The quote was: "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself"
Yes, the sentiment is (possibly) anti-israel, not anti-semetic, but the wording itself implies that Jews have insatiable appetites for war. I'm not saying it wasn't an honest mistake, but someone who is chief diversity officer at a major corporation should certainly be attuned to the difference between Jews and Israelis.
"If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself," (…)
"If I were a Jew today, my sensibilities would be tormented. I would find it increasingly difficult to reconcile the long cycles of oppression that Jewish people have endured and the insatiable appetite for vengeful violence that Israel, my homeland, has now acquired."
It just became “If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing” in the tweets.
I think with the more fulsome context you've provided that the prior post's attempt to reduce his statement as critical of Israelis alone is a bit reductionist; his argument here extends to the diaspora that also unwaveringly support Israel in their expansionary policy.
I don't feel that position is anti-Semitic either, but I think it needs to be noted for the sake of intellectual honesty. He is critiquing a LOT of Jews here.
Even if he isn't saying all Jews are bad, it still reads something like "I'm just saying Israel is insatiably, vengefully violent and [an awful lot of] Jews support Israel...".
I'm all for charitability, but it feels like we're contorting ourselves--why would any tolerant person with a decent penchant for writing not keep a wider berth between their criticism of Israel and antisemitism? I understand that there are always going to be bad faith people who willfully misinterpret all criticism of Israel with antisemitism, but those people aside I've never found it particularly difficult to criticize Israel in a way which is unambiguously tolerant of and respectful toward Jews (and he seems like a better writer than I am).
"If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself" is a straight quote from the last paragaraph of the post in question, not a paraphrase or elided excerpt. https://web.archive.org/web/20210602000424/https://www.kamau...
The only thing I deleted is the period. "If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself." is the entire first sentence of the last paragraph. Again, people can read the linked original post and see for themselves.
Exactly. I'm a Jew (by heritage, though not by belief). I oppose Israel's actions WRT Palestine and related issues. The Israeli government seems to have that "insatiable appetite for war", but that's a pretty small subset of all Jews. Even the entire Israeli population is a small subset of all Jews.
I never understood that concept. The idea that Judaism is transmitted from lineage is itself only a belief of Judaism. If you don't believe in Judaism there is no reason to believe in this particular fiction. This specific feature is obviously a hack on the reproductivity of the meme. There is no Judaism gene, it's not transmittable, it's not an ethnicity.
No problem! It certainly doesn't make sense if one approaches it from a Western Christian mindset. I am not trying to imply that is how you are approaching it, rather I mention this because Judaism often gets compared to Christianity, but I think they are quite different.
It is better to think of Judaism as a tribe. Membership to this tribe is mainly given under two conditions: through matrilineal descent or through religious conversion. Some subgroups within the tribe have different membership conditions like recognizing patrilineal descent, others may not recognize conversions done by other subgroups.
Exactly this. It's a cultural thing, much like how you can be an American or a German or an African. There's no single ethnicity for any of those, but they're all cultural identities based on birth or citizenship.
But this is all very consistent. Most people noticed many years ago that the people who most loudly claim to be fighting racism are always huge racists themselves. This is so common, and so obvious, the only reason it's attracting attention at all is because somewhat unusually it's Jews who are the target today, instead of white men. If the same quote about war had been made with white men instead of Jews nobody at Google would have cared. And arguably they don't care at all because the guy is not fired, just re-assigned, which tells you everything you need to know about what that company has become.
And it's not really surprising that the target are Jews. In America this doesn't seem to be the case so much, but in Europe when the left engage in racism, it's always against their own countryfolk or Jews. Diversity programs, however they started, long ago became a left wing movement.
Frankly it's a lot more shocking when someone working in diversity does not turn out to be racist or sexist. Those are very rare people indeed. Oddly, I vaguely recalled the Google head of diversity making some sensible comments some years ago, but I don't recognize this name. It seems he's actually just "a" head of diversity, not "the" head.
In case anyone is confused by this person’s definition of racism, I enjoyed this description of the essential impossibility of “racism against whites,”[1] as well as this Sociology of Racism[2].
I'm sure people are so confused by someone using the long established English dictionary definition of racism and not the new far left interpretation of the word that now includes social power structures that conveniently allows non-whites to be racist without being called out.
you can substitute “racist” for “prejudiced” in their comment if you want, but I feel like 99% of the English speaking population would characterize what Google’s diversity officer wrote about Jewish people as racist so I don’t really see the need.
I was responding to a comment that was referring to racism against white men. I was not responding to a comment about the Google diversity officer’s language.
Given the Farhud, the Holocaust, and the persecution of Soviet Jews both remain in living memory and shape our lives today, I'd say that if you think you've got logic to prove the "essential impossibility" of antisemitism, you've taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Anyone confused by my post should use a dictionary to refresh their memory of what this very basic and simple word means, not some random academic papers.
Ha, yes, the dictionary: the ultimate authority for explaining power dynamics in society.
I understand the draw of believing in “reverse racism.” When I was in junior high, and was targeted for being a white boy, it made sense to me. And it felt unfair. But then I gained more perspective through a better understanding of sociology and history.
The dictionary is the authority for what words mean. If someone genuinely wants to "explain" power dynamics they would do so in ways designed to communicate clearly and illuminate. If they want to manipulate and confuse they would try to redefine the meaning of common words to mean something totally different and then accuse people who speak English properly of misusing words.
By the way, sociology is nonsense, surely everyone knows that by now. Their papers are usually pseudo scientific.
Yeah, at this point, having been left-wing my whole life, I'm more surprised when a DEI activist type isn't an antisemite than when they are. "The Jews are greedy, bloodthirsty, and evil" is part of the canon for this ideology.
Even then... do we accuse every American of bloodlust for our nation's warmongering? Or every Chinese person for their governments treatment of the Uighur/Tibet/etc?
Governments != people of a nation people often / usually don't approve of governmental actions.
Think of it as the downside of the Enlightenment idea that governments acquire their legitimacy solely from the support of the governed. If the people of a nation do not approve of the actions of their government, they have both the right and the responsibility to change those actions.
Or, think of it as basic ethics: no one who eats meat can be more saintly than a butcher. Everyone who benefits from citizenship in a nation gets to share responsibility for the actions of the nation.
I'm not sure of the politics in the Wiemar Republic. How many Jews supported the National Socialist party? How many of them voted for the National Socialists during the Great Depression economic crisis? (Not many, I suspect. Voting against a group is, by definition, not supporting them.) (https://www.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%2077...)
Once the National Socialists had achieved power, in 1933, German Jews protested the actions of their government, leading to the Civil Service law and further restrictions on Jewish activities. (At this time, there were many German non-Jews who probably didn't like their government's activities but benefited a great deal from those activities.) By 1935-36, Jews in Germany had essentially no power, either to support or oppose the government. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Germany...) Thus, those who could left.
This is the illusion of democracy. There is no available democratic option in the USA that will bring about the end of US imperialistic war.
The people in the voting booths in the USA can no more be blamed for the USA's warmongering than the Americans who stayed home, abstaining, or people in the next country over. The US military is going to do what the US military is going to do, and to believe anything else is to be either ignorant of history or hopelessly naive.
No, this is illusion of apathy, believing you are powerless is what actually makes you powerless. Larger changes have happened within American society that in retrospect seem obvious to everyone.
There are many systems in which believing you are powerless leads to your own powerlessness.
Not voting in an authoritarian military dictatorship masquerading as a democracy is not one such instance, unfortunately.
There is no sufficient loudness of "wake up, sheeple!" that will get the US military to stop waging war (the continuation of which is entirely contrary to the will of the US people). It is an autonomous organization, unaccountable to any branch of the US government, as evidenced over and over again by the lack of resistance to it in the USG, and the lack of consequences for its members when it breaks the law.
The CIA got busted lying to Congress about hacking into Congressional computers to delete evidence of the CIA's torture program. The torture program continues, and nobody is in jail.
> There is no available democratic option in the USA that will bring about the end of US imperialistic war.
Certainly not like turning off a light, but it's a clear fallacy that peoples actions (or inaction) don't change policy and practice.
Put it another way, if Americans aren't responsible for the actions of America, who is? What sort of answers to that don't undermine the entire concept of the country?
certainly you can avoid being partially culpable for your nation's actions - by dropping out of society, refusing to pay taxes to it, and probably supporting yourself via a life of crime.
If however you are a functioning member of a society and do things to support it you are partially to blame for the things that society does. That amount of blame is not the same for everyone - and for some people it is so minimal it hardly warrants mentioning - but you do have a share.
I did not say it was a viable strategy for ending the war I said it was a viable strategy for minimizing and hopefully removing completely culpability for the actions of one's society.
on edit: as an example we can say with some surety that the one white man in 1800s American that should not be charged with culpability for slavery would be John Brown (although he probably would not feel the same way) - there are undoubtedly others but we can point with some justification at John Brown and say that guy pretty much not to blame for any of that shit.
I'm certainly not recommending that people have to do these things either, just to being clear eyed about things - you can't benefit from your society's actions and then say you don't share any blame from what it does without some extreme dropping out of the system.
I don't agree. One cannot be responsible for one's actions taken under threat of coercive violence. The violent aggressor remains responsible for the outcome in that instance.
So to be clear, as a corollary of the standards you've defined here, 1.3-1.4 billion Chinese have some level of culpability for what's going on with the Uyghurs?
I mean, I can see where you're coming from. But at this point we are really at the fringes of culpability and it's more of an issue of semantics and definitions.
as I also clearly stated earlier "...for some people it is so minimal it hardly warrants mentioning"
so yes, each of those 1.3 billion probably have an atom of culpability, so minimal it hardly warrants mentioning.
I'm a citizen of Denmark, I have some share of culpability in the wrongs my country does - I do a little to minimize those wrongs (when I see them) by voting against the perpetrators but that's about it - I support the country and it is partly my fault because I am too comfortable to do what would be required to completely absolve myself of any culpability because hey, I'm pretty okay (as most people throughout history have said)
You are conflating collective blame with collective punishment, which not an unrelated term.
Collective punishment refers to the punishment communities en masse for the actions of individuals, that may be being harbored by some members of that community.
Just because something is done in a collective manner does not absolve the members of that collective from the outcome.
I'm not conflating them. I think collective blame is generally a bad thing in itself and it is the way of thinking that begets racist and tribal attitudes. It is also inaccurate.
Bernie Sanders is an American who was advocating against the Iraq War. He was clearly not culpable for it, and his causal role was to lower the probability that it would go ahead. This is an example of why it would then be wrong to blame "Americans" as a collective for the Iraq War. Bernie Sanders, a member of that collective, deserves either zero blame or negative blame (if that even exists).
I think this illustrates why it is in fact about responsibility, and thinking about it as blame gets you in confusion.
To extend your example: Bernie Sanders as a citizen, and further a politician, acquires an amount of the collective responsibility for the countries actions in the Iraq War. Bernie Sanders as an activist has more than discharged that responsibility by actively countering it.
A citizen who has done nothing to mitigate or counter the actions is left only with the share of collective responsibility; however large or small that may be, it's real.
Many people can't vote, or explicitly don't vote to avoid supporting these parties. Many more are poorly educated (intentionally). How are they responsible?
Are they expected to single-handedly (or collectively) organize and engage in a bloody civil war, thereby gaining culpability for that? Blaming people for the actions of their nation / elected officials is absurd. All a person can do is vote for the best candidate in front of them and vote at face value.
Representative democracy takes power away from people. If it were a direct democracy, then yes, I'd say sure, people bear responsibility. But it's not. It's a system designed to be manipulative and serve wealthy and powerful interests, and the only way to change it is either very, very slow, or very, very bloody.
No we should not accuse but as the citizen of such a regime I should feel responsible of its actions, I should condemn it and may be expect accusations of supporting such a regime.
It's so incredibly wrong to pick lines from a text out of context like that to attack someone. It's exactly how some people tried to sink Bernie Sander 2020 presidential campaign by referring to his "rape fantasy" essay from the 1970s. Read Kamau Bobb's blog post in full (it's only six paragraphs or so). It s about how he imagines how a progressive Jew has to struggle with reconciling his commitment to Israel with his humanist views. His thought may have been misguided, and he may not fully have understood how Jewishness and Judaism works, but they are certainly not hateful towards Jews.
He’s clearly referring to Israel, and since it’s a Jewish date, it’s reasonable to assume many / most Jews feel somewhat represented by Israel, voluntarily or not. Or at least that Israel’s actions reflect well or poorly on them in regards to non-Jews.
Yes, the sentiment is (possibly) anti-israel, not anti-semetic, but the wording itself implies that Jews have insatiable appetites for war. I'm not saying it wasn't an honest mistake, but someone who is chief diversity officer at a major corporation should certainly be attuned to the difference between Jews and Israelis.