zionism

[Kelley Walker]

At 09:52 AM 7/19/01 -0700, joanna bujes wrote:
>At 08:50 PM 07/18/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>>Now you could say there is shared language,
>>culture, and religion within Israel, but these
>>are not the constituents of a race, but of a
>>nation.  Call Israel nationalist, theocratic,
>>chauvinist, and racist in regard to certain
>>non-jewish groups.  But I don't think it is
>>accurate to call it a racial state, or to
>>characterize its consciousness as racial.
>>There just aren't enough jews to have a race.
>
>The point is they DO!  As I mentioned before, it's not a question of 
>religion; you can be a zionist, "jewish," atheist. To be jewish, your 
>mother has to be jewish OR you have to convert to Judaism...a fairly rare 
>occurrence. But mainly, it's a blood sport. I know this intimately as the 
>child of a jewish/christian marriage, which made me a "dirty jew" to the 
>christians and a dirty shiksa to the jews.
>
>Now, of course, they are not really a race, Or, if they are, they are the 
>same "race" as the Arabs, so it's a moot point.

there is no really race anyway. what exactly was shared in 1850 among US 
slaves who'd be in the americas for 200 yrs, people living in what we now 
call Egypt, people living in the Carribean... you get my drift. absolutely 
nothing was shared - not culture, not religion, not language, and 
definitely not skin color, let alone other physical traits.  race isn't 
about skin color, biological, physical traits. race is purely about 
socially constituting a group as raced. and the dominant group that 
'creates' a raced other is, simultaneously, creating its own race except, 
thus far, the process has entailed _erasing_ the dominant group's race.

blacks have race, apparently, whites don't?  right
and women, they have gender, too, right? but men don't.
riiiiiiiiiight

no, creating a subjugated other requires creating the dominant ONE.  that's 
why it's racist max. sheesh. this is not a new idea on LBO and it 
definitely isn't a new idea on the left.

i've managed to read about 4 posts in this thread and already i'm 
nauseated. i freakin' cannot believe that LBO has been alive since 1998 and 
people here are tossing around the idea that there is "really" race.

honestly

maybe you didn't mean it this way joanna, but still, there's just no 
"really" race.