I think I have mentioned before that, if you ask me, the concept of race, as in a biological subcategory of humanity, is intellectually moot. While there are obviously differences between communities such as skin colour, we are all one species which can interbreed without a problem. No group of people is inherently superior to any other: the notion that people from Europe are innately superior to people from subsaharan Africa, for example, is the very definition of racism. I think we can all agree that such thinking needs to be outgrown if we are ever to achieve true equality. Surely we are all one glorious global species, with no subdivisions to divide or break apart that whole.
Does it not strike anyone as odd, then, that people who identified as Jewish seem to go out of their way to cling to such notions? On the face of it, they look like any other white European person; yet they seem to want to emphasise their Jewishness, as if they want to set themselves apart. I was watching an interview with David Baddiel earlier, and he said that, although he was an atheist, he somehow still saw himself as Jewish as if it wasn’t just a religion but some kind of sub-category of humanity. We know that, historically, clinging to such divisions between communities has brought about the most horrific of crimes, so what good does such thinking serve?
I honestly don’t understand it. Baddiel was saying that he felt some kind of inherent link to other Jewish people, in spite of his atheism. He seems to think this gives him a link to the suffering other Jewish people have endured historically, a notion which I find rather problematic.
I have come across such thinking once or twice elsewhere recently, for example with Irish people claiming to have somehow inherited the trauma inflicted upon their grandparents and great grandparents by the British. Surely the experience of such hardship cannot be inherited, and maintaining that it can be just allows old wounds to remain open.
It seems to me that the only reason anyone would seek to do this is to justify their own political agitation. That is to say, there seems to be a desire in many people these days to be seen as a member of an oppressed group, so they go to whatever lengths they can to become a member of such a group. It is no longer politically fashionable to be seen as white, straight and able bodied, as that is to hold too much privilege.
I think this is probably why David Baddiel went out of his way to emphasise his Jewish ancestry, even though he says he does not believe in Judaism. Where this becomes slightly problematic or complex, of course, is culture: Obviously, cultural diversity is to be maintained and cherished. Baddiel has as much right to celebrate his cultural Jewish ancestry as I have to celebrate my Greek Cypriot cultural ancestry: I eat galombrama and paglava, and my mum and dad used to sing greek nursery rhymes to me. But having Cypriot grandparents does not somehow set me apart from other people; nor does it give me the right to claim to share in the suffering other Cypriots went through historically. More to the point, Baddiel claims membership of the Jewish community even though he as an atheist does not participate in it’s (religious) rituals or traditions. How can anyone claim to be a member of a community or group while rejecting it’s very core component? This analogy may be a tad flippant, but is that not like someone claiming to be a member of the Star Trek fan community without ever watching an episode of Star Trek?
Of course, as a disabled person I often say that I feel a bond with other disabled people, to the extent that I feel we are a community. However, that commonality is born of shared experiences such as broken lifts, inaccessible public buildings and going through segregated education. It is a community of necessity and shared struggle, rather than one of culture or inheritance. I do not think that being physically disabled gives me the right to claim to share the brutal hardships which disabled people have endured historically.
Does it not strike anyone else as very problematic indeed, then, that Baddiel would claim membership of a group based around a religion that he doesn’t believe in, and to share in cultural experiences which he could not possibly have any concept of? Is this not just yet another case of a straight, white, able bodied man desperately trying to other himself? Unfortunately in doing so he revives anachronistic notions about race, which in the long run can only do more harm than good.
The Ill-Informed Ramblings of a Cripple 