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Maus, Whoopi Goldberg, Book Burnings and J6
The last few days have been interesting. They point out where we have been heading for some time as a nation. These are not nice markers. They range from ignorance, to book burning, to a national political party denying the horrors of January six and justifying it as valid political speech.
I believe Whoopi Goldberg when she said she was not aware the Holocaust was about race. I am sure she did not realize how much race plays a role even in modern antisemitism. I understand what she told Stephen Colbert as well. In her mind, and I get it if the Klan was rushing her and a Jewish friend, they would leave the latter alone, for the moment. Also, I am assuming that this Jewish friend looks like me, but does not sound like me. Trust me, I open my trap, I will instantly become a target.
Yes, I have an accent. This alone marks me as the other.
However there are Jews around the world, and in the US that looks like Goldberg. This is how much of a stereotype of what is a Jew is part of American culture. No, not all Jews are white, or of Eastern European extraction. And for most of American history Jews were considered a separate race.
It is the last two generations that Jews became white, and like Italians, the Irish and Poles became part of the majority. There has been a cost to this, as well as…