New California Curriculum and Jewish Privilege

Bruria

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 2:15 pm

And all Jewish people are white now? No mizrahim, yemenites, just white Europeans? It's terrible how they try to make all Jews as entitled white and I can't believe how this curriculum is allowed!

monkeymamma

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 2:16 pm

The Time Is Now for a Jewish Civil Rights Movement | Opinion

BROOKE GOLDSTEIN , FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE LAWFARE PROJECT
ON 8/31/20 AT 7:30 AM EDT

The Jewish community has a long and proud tradition of mobilizing for positive change. When Rabbi Abraham Joseph Heschel and Martin Luther King Jr. marched hand-in-hand for racial equality, they made cross-cultural support for civil rights a hallmark of liberal doctrine. "Intersectionality" comes naturally for the Jewish people, the oldest and most persecuted minority community in the world. These days, our signs say "Black Lives Matter" (BLM) and "Love is Love" and a litany of other slogans designed to bring attention to just causes that are important, but are not exclusive to our tribe. Yet we cannot seem to gin up even a small fraction of this enthusiasm and support when members of our own community come under attack.

A few months ago, my client Lihi Aharon was brutally attacked while riding on the New York City subway, leaving with a scar on her face for life simply because she is a Jew. No one demanded that we "say her name." When Josef Neumann's skull was hacked to pieces by a machete-wielding racist at a Chanukah party in Monsey, Jews didn't occupy the streets and demand justice as he laid unconscious in the hospital. When four Jews were gunned down in a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, we didn't blackout our Instagram accounts. It's open season against Jews in this country, yet only a few of my Jewish friends even bothered to share these stories on social media.

Instead, the Jewish Left is organizing for LGBTQ rights, Black lives, women's rights and against President Trump. They write op-eds demanding we march behind BLM, a movement plagued with Jew-hatred, afraid they will "cede the space" if they don't "show up" but failing to demand the same loyalty when a Jewish cause arises. The just cause of Jewish rights has been abandoned by the Left and replaced with a reform agenda that includes gender-neutral Mattel dolls, protesting ICE and asexual pronouns. Traditional liberal values that Jews have championed for decades, like free speech, self-sovereignty and criticism of religion have been replaced with safe spaces, open borders and criticism of Islamophobia. With appropriate irony, these new values are used as a weapon, especially on campus, against Jewish students and the Jewish state.

On the other hand, millions of philanthropic dollars, dozens of think tanks and a ton of effort have been put into "pro-Israel advocacy." It has barely moved the needle. Students are sent into the campus arena with a shield, not a sword. They are told to memorize 15-page pamphlets on why Israel isn't an apartheid state so that they might be able to regurgitate the facts when attacked. So-called pro-Israel advocacy is never as s-xy as posing for a selfie with your fist up in the air. The Jewish community made a strategic mistake by allowing arguments about a complex foreign conflict to define Jewish advocacy.

If a Jewish student is harassed on campus and told she must answer for the alleged crimes of a foreign country, our answer to-date has been, "let's debate the points." Instead, our response should be, "you're targeting me with a political litmus test because of my cultural and ethnic identity as a Jew, and that's racist." Muslim students are not required to reject Iran's nuclear ambitions as a necessary precondition to joining student clubs. Why are we teaching Jewish children that they must debate Israel? Why have we focused our efforts on pro-Israel advocacy, instead of launching a great civil rights movement?

BLM and the New Women's Movement (NWM) have become masters at strategic mobilization in the civil rights space. They operate at a level the Jewish community has yet been able to achieve. Their broad appeal is a result of key tactics, which our community must adopt and mold to fit our cause.
These movements have affected a seismic shift in the national dialogue because they impose real consequences for bad behavior. The NWM zeroes in on specific targets, men who have a history of s-xual abuse, and makes sure they face dire consequences for their behavior. BLM uses direct action tactics to gain publicity, such as shutting down highways, chaining their leaders to trains and other methods to disrupt everyday life. Multinational corporations have aligned themselves with both movements because they understand the long-term economic and social costs if they do not do so.

There is almost no price to pay for those who discriminate against Jews. This double standard exists for one reason: The Jewish community is not properly organized. We have storied, well-meaning and well-funded institutions led by an old guard utterly unfamiliar with the 21st-century tools and tactics required to effectuate positive change on a national level. They run hierarchical legacy organizations that lack the flexibility and drive to respond rapidly to changing events. There is no appetite to take risks and innovate in any meaningful way, lest they upset a few large donors or make things awkward for long-standing partners.

BLM and the NWM are more spontaneous movements with creativity, passion and drive. They are networks of decentralized, chapter-based protest organizations, which provide training and logistical support for grassroots mass mobilization. The central organization sets the tone and principles under which different groups operate. A solid training infrastructure produces a steady supply of skilled organizers who can be deployed to local areas and train local leaders to effectively fight for change.

This anarchist model of decentralized leadership makes member-led organizing and direct action possible. It empowers people through civil engagement and encourages cross-communal partnership, lending support to and from various causes. The Jewish community has organized itself from the top down, focusing on building organizations, not training grassroots leaders in civil rights advocacy.

Successful civil rights movements present cohesive and compelling narratives. Divisiveness, partisanship and our lack of a clear message have crippled us tremendously. A sizable number of Jewish intellectuals have spoken out against the application of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus. We are unable to differentiate between protecting free speech and punishing targeted harassment that singles out Jews due to their ethnic and religious identity. We degraded ourselves when, as a community, we failed to unequivocally support the American embassy relocation to Jerusalem, a city so central to the Jewish culture and religion that we pledge our limbs lest we forget it. To what end were Jewish values compromised to placate our detractors and further partisan politics?

Perhaps our greatest failure has been the absence of significant civil rights advocacy through the courts, or impact litigation. One of the best things about American democracy is the citizenry's ability to effectuate societal change through the legal system. Roe v. Wade codified women's right to choose. Brown v. Board of Education judicially mandated desegregation. Most recently, Obergefell v. Hodges guaranteed marriage equality. You would be hard-pressed to name a seminal Jewish civil rights case, despite the disproportionate number of lawyers in our community.

Until I founded The Lawfare Project, there was not a single entity dedicated to impact litigation on behalf of Jews. The NAACP's Legal Defense Fund has spent nearly a century filing cases to advance the civil and human rights of the Black community. Lambda Legal has played a similar role for the LGBT community since 1971. There is a Muslim Legal Fund of America, and even a Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund. We have only just begun, as a minority community, to take advantage of our rights to equal protection under the law by strategically using the legal system to fight Jew-hatred.

Jews have been subjected to every kind of abuse and persecution for centuries, to say nothing of multiple attempted genocides. Jew-hatred is structural and systemic, and it has been a fixture of Western society. It's time to end it. Ending Jew-hatred requires a seismic rewiring of the human psyche, but it can be achieved. It also requires a change of focus internally. No more printing handbooks for Jews about how to organize for BLM and how to advocate for Israel in anti-Semitic spaces. Our handbooks should be teaching Jewish youth how to organize and advocate for policies that enhance our status as a minority community. Our training infrastructure should teach how to introduce social consequences for those who are caught on the wrong side of our issues.

Now is the time to seize the opportunity and launch a movement that ensures Jewish liberation and justice through peaceful direct action. We must impose social, legal and financial consequences for Jew-haters. The Jewish community must no longer tolerate antiquated stereotypes and casual exclusion. It must resist entanglement in Middle Eastern politics and mobilize against the colonization of the campus space. Jew-hatred can no longer be acceptable in our society. The time for a Jewish civil rights movement is now.

Brooke Goldstein is founder and executive director of The Lawfare Project. Follow her on Twitter: @GoldsteinBrooke. https://www.newsweek.com/time-.....WBSws

Rappel

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 2:23 pm

Finprof, I think you need to read the Units overview. This curriculum is not what you're describing. According to this curriculum, a Manhattan lawyer whom is Asian is persecuted. Kamala Harris is persecuted. Flipping Carlos Slim is persecuted. And they all deserve a justice that has not yet been served, due to their looks and family history. What is that justice? A complete overturn of current society, from the cellars to the attics.

-------

And btw, regarding kids having these discussions: No one whom grew up poor and "disadvantaged" needs to be told that life is a horrid, dark, roach-infested hell. It's what we did about it that counts. Blaming your money, or your family, or your looks, is as useless as lying down on the train tracks to die. Call yourself "disadvantaged" because of features you can't change, and you will never live past that identity, even if you become a millionaire. It's a hopeless, helpless, heartless thing to sap a young person's courage by making them believe they are inherently something less in society.

monkeymamma

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 2:23 pm

Bruria wrote:

And all Jewish people are white now? No mizrahim, yemenites, just white Europeans? It's terrible how they try to make all Jews as entitled white and I can't believe how this curriculum is allowed!

Jews are only considered white when it comes to denying us opportunities and services reserved for those who qualify under affirmative action. So Jews were historically denied access to college because we were Jewish but now we can be denied access to college for being "white". Same old anti-semitism but now disguised because discrimination against white people is legal. But dont worry, we are not really considered white for anything else, that is the privilege of being Jewish Can't Believe It

-- https://forward.com/fast-forwa.....aYar0

finprof

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 2:25 pm

Nowhere does it say that all Jews are white. This is an interesting assumption though, and I'm sure one that would be brought up in the classroom by the students!

nchr

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 2:27 pm

SixOfWands wrote:

Of course Jewish kids know that there is antisemitism. But this would seem to be telling non-Jewish kids that antisemitism is a thing of the past.

Up until that point, its valuable and interesting.

Honestly, most secular Jewish kids in large cities will never experience anti semitism and probably do not know it exists in the US.

finprof

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 2:30 pm

Rappel wrote:

I grew up as the poor disadvantaged kid. Schools know how to handle this: these issues are never discussed to "benefit the poor kid" they are discussed to benefit the wealthy privileged kids by opening their eyes!

I will read the overview again.

servewithjoy

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 2:32 pm

At secular colleges and universities so called secular Jews are likely to encounter anti semitism as well as certainly anti Israel anti Zionist rhetoric, graffiti, and more. The campuses have for years and decades been increasingly left and that means increasingly these ramifications.

Hashem Yishmor.

finprof

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 2:35 pm

The overview says:
". Furthermore, ethnic studies scholars and classroom teachers established through research that courses in the field have:
• Helped students develop a strong sense of identity
• Contributed to students’ sense of agency and academic motivation
• Helped students discover their historical and ancestral origins
• Reduced stereotype threat
• Aided in the socioemotional wellness of students
• Increased youth civic engagement and community responsiveness
• ...
• Strengthened social and cultural awareness
Ethnic Studies courses, teaching, and learning will:
1. cultivate empathy, community actualization, cultural perpetuity , self-worth, self-determination, and the holistic well-being of all participants, especially Native People/s and people of color;
2. celebrate and honor Native People/s of the land and communities of color by providing a space to share their stories of struggle and resistance, along with their intellectual and cultural wealth;
3. center and place high value on the pre-colonial, ancestral knowledge of Native people/s and people of color that is typically marginalized in society;
4. critique empire-building in history and its relationship to white supremacy, racism and other forms of power and oppression
5. challenge imperialist/colonial beliefs and practices on multiple levels
6. connect ourselves to past and contemporary resistance movements that struggle for social justice on the global and local levels to ensure a truer democracy; and
7. conceptualize, imagine, and build new possibilities for post-imperial life that promotes collective narratives of transformative resistance, critical hope, and radical healing. ..."

I'm not seeing anything bad here. All of this is standard first-year college seminar stuff that a HS Jr or Sr would be fine with!

Rappel

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 2:39 pm

finprof wrote:

I'm not here to fight over whom has a worse history.

The point is that blaming modern society's ills on race (sorry, forgot to be pc - "ethnicity") is worse than total ignorance, because it's a false paradigm which will teach children fruitless and destructive modes of thought. Not poor children. Not rich children. All children will be pushed into a divisive paradigm whose only focus is to tear others down in the name of justice.

How can that be the road to success?

finprof

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 2:54 pm

Rappel wrote:

I'm sorry that you think so little of the average school kid that you think this is what they will get out of this. Recognizing injustice isn't placing blame, its recognizing a fact. As I said before where you come from is A factor, not THE determining factor. The discussion you seem to fear actually focuses on how to overcome your initial disadvantages. Change does not happen without first recognizing the issue. These kids are the future- why is asking them to face the issues of society head-on so upsetting to you?

My parents and my school prepared me well to recognize where I came from and help me to rise up. Why should I doubt my ability or the ability of my kid's school do help them do the same? I am proud that my kids will be starting off on a "higher rung". They know how hard my parents and I worked to achieve that and they recognize that some of their peers will need more help just like Mommy did.

The way I read the overview: There is no blame. There is no desire to stoke prejudice. There is only a desire to recognize the divisions that exist with a goal of healing them.

keym

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 3:05 pm

Does the curriculum say Irish vs Jewish?
Or Irish vs German Jews vs Russian Jews?
Does it differentiate between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants?

Rappel

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 3:06 pm

Finprof - I see we have very different perceptions of reality, but I'm not sure where it stems from.

May I ask: why do you conflate "poor/disadvantaged/inner city" with "non-white"?

finprof

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 3:13 pm

I don't. If you are referencing my Trump vs. Inner city guy comment that was purely a wealth comparison. It is interesting that that is the way that you interpreted it.

Bruria

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 3:18 pm

finprof wrote:

Nowhere does it say that all Jews are white. This is an interesting assumption though, and I'm sure one that would be brought up in the classroom by the students!

It does assume all are, look at the title: Unit 6: Irish and Jewish Americans: Redefining White and American

Bruria

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 3:19 pm

monkeymamma wrote:

-- https://forward.com/fast-forwa.....aYar0

Agreed, same old anti-Semitism..

Rappel

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 3:20 pm

finprof wrote:

I don't. If you are referencing my Trump vs. Inner city guy comment that was purely a wealth comparison. It is interesting that that is the way that you interpreted it.

I actually missed that line on first read - I just went back and found where you said it.

No, I ask because you keep referencing wealth, when the curriculum clearly is discussing ethnicity. I'm trying to analyze your views on this issue from your several posts here, and I'm at a loss as to why you keep bringing it up, unless you equate one with the other.

Last edited by Rappel on Tue, Sep 01 2020, 3:25 pm; edited 2 times in total

Fox

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 3:21 pm

Given the lack of success public schools seem to have in teaching basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills, perhaps they should be focusing on these topics first.

Imagine how much discrimination and privilege could be overcome if graduates entered high school and/or the work force fully competent in these basic skills. There would be less need to introduce them to grievance studies.

monkeymamma

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 3:23 pm

finprof wrote:

How do Jews fit into this? Or are Jews no longer allowed to celebrate who we are, where we come from or what we went through and are still going through now that you perceive us to be "white"? Were we "white" in Auschwitz or when we werent welcome in stores or colleges or when we were shipped back to Europe? Are we "white supremacists" and "former colonists/slaveowners" who are oppressing other people considered to be "people of color"? How did we go from being hated for being Jewish to being hated for being "white"? Or is it just a pretext to discriminate against us and silence us (considering that they are using the term "white privilege" to silence white people which is just Hilter/Nazi rhetoric who used "Jew Privilege" to silence Jews which eventually led to genocide)? Keep in mind that the U.S. Supreme Court already ruled that Jews are a separate race-- https://supreme.justia.com/cas...../615/

Ruchel

Tue, Sep 01 2020, 3:34 pm

In my world you are what you ARE. There's no whiter than Ikrish Wink

and European Jews are white