitalizing on legitimate Jewish fears but also stretching way beyond them, would entirely drive the conversation about the curriculum and lead to unnecessary and damaging friction that would entirely blow up the hard work so many in the Jewish community had put in to ensure that Ethnic Studies fairly represented Jews.

You see, in the past when I'd found myself in predicting one of these trainwrecks from afar, I'd contact someone in the establishment Jewish community and plead with them to fire back. Don't let the bad faith actors occupy the field, don't let them control the narrative, don't let them poison the discourse without challenge. And over and over again, the response I got from the folks I talked to was "we don't want to give them any oxygen." The standard tactic in the face of these conservative narratives was to adopt an above-it-all posture of silence. It purported to be a stance of dignity -- not deigning to respond to such obvious falsehoods. In reality, it was an ostrich defense -- hoping that if they buried their heads in the sand, the problem would go away on its own.

And so when I sent out my now ritual missives on this issue; pleading with a leader of one of the organizations to push back against the Tablet narrative racing around the internet, I didn't expect much. And I wasn't surprised when the first response I got back was an instinct to just let it lie. The person I spoke with was worried that more attention might spark still greater backlash, threatening the incredible advances they had already made. 

I argued that silence was more likely to see those advances disappear -- to the extent they were added in deference to the Jewish community, if the perception is that the Jewish community is still unhappy, that doesn't exactly assist the credibility of those Jewish organizations who had been their advocates. More broadly, the folks in the California education system who had made these changes needed to know that the reward for working with concerned Jewish organizations wouldn't be to be left high and dry as soon as there was pushback. The last lesson we want someone to draw is that it's useless to try and assuage Jewish communal concerns because even if you do work with prominent community members you'll still come in for attacks and your erstwhile partners won't have your back.

And wouldn't you know it -- she listened. And others in the Jewish community seemed to have listened to.

It has been striking to see over the past week just how decisively the mainstream Jewish community has rallied against attacks from the communal right on the Ethnic Studies curriculum. Tye Gregory of the San Francisco JCRC had an early editorial out defending the latest draft. It was swiftly followed by columns by Sarah Levin of JIMENA, Hen Mazzig, and JPAC, all blasting the "misinformation" and "misrepresentations" being promulgated about the curriculum. A huge coalition of Jewish establishment heavyweights -- the ADL, AJC, Holocaust Museum, even StandWithUs -- released a united statement urging support for the Ethnic Studies curriculum and condemning bad faith attacks.

I haven't seen anything like it. And it's made a huge difference. The Tablet article's author has been thrown on the defensive, with a weak authors' note appended to the piece that does less to address the substantive criticisms than it does make evident just how effective the pushback has been. In the space of a few days, the article has gone from "the story" in the Jewish press (per Bari Weiss) to almost uniformly discredited. It seems obvious to me that the folks who had been pressing the histrionics about the Ethnic Studies have been taken a bit aback. And why shouldn't they? They're use to peddling this sort of nonsense without any resistance. This was new for them.

I hope it is the start of a trend. I hope it is the start of a more muscular Jewish center, one that knows that it cannot make the problem of right-wing zealots go away just by wishing it so. We'll see if the lesson takes. But boy, has it been nice to see our side throw some elbows of our own for a change.

The Antisemitic Quote That Wasn't in California's Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum

A few years ago, back in 2019, there was a significant controversy over California's draft Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC). Basically, it was a hodgepodge of far-left jargon that barely talked about Jews or antisemitism but sure had some things to say about Zionism and BDS. This did not make the Jewish community happy, as one might expect, and -- led by Mizrahi and Middle Eastern Jewish activists who were particularly galled to be erased from the course given their significant numbers in the state of California -- they rallied an impressive array of allies and community members to demand changes (full disclosure: I was among those who submitting comments on the initial draft urging significant modifications). Luckily, the education powers-that-be in California were actually quite receptive, and the text was sent back for substantial revisions.

Fast forward to today. The ESMC is on its third draft, and many of the Jewish community's suggestions have found their way into the curriculum. The current ESMC draft cites surging rates of hate crimes against Jews, and that we are the most common victims of religious-based hate crimes in southern California. It has an excellent unit focusing on Mizrahi and Middle Eastern Jews -- one of the first I've seen dedicated to this subject -- that specifically characterizes Jews as indigenous to the Middle East. It includes passages from a range of Jewish luminaries including Ruth Wisse, Julius Lester, and Angela Buchdahl. It speaks on how, while Jews have found America to be a land of opportunity, especially after World War II, our successes stand side-by-side with the continued reality of antisemitism -- especially for Jews who have resisted assimilation into dominant American culture. 

Like any work done by committee, one can pick at this or that bit of rhetoric or focus. Still, on the whole, leaders in the Jewish community, such as Tye Gregory of the San Francisco JCRC (and formerly of the LGBT rights group A Wider Bridge) are celebrating it for what it is: a success story. It is a testament to what we in the Jewish community can accomplish via constructive engagement and participation, and proof positive that we can be included in a positive and affirming way in an Ethnic Studies curriculum.

Unfortunately, for certain pockets in our community, this very success is a threat. There are some in the Jewish community who are have made much of the threat posed by Ethnic Studies and other leftist academic ideas, and who have gained a great following and acclamation from fear-mongering about it. Unlike those who have recognized problems in the field but have sought to engage and improve things, these persons are invested in the notion that things like Ethnic Studies are inherently antisemitic, inherently anti-Jewish, and inherently incapable of reform. The original draft of the California ESMC was an omen of how the American left was inexorably falling under the shadow of "Corbynization". For them, and for that narrative, the revised ESMC presented a large problem. What does one do when one's favored ogre appears to have turned over a new leaf?

The answer, if a widely cited Tablet Magazine article by Emily Benedek published earlier this week is any indicator, is simply to lie about it.

Much of the article simply presents generic complaints about "critical race theory" or rehashes content from the initial draft which had already been removed, in order to suggest that the curriculum continued to explicitly demonize Zionism and Israel. Plenty of credulous readers bought the message -- Bari Weiss, for example, linked to the article with a searing indictment of American Jewish leadership: 

"California's schools are mandating the erasure of Jews and the acceptance of anti-Zionism. I blame every single American Jewish leader who didn't bang on about this every single day. Every single one."

The problem? The current draft does not, as best I can tell, even mention the word Zionism or anti-Zionism. It's not present. And the reason it isn't present is because of a bevy of American Jewish leaders who did successfully bang the drum on this and now are having their hard work erased. Nice work.

But the reason why Benedek focuses on the old drafts becomes clearer when you look at what she has to say about the current one. In one of the few passages that speaks on this subject, Benedek writes that in the new draft

[t]wo lessons have been offered about Jews. One, following crude CRT dogma,  teaches that Mizrahi Jews coming to the United States from Arab lands were mistreated by “white” Ashkenazim. The other suggests that Jews of European descent have white privilege.

The first claim is simply a lie, and a lie that generated a furious reaction from the Mizrahi Jewish advocacy group Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA). JIMENA had invested extensive time and energy into helping develop the ESMC's Mizrahi Jewish unit, and they were not pleased to see their efforts so cavalierly misrepresented. They were doubly-displeased that Benedek didn't even deign to reach out to them to learn about the unit they helped construct. They have asked Tablet to issue a correction, but so far the magazine does not appear to have obliged.

The second claim relates to sections of the curriculum which discuss how Jewish racial identity is malleable and how some Jews have conditional White privilege. The intersection of Jewishness and Whiteness is an area I'd like to think I know a little about, and what the ESMC is saying is true -- and more than true, important for understanding how antisemitism continues to operate. As the ESMC notes, "conditional" whiteness is always revocable, particularly when Jews refuse to assimilate or insist on maintaining ourselves as a distinctive people. Recognizing that, and recognizing how Jewish racial status is malleable such that Jews can sometimes be treated as "White" and other times not, is essential if students are to understand how Jews who look like me can and do face continued antisemitic oppression even as in other contexts we might be able to access some of the prerogatives of Whiteness. To be Jewish in America is to be allowed to attend the all-White schools in the segregated south while simultaneously being targeted by the KKK as the ultimate threat to the White race. In short, our whiteness, and access to the privileges thereof, is inconsistent and shifting -- or, we might say, conditional. 

Yet for the ESMC's effort to present this nuanced position in good faith, Benedek echoes other critics in accusing it of being tantamount to Nazi propaganda. No good deed, indeed. 

But that isn't the worst of it. Having struggled to point to anything concrete in the current (as opposed  to older, abandoned) drafts of the ESMC that is antisemitic, Benedek finally appears to identify a whopper of an example in this paragraph:

As a result of the outpouring of criticism of the first ESMC draft, in August 2019, Superintendent Thurmond ordered a revision. A second draft was completed in August 2020 and was immediately criticized for simply moving objectionable material to the appendices and footnotes. In the current, third draft, released in December, some of the most offensive material was actually moved back in. For example, an historical resource was added with the following description of prewar Zionism: “the Jews have filled the air with their cries and lamentations in an effort to raise funds and American Jews, as is well known, are the richest in the world.”

That last quote is quite shocking, and if it were presented approvingly in the ESMC it'd be worthy of condemnation. And precisely because it was so shocking, I went in search of it, wanting to see if there was any context or explanation that might justify it. But my efforts stymied by a more fundamental problem: 

The quote isn't there.

I, along with several other readers, searched high and low for much of the day trying to find where this quote was. It did not appear to be anywhere in the ESMC. And we couldn't find it on google either, so we couldn't even figure out the initial source. Finally, Benedek gave us a clue: She cited line 11180 of the ESMC's "Appendix A", offering sample lesson plans for various units. A bit strange to see it located in an appendix, since it was cited as a case where offensive material was taken out of the "appendices and footnotes [and] ....moved back in" to the main text, but at least we now knew where to look.

Except, it wasn't there either. Line 11180 is part of a string citation to additional handouts and materials that might be consulted. That line specifically was a cite to Ameen Rihani's essay  (published in the 1920s) "Deserts of Fact and Fancy," though it didn't quote any passages from it. But while the quote wasn't in the ESMC itself, maybe it could be found inside Rihani's essay? No again. The words are not present in Rihani's essay either. So what on earth was Benedik talking about?

After several hours of sleuthing, we finally figured it out. The words were not in the ESMC. And they weren't in the "Deserts of Fact and Fancy" article cited in the ESMC. Rather, the material appeared in a different article, not cited or referenced anywhere in the ESMC, that happened to be printed in the same volume as "Deserts of Fact and Fancy" -- albeit 30 pages away. There, finally, we'd uncovered the big offense of the ESMC third draft.

If it wasn't so unethical, it'd be hilarious. Over eleven thousand lines deep into one of the appendices, someone -- no doubt frantically searching for something to hang their hat on in order to continue portraying the revised ESMC as an antisemitic document -- clicks on the alternate link provided for the "Deserts of Fact and Fancy" article (since the first is behind a paywall; if one read it on the original site, incidentally, it's clear that the quote is not present) and then, finding nothing of note in the essay itself, decides to browse through the entire newsletter it appeared in before finding a completely unrelated article with offensive material. Is that offensive material quoted in the ESMC? No. Is it contained in an article cited by the ESMC? No again. Who cares! Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Of course, there's virtually no chance that any actual student would ever come across the quote. It is not, contra Benedek, part of the curriculum, nor is it included in the resources cited in the curriculum. And if there are K-12 students who not only actually look up the fourth entry on the additional readings list, but also proceed to read all the other articles which share a volume with the suggested supplements, then frankly I tip my cap to the Ethnic Studies Curriculum for developing such voracious overachievers.

But the fact that one had to dig so deep into the weeds to find something objectionable in (or more accurately, not in) the ESMC is, in its perverted way, another testament to just how well the Jewish community did in securing necessary reforms. We should be taking a victory lap. And we should be taking down the names of those who would rather see anything else than a world where Jews are, in fact, fairly included and treated in Ethnic Studies.

When It Comes to Demographic Doom, Conservative Pundits Really ARE Whistling Dixie

Responding to David Brooks' fear of an upcoming GOP apocalypse, Daniella Greenbaum Davis might have written the least self-aware pollyanna account of Republican prospects I've ever read. It's almost -- not quite, but almost -- Liel Leibovitz-level bad.

Brooks' argument is simple: young people hate the Republican Party. And as this generation becomes the dominant force in American politics, it becomes a bigger and bigger problem if they hate the Republican Party. If there is to be a conservative appeal to this generation, it has to be one that can speak in the language of pluralism and diversity -- a project that the contemporary Republican Party is racing away from at top speed.

Davis is not convinced. First of all, we get the standard chestnut that even if Trump alienates the youth, he doesn't count because he isn't really "conservative". Specifically:

Trump is not conservative in the strict sense of the word; he’s a libertarian and a libertine.

Trump is a libertarian? Are you kidding me? Trump represents conservativism at roughly its furthest possible distance from libertarianism. His signature policy is a massive increase of state repression at the border. Most recently, he's wreaking havoc on the economy with a threatened tariff war. He pairs a massive ramp up of the security apparatus with targeted economic bailouts and distortions aimed to assist politically-connected and favored industries (like coal). This is the least libertarian posture imaginable.

Moving on:

We don’t need data to show us that young Americans are over-represented on the left. But it was a wise someone — not Winston Churchill, who usually gets credited, but the French historian and prime minister François Guizot — who coined the Burkean insight that anyone who is not a liberal at 20 years of age had no heart, and anyone who is still a liberal at 40 has no head.

Well, I'm glad we got it straight that it wasn't Churchill who said it! What's amazing about this is that Brooks directly addresses this point: He specifically observes that the popular belief that young are always more liberal is actually a myth (see: Israel). Instead, the first few elections a person votes in tends to calcify their political affiliation for the rest of their life -- so if young people learn early on to vote Democrat, it becomes much harder to dislodge them from Democratic affiliation later on.

So the GOP can't just wait for the kids to grow up and get more conservative. Indeed, the reason the younger generation is more liberal is because it is (a) more diverse and (b) more likely to have personal encounters with people of other backgrounds, races, etc. on a regular basis. But that's not going to change over time -- the youth might be older in fifteen years, but they're not going to become Whiter.

In any event, Davis thinks that the growing progressive bent among the youth will eventually implode on itself because it will be too socialist and, as time goes by, will eventually "consume its young". Of course, this directly contradicts the "young people will mellow out as they age" hypothesis, which would instead suggest that the harder edges of Millennial politics will instead get filed off as time goes by -- a more sustainable progressivism replacing certain youthful idealisms. It also has the convenient property of not necessitating a GOP response, since the failure of the progressive wave is axiomatically assured. So no need to tamp down on nativist or flatly racist elements in the GOP coalition -- which one would think would be a necessity if they're ever going to appeal to a generation that either is or is friendly with immigrants and either is or is friendly with non-White people. Instead, it allows the GOP to continue to respond to growing diversity in America by literally whistling Dixie.

Regardless, Davis foresees a purge where the radicals oust the moderates, who are left looking for someone -- anyone -- to carry the torch of classical liberal values. And enter the GOP!

Those exiles might abhor social conservatism, but they would be wrong to define conservatism purely by a handful of socio-religious issues, some of which exercise only the GOP’s powerful but numerically small Evangelical wing. It’s those other conservative specialties — defending free speech, championing a diversity of opinion and faith, defending free-market capitalism — that are the issues that can win back the voters.

This might have some plausibility except that the contemporary Republican Party has never been less well positioned to attract an "exile" interested in these values. We already noted that Trump -- with eager buy-in from the GOP caucus -- has pursued an economic policy of crony capitalism and a social policy of big government repression. And now we see a growing faction of conservative voices -- like Sohrab Ahmari and  Liel Leibovitz -- just openly declaring war against whatever remains of classical liberal conservatism. The ideology that wants to upend libel laws, ban entire academic disciplines, and wreck energy markets to protect polluters can no longer claim to "specialize" in free speech, diversity of thought, or even free markets.

Davis does allow that, eventually, Republicans will have to offer an agenda beyond opposing progressive "nihilism". But it speaks volumes that her survival plan for the GOP depends less on anything they might do, and instead relies on the unshakable faith that eventually Democrats will destroy themselves. Growing progressivism won't last because it can't last. That sort of outlook, ironically, is exactly the sort of docile quiescence that's allowed modern conservatism to decay into the shell of an ideology that it is today. Not free markets, not free speech, not free movement, and not free people. Just Cleek's Law, in ever-purer forms.

Timothy Burke on Cultural Appropriation and Cultural Regulation

Timothy Burke has an absolutely superb blog post on the latest flare-ups about cultural appropriation and his concerns about how some student activists are unwittingly reinforcing a project of bureaucratic regulation of cultural expression. It's definitely a "read the whole thing" bit, but here's a taste:

The concepts of appropriation and ownership.... is where moves are being made that are at least potentially reactionary and may in fact lead to the cultural and social confinement or restriction of everyone, including people of color, women, GLBQT people, and so on. In some forms, the argument against appropriation is closely aligned with dangerous kinds of ethnocentrism and ultra-nationalism, with ideas about purity and exclusivity. It can serve as the platform for an attack on the sort of cosmopolitan and pluralistic society that many activists are demanding the right to live within. 

Appropriation in the wrong institutional hands is a two-edged sword: it might instruct an “appropriator” to stop wearing, using or enacting something that is “not of their culture”, but it might also require someone to wear, use and enact their own “proper culture”.

When I have had students read Frederick Lugard’s The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa, which was basically the operator’s manual for British colonial rule in the early 20th Century, one of the uncomfortable realizations many of them come to is that Lugard’s description of the idea of indirect rule sometimes comes close to some forms of more contemporary “politically correct” multiculturalism. Strong concepts of appropriation have often been allied with strong enforcement of stereotypes and boundaries. “Our culture is these customs, these clothing, this food, this social formation, this everyday practice: keep off” has often been quickly reconfigured by dominant powers to be “Fine: then if you want to claim membership in that culture, please constantly demonstrate those customs, clothing, food, social formations and everyday practices–and if you don’t, you’re not allowed to claim membership”. 

And then further, “And please don’t demonstrate other customs, clothing, food, social formations and everyday practices: those are for other cultures. Stick to where you belong.” I recall a friend of mine early in our careers who was told on several occasions during her job searches that since she was of South Asian descent, she’d be expected to formally mentor students from South Asia as well as Asian-Americans, neither of which she particularly identified with. I can think of many friends and colleagues who have identified powerfully with a particular group or community but who do not dress as or practice some of what’s commonly associated with that group. 

[...]

What I think many activists mean to forbid is not appropriation but disrespect, not borrowing but hostile mockery. The use of costumes as weapons, as tools of discrimination. But it’s important to say precisely that and no more, and not let the word appropriation stand in for a much more specific situational critique of specific acts of harmful expression and representation. “Appropriation” is being used essentially to anticipate, to draw a comprehensive line proactively in order to avoid having to sort out with painful specificity which costumes and parties are offensive and which are not after the fact of their expression. 

[...] 

One of the things that I heard coming from a substantial wave of student activism here several years ago was that they held themselves to be already knowledgeable about all the things that they felt a good citizen and ethical person should know. It was the other students, the absent students, the students who don’t study such subjects, who worried them. And some of the activists had a touching faith in a way in the power of our faculty’s teaching to remake the great unwashed of the student body. If only they took the right classes, they’d do the right thinking. As one Swarthmore student in spring 2013 said in the group I was in, “I can’t believe there are students here who graduate without having heard the word intersectionality.” 

This moment worried me, even though it is important as always to remember: this was a young person, and I said things under similar circumstances that I would be deeply embarrassed to hear quoted directly back to me. It worried me because I hear that same concern a lot across the entire space of cultural activism, both on and off-campuses. 

It worries me first because that student and many similar activists are wrong when they assume that what they don’t like in the culture is a result of the absence of the ideas and knowledge that they hold dear. Far more students here have been in a course where concepts like “intersectionality” come up than this student thought. All political ideologies in the contemporary American public sphere, from the most radical to the most reactionary, have a troubling tendency to assume that agreement with their views is the natural state of the mass of people except for a thin sliver of genuinely bad actors, and therefore where a lack of agreement or acceptance holds, it must be because the requisite knowledge has been kept from the masses. This is a really dangerous proposition, because it blinds any political actor to the possibility that many people have have heard what you have to say and don’t agree for actual reasons–reasons that you’ll have to reckon with eventually. 

It worries me second because I think some activists may be subconsciously thinking that if they can sufficiently command custodial or institutional power, they will not have to reckon with such disagreement. Not only does that mistake custodial power as permanently and inevitably friendly to their own interests, it is where the temptation to use class power against other social groups will enter in, has already entered in.
This is what worries me most. The thing that I wish that student had recognized is that some of the people that he wishes knew the word intersectionality already know the reality of it. They might not have the vocabulary he does, but they have the phenomenology right enough. Perhaps more right than the student did.

That is, I concede, a pretty long taste. But the whole thing is nonetheless worthwhile. Timothy Burke was one of the very first bloggers I read, and for whatever reason he had kind of fallen off of my radar screen. This is a mistake on my part, and one I will hopefully remember to correct in my reading habits.

The Strawman that Broke My Back

I try to ignore most right-wing posts that purport to attack "multiculturalism." I know that they have no knowledge of the theoretical or academic underpinnings of multiculturalism, what the movement actual advocates for and represents, or even, beyond a bare-bones caricature, what the term even means. It is a waste of my time, and yours, to highlight every single boneheaded post or article that purports to indict multiculturalism simply by pointing out an instance of somebody doing something stupid or evil, with a racial/cultural component.

But browsing through Powerline, I came across this post by Scott Johnson which just popped my eyes out.

One of the basic tenets of the contemporary liberal faith is the beauty of "diversity." Every day the dogmas of multiculturalism are promulgated relentlessly by our schools, newspapers and media, and public authorities. The transformation of the United States by waves of immigration from non-European countries is always depicted as a phenomenon to be celebrated, as are the immigrants' religions and cultures.

Minneapolis and St. Paul have been deeply affected by the large number of Somali and Hmong immigrants who have made the Twin Cities metropolitan area their home. Their occasionally disturbing cultural practices and the related social costs are rarely discussed.

Despite the liberal dogmas of multiculturalism, for example, one of Minnesota's leading left-wing legislators was responsible for legislation criminalizing the Somali practice of female genital circumcision in Minnesota in 1994. Her feminism trumped her multiculturalism. Female genital mutilation was not much of a problem in Minnesota before Somalis settled here in the 1980's and 1990's.

Normally, I'd skip over some of the minor misrepresentations and just hit my main beefs, but I'm trying to achieve catharsis here so let's go for the whole hog. Briefly:

1) Multiculturalism is mocked by mainstream media sources--it's a running joke of liberalism gone amok. And certainly our schools don't teach it all beyond dull platitudes about how "everybody is special" but really we're all the same (which is kind of the opposite message from multiculturalism, but whatever). Certainly, I became a fan of multiculturalism in spite of my education at the uber-liberal Walt Whitman High School, not because of it. I can scarcely think of anything I learned from my HS curriculum that even remotely pointed towards a multiculturalist point of view.

2) I don't know who is "rarely" discussing problems within immigrant communities. Among conservatives, nothing seems to provide more glee that discussing how backwards and scary brown people are. And among liberals, I've noticed an acute awareness of difficulties in immigrant communities. Attending college in Minnesota for the past three years, I don't think anybody I've seen is not aware of the particular issues and problems faced by Hmong and Somali immigrants. Problems such as female genital mutilation (FGM) are hardly mysteries to American feminist and multicultural groups--I've seen countless discussions about how horrid the practice is, and what are the best strategies for ending it.

3) The idea that, because there are negative elements to a particular group culture, we should decry their presence entirely, is a particularly weird claim to make on a variety of levels. I'd imagine it is true that the twin cities did not have a big FGM problem until Somali immigrants started arriving, but that's about as meaningful as saying America didn't have a slavery problem until White people started arriving. Meanwhile, the absorption of the whole by the part also seems to be a bit of a double standard. Those of us with a bit more intellectual agility than Johnson possesses can believe there are benefits from incorporating a diverse array of cultures, backgrounds, and experiences into our institutions, without approving of each and every cultural practice that comes our way. For example, despite having many cultural practices I find abhorrent, offensive, or just annoying, I am generally pleased when a given institution has at least some American presence, and think the world is a better place when there is at least some American influence. I know that, while the "manifest destiny" mentality, or the long history of racism, or (ironically enough, given the topic of Johnson's post) our relative apathy towards spousal violence (demonstrated by a culture of silence, strong pressures not to go the police, misogynistic views that give men considerable latitude to deal with "their" women, and a general belief that such issues are "private" matters best kept out of the public eye--reasons that will sound familiar if you keep reading....) are all things about American culture that need to be critiqued and reformed, there are also plenty of good things about American culture that deserve to be promulgated throughout the world. Nimbleness is a useful trait to have.

4) This is perhaps the thing that most ticked me off: What evidence does Scott provide that multiculturalists sanction, ignore, or otherwise condone this behavior? Normally, here is where we get some fringe academic taken out of context to do the work, but Scott doesn't even provide that. Instead, he points out a "left-wing" legislator who worked to toughen penalties for FGM. Well gosh, wouldn't that seem to indicate that the defenders of multiculturalism are equally appalled by FGM and wish to put a stop to it? No, apparently it just means that the legislator let her "feminism trump[] her multiculturalism." Aside from the fact that this is the only time you will ever here Scott Johnson use "left-wing feminism" as anything but a swear word, the entire argument is just breath-taking in how far it has to stretch out to make sure it condemns the right people. As we will see below, even the barest familiarity with the multicultural position would show that it takes precisely the culture-conscious position Scott wants it to take, rendering his whole argument a bizarre "12 wrongs make a right" tenor.

Okay, back to the main. Johnson links to this story about an attempted murder of a wife by her husband in a Somali immigrant family. The story delves into how the particulars of Somali cultural practice often make these crimes hard to prosecute. There is a culture of silence surrounding domestic abuse, which prevents reform from penetrating. There are strong community norms that seek to "deal" with such abuses in-house, without informing relevant authorities. Victims are pressured into keeping silent and not going to the police. All of this "suggest[s] a specific cultural component that is uncomfortably subsumed within the category of 'domestic abuse.'" This obfuscation, we are led to believe, is a product of adherence to the multiculturalist dogma.

This, to be blunt, is a spectacularly ignorant claim. Why? Because the multiculturalist movement has been saying precisely what Scott is arguing for decades. Multiculturalists have specifically critiqued how maintaining a universal narrative of such concepts like "domestic abuse" tends to inadequately account for the way abuse plays out in minority communities, thus rendering them particularly under-protected and enhancing their subordinated status. I am baffled as to how anyone with even a remote awareness of the tenets of multiculturalism (and here we may have our problem) could miss this, as the need for particularized analysis of minority-group practices as part of reformist agendas is probably the single most central insight to the entire multiculturalist agenda. For example, here's Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, known as the founder of the Critical Race Feminism movement and certainly someone who would fit into the "multiculturalist" label, on some of the specific cultural barriers that make it more difficult for immigrant women to escape domestic abuse via "conventional" (mainstream, White) means:

[C]ultural barriers often further discourage immigrant women from reporting or escaping battering situations. Tina Shrum, a family counselor at a social service agency , points out that " .... Just to find the opportunity and courage to call us is an accomplishment for many [in the Asian community]." The typical immigrant spouse, she suggests, may live "[i]n an extended family where several generations live together, there may be no privacy on the telephone, no opportunity to leave the house and no understanding of public phones." As a consequence, many immigrant women are wholly dependent on their husbands as their link to the world outside their homes.

Language barriers present another structural problem that often limits opportunities of non-English-speaking women to take advantage of existing social support services. Such barriers not only limit access to information about shelters, but also limit access to the security shelters provide. Some shelters turn non-English-speaking women away for lack of bilingual personnel and resources. These examples illustrate how patterns of subordination intersect in women's experience of domestic violence." [Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, "Intersectionality and Identity Politics: Learning from VIolence against Women of Color," reprinted in Feminist Theory: A Reader 2nd Ed., Wendy K. Kolmar & Frances Bartkowski, eds. (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2005), pp. 533-542, 535]

Far from ignoring the cultural component to such violence, Crenshaw stresses it as an integral part of determining how to redress it. If our normal anti-abuse measures involve women calling a hotline, for example, Shrum's experience would let us know this will be inadequate for many Asian immigrant women. I, too, have written posts on how knowledge of specific cultural practices is essential if we are to truly to enact a progressive agenda respecting the rights of women in a pluralist, multi-cultural society. Amazingly, this leads to yet another irony--dealing with the "cultural component" to abuse cases (among others) requires a viewpoint that is conscious of these differences and may require different resources and responses for different communities. In other words, it will be (shudder) color-conscious. So it is that, while Johnson is quite willing to pontificate on the problem, he probably will stand in opposition to the solutions that would be indicated by the issues he is bringing up because they won't be "color-blind" (who wants to do an over/under on how often "the soft bigotry of low expectations" will be deployed in that future post?).

I could elaborate on the multicultural prescription for dealing with domestic violence at greater length, but that would digress from the point of this post, which is that multicultural feminists have been doing exactly the work Johnson says we should be doing, for far longer than he's cared about the issue, and will continue to do so long after he loses interest in the plight of Somali immigrant women. Any good multiculturalist will tell you that spousal abuse is a problem in the Somali community, and a problem in the White American community, and that both problems will require different approaches to solve because both problems are tied up in particular cultural practices that change the structural terrain. Know thy enemy, and don't be ignorant. Sheesh.

Negative Gain Round-Up

I actually have made negative progress on my finals this week. The four pages I've written are washed out by the five page paper I only just today was informed/remembered I had. Net: negative one page. Speaking of finals and failing, I also played in the IM floor hockey championship game today. I had two goals, but we lost 5-3. Still, it was an excellent season (we had to win a razorthin 2-1 upset to even make the finals), and we'll be back next term.

So instead of real posts, you get a round-up:

The NYT has a cool story about adopted Chinese orphans getting their Bat Mitzvot. I like anything that binds Judaism into multiculturalism--we're not all (or even mostly) White, y'know (for example, That Black Lesbian Jew)!

A BBC Poll is out, measuring various countries' assessments of whether other countries are mostly positive or negative influences on the world. Israel beats Iran for last place, both as an average and in terms of most countries ranking it last. Israel had net positives only from the US, India, Kenya, and Nigeria. Incidentally, Germany's split on Israel was 10% positive, 77% negative--only Turkey, Egypt, and Lebanon had lower net negatives for the Jewish state.

Belle Waring has a stellar post on female sexuality from a feminist lens.

A post by Jill at Feministe explores her personal experience being targeted on law school posting forums. Some pretty sleazy stuff happens on those threads. Dave Hoffman makes an interesting contribution to the discussion.

Peggy McGuinness blogs on the State Department's release of the 2006 Human Rights report. It's a bit tough to condemn Egypt for torture when we're sending our terror suspects over to Cairo so they can be tortured on our behalf.

Ezra Klein excerpts from an intriguing interview with GOP Presidential Candidate Gov. Mike Huckabee (AR).

Watch the surge work!

The Washington Post has a series of stories up on the Darfur situation. They aren't good news. The refugee camp situation along the Chadian border is worsening, and gunmen have kidnapped and killed two peacekeepers. Meanwhile, Sudanese leader Omar al-Bashir wrote Bush a letter, and Bush apparently wrote back (no judgment on my part without knowing the content of his response).

A Southern blogger not-so-gently corrects Newt Gingrich for blaming the victims of Katrina.