This dirty Jew remembers every penny thrown at him.
The
ones thrown from above, as we waited to be picked up from the public
pool in my hometown on Long Island, our yarmulkes pinned to wet hair. By
then, I was big enough to feel shame for the younger kids, who knew no
better than to scurry around, as our local anti-Semites laughed.
I
remember walking home from synagogue at my father’s side, in our suits
and ties, and seeing a neighbor boy crawling on his hands and knees,
surrounded by bullies, this time picking up pennies by force. I remember
my father rushing in and righting the boy, and sending those kids
scattering.
I
remember when, at that same corner, on a different day, those budding
neo-Nazis surrounded my sister, and I raced home for help. I remember my
parents running back, and my father and mother (all five feet of her)
confronting the parents of one of the boys, who then gave him a winking,
Trumpian chiding for behavior they didn’t care to condemn. Even if it’s
“kids with horns,” they told their son, he should leave other children
alone.
If you are someone white who is at all interested in trying to learn more about the trauma of living a childhood as a
racialized person, or trying to learn more about how antisemitism
affects Jewish people on a basic, human, individual, and emotional
level- having come to understand that systemic antisemitism exists and how crucial it is to white supremacists according even to themselves- I
think this is an excellent read for you.
I am not Jewish myself, but it absolutely mirrors many of the problems and traumas of childhood as a black person that I experienced myself, and I think it is important, in these dangerous times, that we find all the sources of solidarity that we can, so if you are someone who already experiences racial subjugation every day but who doesn’t know much about antisemitism, I would recommend this to you as well.
this is behind a paywall but I’m sure resourceful folk can cop it easy
It’s not behind a paywall for me on PC! If I recall properly the NYT gives you 10 free articles per month on their mobile site, so maybe if you open it via computer that’ll open it for you. That’s assuming you are on your phone, but I am not sure how to help otherwise, sorry.
OK, change of plans to have either plain zucchini or possibly substitute quick cooking red lentils or something in that curry. Because it looks like we already ate the last canned chickpeas I thought we still had, and the only other thing here is some canned baked beans. Nope, not even rinsed off 😕
One good thing about being on my own for the weekend: great opportunity to eat up the rest of the squash and eggplant I didn’t finish before he came back from that last trip. At least without worrying about anyone having enough to eat while avoiding it 🙄
Rough plan, once I finally get the cat moved so I can use the stove. Pretty much a nightly thing around here, and I still feel like a meano every time 😿 All the prep work is already done and the rice has been soaking, so I’d better not lose courage now *wry smile*
Good opportunity to use up the other half of that big marrow that was still lurking in the fridge, and a few other odds and ends that needed used up. With a few modifications to make it more actually South Indian influenced. Good thing I still had some curry leaves stashed in the freezer!
Also going to turn out a few onion bhajis to snack on, because I can’t resist. With at least a nod to a three sisters meal theme, since I was messing around before and found that using a little masa harina along with the chickpea flour in pakoras makes for a really great flavor. Works really well subbed for rice flour in about any kind calling for that.
Can we just… normalize teens loving their parents? Like obviously you’re not obligated to if your parents are shitty, but damn, I love my mom. She’s there for me all the time and sure we have rough patches but honestly she’s the greatest. Like. We need teens to know that they don’t have to hate their parents just cause.
It must be nice to come from a nonabusive family. One that doesn’t traumatized every emotional interaction to the point where you drive away any sign of love as a form of manipulation because that’s all that you were raised with. 🤷♀️
It is.
Reading Comprehension
but loving ur parents is already normalized and its the kids w/ abusive parents that actually have to deal with misunderstandings and ignorance from others regarding this topic.
Hey there, I’m talking about the trope where it’s seen as super uncool to like your parents that was literally pushed on teens through the media since the culture shift in the early 60s. The post has nothing to do with abusive parents. I was abused as a kid and honestly if the trope where teens have to hate their parents to be cool died, then kids with actual abusive parents would have an easier time recognizing abuse this has been a psa
“if the trope where teens have to hate their parents to be cool died, then kids with actual abusive parents would have an easier time recognizing abuse”
Teen with abusive parents: I hate my parents
Teen influenced by society: Me too mine are the worst
The takeaway for teen 1: This is normal and it’s supposed to be this way
The takeaway for teen 2: My friend’s parents are like mine
The takeaway for any adult listening: All kids who complain about their parents are just being rebellious
Honestly, I think most teenagers who complain constantly about their parents are being abused, or at least come from families with serious interpersonal problems.
Of the people I know who did this from 12-17 who I actually knew well enough to have any idea, one was being hyper-controlled by parents who thought she was basically a doll and were angry with her for expressing any emotion; one had a stepfather who hit her and was being funneled into the psych system and diagnosed with ODD for denying she deserved it; one I don’t know details about but ‘bringing vodka to first period in tenth grade and chugging it in class’ doesn’t exactly spell ‘functional family life;’ one – my older sister – lived in a house with a child molester and her abusive husband; one – me – was sexually abused.
Teenagers complaining about their parents is common because abusive parenting is common. The people I know as an adult who have good relationships with their parents didn’t do it regularly as teenagers.
(Personal anecdata suggests most teenagers who are at the ‘I hate my parents’ stage know they’re being treated unfairly. I didn’t leave because I was afraid of being arrested, not because I’d “normalized abuse.” Teenagers have very little power to leave on their own, and almost all of their options for asking for help are dangerous, sometimes more dangerous than their families. They don’t invite abuse by accepting it as normal; our legal system just gives parents almost unlimited power over them.)
I’m starting to think the “white is
not a culture, have pride in being Irish/whatever” arguments are
losing a few key points.
Like, just within the US: there are
absolutely specific-ethnicity pride or heritage groups that serve as
fronts for white nationalism, or who are recruited from by white
nationalists. There are also specific-ethnicity groups that aren’t
specifically connected to white nationalism but serve as fonts for
other conservative reactionary movements, some of which are actually
just as violent, genocidal and dangerous as white nationalism.
Outside the US, fascist groups in, say,
Serbia or Denmark are going to phrase it primarily as Serbian or
Danish pride at least a fair amount of the time. That doesn’t make
them less evil.
If we want people to be able to
identify nationalist recruiting that comes under the guise of pride
in specific cultures, we need to talk about what nationalist
extremist recruiting looks like, and what their tactics are, before
they get to the point of openly talking about genocide in front of
you. It’s not as simple as “What ethnicity are they?” Dangerous
nationalism exists in a lot of forms in a lot of countries – in
Europe and elsewhere (and in the debatable/bordering regions at the
edge of Europe.)
It isn’t as simple as ‘is this group
really oppressed?’ either. We need to acknowledge that some of these
groups have historically been oppressed, and some of the things they
point to as evidence they’re persecuted will be factually true. That
does not give them the right to do whatever they want to people or
mean that anything they do is automatically punching up. The
genocides committed by the Ottoman Empire before its break up do not
excuse the genocide committed by Serbian fascists against Bosnian
Muslims in modern times, or the actions of Greek neonazis against
refugees and others in recent years. Neither does the economic
exploitation of states in eastern Europe by western Europe; being
anti-western doesn’t make a group’s behavior acceptable, either.
The flip side of this is that there are
some people who can point to no ethnicity besides “white American”
or “white Canadian,” because they don’t know much about their
family heritage for whatever reason or they don’t have any strong
connection to a specific European culture, because their families
have been in North America for 100, 200, etc years and three
generations ago someone gave up on the last pieces of specific
heritage.
We need to be clear that we don’t have
a problem with people because they don’t know who their parents were or because their families caved to pressure to homogenize in the fifties.
The issue at stake is that white nationalists kill people, not
whether white constitutes an ethnicity in the United States.
If they
renamed themselves British nationalists, that wouldn’t make them
better. And if ‘white pride’ really meant heritage groups that
primarily concerned themselves with traditional food festivals and
folk dancing, no one would care. At
it is, when these things exist in the context of “white pride,”
it’s for the purpose of luring people in and entangling them in a
social environment that promotes murder. This should be explicit.
1. I would wager good money it is that sombrero you have on, the one that you have decorated so thoughtfully with millions of sunflower seeds. 2. Oh god you’re some kind of ornithomancer aren’t you? Just stop it, please. It’s not funny any more. Last time you came over my underwear drawer was suddenly full of pigeons. 3. The energy required to maintain your human disguise against the horror of your true form bursting forth is so intense that it constantly makes small rips in the space-time continuum around you. Lacking the mental apparatus to percieve these correctly, we are interpreting them as birds flying past. 4. It is very thoughtful of you to pre-order us takeout chicken whenever we meet, don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying I’d maybe like a kebab or a salad or something sometimes. Heck, even chicken but just slightly less of it. 5. Just like me, they feel the intense gravitational pull or your presence and must fight against it or get sucked in. How I wish I had not created you in my careless, heedless days at the nuclear collider! I pray for the day when our orbits cross no longer. 6. Actually I don’t think those are real birds. I think they are people in chicken costumes. I suppose this is par for the course when you run for public office having made some less-than-courageous decisions in the near past.
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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