Am I An Anti-Semite?

(UPDATE 3/10/20 As readers might guess or know, I emailed these two people and asked them to read the post. I have yet to hear back and considering how unpopular I am with Boulder progressives and the fact that this post has been viewed about 20 times, I suspect that people are laughing at me. Do I regret using my blog to communicate with these people? Almost. But if I had said what I had to say to these people by email they would have just forwarded the email to their friends, and there are personal/political reasons I have for doing it the way I did it. And if this ridicule is based partly on a belief that I’m still wrong about Jewish-Americans and oppression, I typed a new post addressing that. That post is here)

This post, much more so than any other, is about a personal and slightly political agenda of mine, instead of the other way around or just 100% political.

In 2006, I may have given a Jewish political friend the wrong idea about me. You’ll want to first read a paragraph here, the one towards the VERY bottom that starts with “Lastly, if American progressives….” As I sort of imply, I once did an even less substantial job of explaining why I don’t think that Jewish-Americans are oppressed as Jewish-Americans. I don’t think I have to do more than what I do in that paragraph, but it is sort of the minimum required if you don’t want to sound like an ass-hole. Of course this person also once stated, in 1999, when I asked him a question at an event about Israel, that Jewish-Americans are White. In 2006 after he enthusiastically and generously agreed to read a lot of personal/political material about me including my way-too-brief assertion that Jewish-Americans aren’t oppressed as Jewish-Americans, he didn’t respond to a few emails and phone calls. I sort of owe him and/or the Jewish-American community s small apology, and I offer it.

Sometime in mid-2018 I attended an outdoor event, sort of a positive energy vigil based on Jewish prayers organized by a pro-Palestinian Jewish-American group called If Not Now. The notice about it that I saw made it sound like it might be just for Jewish people, and I didn’t want to do anything inappropriate- I was worried that it WOULD be inappropriate for a non-Jew to take part in something like that. At the risk of getting too personal, I have obsessive compulsive disorder and can worry more than I should. Someone told me it was open to non-Jewish people, so I showed up. It was generally very good. But a slightly close political friend who’s Jewish wondered aloud while talking with me about how many non-Jewish people had showed up. I told her that I almost didn’t show up. The next time I saw her, at an event, it seemed like she was refusing to make eye contact with me. I don’t think I owe an apology in this case. But I hope that IF there was a problem, this has cleared it up.

I do a kind of poetry on my blog that is controversial. I can imagine many people who agree with me on the issues thinking that it’s offensive. Two people of color I know seem to not approve, but were very (politically) friendly to me for 5-11 years after they learned about it (one for 5, and the other still is very friendly politically towards me). Two bi-sexual men (who are what you might call anti-fascist militants) I know love it. And a Jewish woman I know likes it (that might sound silly, but it’s important to me that overall, if you combine those three groups, the response is positive).

In a minute I’ll provide a link to all the material on my blog about Anti-Semitism. But first let me mention one last thing on this theme. Elsewhere on my blog i wrote:

I am sort of reluctant to tell people this, although I probably should when this comes up, and I have now told three people before this.

In my sophmore year of college, I was mildly anti-semitic. First, it was mild, I never used the K-word, I never thought “those f—ing jews,” I certainly as f— never bought in to Holocaust Denial, but I had some kind of negative attitude towards Jews.

It was largely about Israel. Although it wouldn’t matter if my estimate was right, I had an exaggerated sense of how uncritical J-As are. Same thing with how upper-middle-class they are. I also had two Jewish room-mates, one that year and one the year before, I didn’t get along with, one I even got in a fight with. And to a large degree I didn’t know many Jews till my freshman year of college (although my Mom’s best friend was Jewish).

I did basically nothing about it, I don’t know if it was connected to me organizing an event in support of the Palestinians (no one showed, there was another event on that issue, the same night). I’ve continued supporting the Palestinians, and the speaker I got, I have since learned is very much against anti-semitism, although possibly a little soft on Hamas, and I don’t think I was thinking at the time that he was anti-semitic.

About 3 years later I was organizing Students for Justice in N. Ireland at CU-Boulder with a Jewish woman as a fellow co-chair. Obviously it was not a great leap for me, my problem was pretty mild. I think what did it was that when I spent some time doing an AFL-CIO internship called Union Summer, the assistant site coordinator was Jewish (later on we were kind of friends at college) and there was an Irish-Catholic guy and they did this Catholic/Jewish rivalry thing for laughs, I’m not sure how to describe it, but about 5 years ago on Comedy Central Jon Stewart and Colin Quinn did it.

Not exactly the Angela King story, but I thought I’d mention it.

(Angela King is an anti-hate educator who used to be a Nazi Skinhead)

I don’t think I am at all anti-Semitic. But I worry greatly that these two people, and maybe people they’ve spoken with, think that to a small degree I am.

All the posts that are partly or entirely about anti-Semitism are here.