Last weekend I went to a friend’s son’s wedding and was bowled over by the diversity. The bride was from another country, and the vows were repeated in her language. The groom’s best friend and former roommate gave an emotional toast about helping one another through thick and thin. When the two men hugged it was a contrast of completely different skin colors.
The groom is one of the few truly-color-blind people I know. He grew up with black and Puerto Rican friends, he works alongside people of color in New York City.
His wedding reception was on the grounds of a gun club in upstate New York. He got the place because his relative, an excavator, is a member. Looking around the wedding, with the shooting range and deer-hanging rack and a magnificent stand of walnuts in the distance, I saw more people of color than I’ve seen at any party I’ve been to in elite settings in New York.
I know the groom because I’m close friends with his father, a contractor, and this is not his first child to marry across traditional lines. The American middle class may be small, but I sense that it’s diverse. There are a lot of groups rising and falling within it, everyone holding on by their nails. That’s the mix I saw at the wedding, including an interracial couple or two.
No one talked religion that day. My friend was raised Catholic but left the church a long time ago. When we pass a crucifix driving, he shouts that they oughta get a coat on the poor guy. There were no religious references in his son’s vows. The guy who officiated wore an open shirt. There were several Jews at the reception.
My friend is special; he’s a freethinker. But this is postracial America, the America that young idealistic people are building. (And yes, it makes the Zionist impulse in American Jewish life, the need to separate ourselves so as to insure our safety, seem more out of date than ever.)
Creating the new man
Homo Americus, familiar somewhat…
“American Jewish life, the need to separate ourselves so as to insure our safety”
Phil would put it that way, huh, Oleg. What about the need for Jews to separate ourselves in order to ensure that we can retain our advantages, and most of all, keep our blood unmongrelised, I mean, rather, uncontaminated, or kosher, or something. Not to mention sending a squad of tall, sexy IDF guys to beat the crap out of anti-Semites anywhere in the world! Naturally, Phil won’t present those as reasons for Zionism.
It’s up to you to tell us the truth, Oleg!
“most of all, keep our blood unmongrelised, I mean, rather, uncontaminated, or kosher, or something.”
Well of course, that’s getting harder and harder to do with all those Russians who were kissing crosses not so long ago and had to pay some rabbi to illegally emigrate to Palestine.
Im bout to get hitched; we told her pops we aren’t interested in a church wedding, let alone a catholic mass…. crickets. my girl got pissed by his silence and said, “well hopefully our not getting married in a catholic church doesnt offend the catholics more than say, kids getting raped by catholic priests.”
Me, my fiance and her mom laughed out loud, and hard – her dad, not so much. So, he’s living in the past to, where the catholic church still held a shred of moral authority among catholics, sort of like how being tribal was the accepted moral sensibility among jews. Tribalism is so 20th century.
Im bout to get hitched
Congratulations, Dan :-)
Ah Dan, you bring it all back, the wonderful day I started my wedded abyss! The minister read the vows, and asked “Wilt thou, Derbig?” (Now you know why I prefer to use my last name) And before I could raise my veil and shyly lisp my answer, my wife-to-be stage-whispered “He damn well better!” And I heard the ominous double-click of both barrels being cocked. I’ll remember the feel of that 12 gauge against my neck as long as I live. I guess that’s what you call ‘many happy re-runs’, but it feels more like PTSD.
As for the reception afterwards, well, “Three Dog Night” probably said it best.
Mazel Tov Dan!
Derbig Mooser.
————oooo———–
“Derbig Mooser.
————oooo———–”
As Bertie Wooster once remarked “There’s some nasty work done at the font”.
Thanks everybody.
I should have said, I agree with Phil here. In my family, only one cousin of my generation had a catholic mass wedding, and I’ve only been to two religious weddings out of the eighteen million ive been to in the last five years.
As for everything else – middle class kids who grew up in the 80′s and later, unless they are from parts of the deep south or rural midwest have gone to school in mixed environments, thats 30 years. In my hometown we had a lot of families from Cambodia, Puerto Rico and Brazil – all of our parents coached teams, carpooled, all of that kind of stuff. So, yeah, alot of mutual support in working middle class communities. Definitely a positive.
Ael – yup, she did. and it was hilarious. catholics should have a sense of humor
congrats dan. hope you have a wonderful marriage and life together.
I see. Your fiance responds to her father’s disappointment by insulting his faith.
Best wishes!
It’s a Catholic thing, Ael. You had to be there.
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Congratulations, Dan!
MRW, if we Jews don’t look out for Catholics who can’t accept the consequences of the paedophilia scandal, who will?
Congrats Dan!
Don’t be too harsh on future F-in-Law, he may have had a long held dream of giving away his daughter on her big day shattered! (of course, I know nothing about him or his beliefs)
a friend at our Saturday lunch club asked me why I’m so concerned about I/P. “After all,” he said, “most modern states have militarized borders.”
As we parted, he said, “I’ll let you off the hook for today, but next time, I’d like an answer to my question.”
My friend is heavily involved in Catholic issues, with particular antipathy toward hierarchy and issues of women’s ordination. At lunch he had mentioned that somebody somewhere was found guilty of failing to prevent abuse of a child by a priest.
On the way home, I tried to formulate an answer to my friend’s challenge. My obvious first response, Because people get hurt, seemed lame — something my friend would dismiss as “Life is tough; people get hurt all the time.”
Then it occurred to me how to get through to my friend: I would ask him why he is so concerned about pedophile priests and those who cover up for them. I imagined the conversation:
ME: “Why is it important to you if a priest molests a child, or if a bishop conceals the crime?”
HE: “Because kids get hurt and their lives changed forever. The people who hurt these kids are part of an organization that I am a part of and believe in. It really bothers me that priests and bishops get away with harming kids; it harms the Church’s reputation, too. I support the Church with my money and my loyalty. Their behavior betrays my trust in the institution.
ME: “About how many kids would you estimate have been damaged forever by the actions of pedophile priests & cover-ups?”
HE: “Gosh, thousands, maybe ten thousand or more.”
ME: “Do you know how many lives have been ruined by zionist actions?
HE: “No, I have no idea. What is zionism?”
___________________
That is why I try to learn all I can about zionism; so that people of good will but erroneous information can be educated about the harms zionism has brought to Palestinians and others in the region, and how zionism has brought about a betrayal of American institutional principles.
I’m so vehement about Israel because as part of the American collective, I’m forced to support it — support it lavishly, indiscriminately, and vigorously.
As I’ve said, if it were a matter of what China does, or Burma does, or whatever Russia might be up to at the moment, or whatever any other country we’re more or less unconnected to does, I’d shake my head, say ‘tut tut’ — and go out back and keep working on the deck.
But when it comes to Israel, that ISN’T the case. I’m only annoyed with myself because I don’t do MORE. It’s the distinction between learning that a teenage boy raped a girl and learning that my son raped a girl. We have an obligation to rein in the 51st State — or at least disown it.
We could do that much.
a friend …. asked me why I’m so concerned about I/P. “After all,” he said, “most modern states have militarized borders.”
i like your first instinct allen, a spin off of ‘because my taxes support or empower it’. but i would also address your friend’s allegation wrt militarized borders. most modern states do not have expanding borders that seek to encroach on and annex their neighbors land nor do they create a blockade that controls all aid/import/export etc. tell him if he doesn’t understand israel is trying to take all the land he’s not looking. tell him without the pretext of conflict it wold make it more difficult to steal the rest of palestine.
Uhh, AllenBee, tell him Israel doesn’t have a border.
And ColinWright, add that if you complain about the support (you catalogue) here in the US, you can have your career and reputation destroyed…that’s enough to piss me off: when your First Amendment rights are violated, crushed, as a result of that enforced support. We don’t have that problem if we complain bout China or Russia…or Puerto Rico or Burma for that matter.
“After all,” he said, “most modern states have militarized borders.”
And that is relevant to the IP issues, how, exactly?
Hey Dan,
Congrats, dude! Cheers and such.
I’ve always been a bit confounded by the lack of diversity by those who proclaim to love it the most, namely white liberal elites. I think Max Blumenthal mentioned that when he met up with a lot of young journalists just out of college in mid-2000s (Adam Serwer, Matt Yglesias and many others) at progressive meetups he was struck at how incredibly white it was. And this was underscored when NPR fired Juan Williams in 2010. He was their only black journalist at the time. Even Fox had more of them.
And this is also true if you look at the major media outlets, both their executive teams and their journalists. Hardly a black, hispanic or an Asian around at NYT, WSJ or WaPo.
And the same is true if you look at where they live, it’s very self-segregated and incredibly white. It seems that the lower classes, sneezed at for their lack of sophistication and supposed bigotry, will get there much faster. Among whites alone, it’s the working class that is most likely to intermarry out racially even if they in polls express more negative racial opinions(perhaps they are just honest) while upper-scale whites give great answers to pollsters because they know the game but in reality intermarry less often on average(even if rising).
Having said so, whites are still incredibly racially conservative. About 9 % intermarry each year of all marriages where one white spouse is involved. Blacks are at 20+ %, hispanics at 40 %, Asians at 40 % and Jews over 50 %(non-Orthodox only).
Let’s hope your friend is joined by many more in the coming years to tear down the racial walls of America.
By the way, Phil.
Here’s an interesting article re Jews and immigration you posted on a few days ago:
link to tabletmag.com
Notice his celebration of diversity and immigration for Europe. I guess it would be the same for America. Now ask if he would celebrate the immigration of the same peoples(Arabs, Africans) into Israel? So we still have some work to do within our own community, the racial hysteria and obsession of blood purity concerning Israel and the complete opposite positions, generally liberal, positions in the diaspora. Ironing out these kinks will require some hard work the coming years.
“And this is also true if you look at the major media outlets, both their executive teams and their journalists. Hardly a black, hispanic or an Asian around at NYT, WSJ or WaPo.”
A non-rhetorical and non-polemical question from a non-US citizen – US Hispanics and African-Americans form over 30 % of the US population while US Jews comprise 1.7% of the population and yet it is beyond argument that the Jewish voice in the MSM vastly outweighs that of the African-Americans and Hispanics – how has this situation developed and how is it maintained?
I think most Jews over, say, age 40 in America still view the nation as mostly white so they don’t really see themselves as ‘insiders’. So Jews in the media is for them minority representation. That, of course, and the fact that they’ve been told by their community elders all their lives that to question overrepresentation in the media is essentially taking the road right down to Birkenau.
I mean a lot of Jews still don’t even view themselves as ‘white’ in a casual way. If pressed, they might consider themselves to be white in relation to blacks, say, but if you ask a random Jew(again, over 40 years of age) ‘do you consider yourself white?’ I think many will give you a qualified answer at best.
I don’t think it’s a determined effort on any part, just that as Jews we are few and far in-between and massive media overrepresentation helps a lot if you’re in a nation where 98% or more of the population are not of your own ethnic group. It’s a cushion of safety, if you will.
And add to this the massive amount of intermarriage between white secular Jews in the media and white gentile liberals who work alongside of them. 50 years ago, Jews might have worked much harder for diversity, but now the WASPs are part of the family, you know. It’s not conscious discrimination. It’s default and subconscious without most of them even reflecting on it. Sociologists call this ‘colorblindness’ in the sense that you assume that race doesn’t matter, all while you just hire people like yourself without reflecting upon it.
So again, I don’t think it’s a deliberate thing. It’s colorblindless and a naive belief that Jews are somehow still outsiders and are minorites in the only sense that matters in America: race(which we are not). Jews are a religious minority, to be sure, but there are many such minorities, even among Christians(such as mormons).
But for those under 40, and especially age 30, there is a much more nuanced sense of identity, especially as many of them come from interfaith families or have many Jewish friends who do and have a much wider distribution of friends from various ethnic backgrounds. They have a much more realistic viewpoint of where they stand in the racial hierachy in America, in part because the lines of whiteness have been blurred a lot more among the younger generations.
‘It’s colorblindless and a naive belief that Jews are somehow still outsiders and are minorites in the only sense that matters in America: race(which we are not). Jews are a religious minority, to be sure, but there are many such minorities, even among Christians(such as mormons). ‘
I think it’s also a somewhat dated perception. When Whites were 80% of the population and White Anglo-Saxon Protestants 60% and they completely dominated all public forums, then yes — Jews would be ‘the excluded.’ Or at least among ‘the excluded.’
But when Whites as a whole are rapidly ceasing to be the majority of the population at all, and the only ‘outsiders’ are Blacks and recent immigrants from especially exotic places, then being Jewish really ceases to be very significant as a distinction. Major corporations are headed by Indians, Cubans run Coca-Cola, Obama has a noticeable taste for cabinet officers that are just his shade of Cafe-au-Lait, and and the founder of dacebook just married a Chinese doctor. Sorry — but being Jewish just doesn’t get you a prize any more. It’s no longer much of an identifier. Why would anyone BOTHER being anti-semitic? There’d be so much more obviously distinct groups to hate.
One could argue this is precisely why some Jews cling to support for Israel. Absent Israel, they’re going to get swept into the great ethno-sociological maelstrom along with the rest of us…
You’re Jewish and no one cares. That could be hard to accept.
Thank you Krauss for your valuable and insightful post.
A few queries, though -
You write: “…the fact that they’ve been told by their community elders all their lives that to question overrepresentation in the media is essentially taking the road right down to Birkenau.” Is this to be taken that there is explicit direction from the “community elders” that this so-called “meme” or “trope” is to be absolutely avoided or is there more nuanced discussion where the general subject of anti-Semitism includes media over-representation as one of the factors that might lead to increased anti-Semitism and accordingly must be avoided.
You write perceptively of the mixed factors of a perceived sense of racial inequality, religious differences and “color-blindedness” and yet the fundamental questions remain unanswered – how has this situation of massive Jewish over-representation developed and how is it maintained?
Again, thanks for your valued input.
PHIL- “But this is postracial America….”
You seem to place an inordinate emphasis on symbolism, while ignoring empirical reality. Post-racial America is an illusion. Your description of the wedding sounded eerily like “Rachel Getting Married.” Something happening here, what it is ain’t exactly clear.
‘Having said so, whites are still incredibly racially conservative. About 9 % intermarry each year of all marriages where one white spouse is involved. Blacks are at 20+ %, hispanics at 40 %, Asians at 40 % and Jews over 50 %(non-Orthodox only).’
Sociologically, this could be seen as a matter of the pecking order. For all the hue and cry to the contrary, ‘they still all want to be white’ to put it bluntly. Conversely, whites want to stay white.
This isn’t to praise the arrangement. It’s just to note it. For what it’s worth, my wife is from El Salvador, and my son has been going steady with a very Mexican girl for over a year now — not to my unqualified approval, but I figure (a) she really is a very nice girl, (b) it’s not really my business to interfere barring something utterly intolerable, and (c) he could do a whole lot worse. To the extent that I would just as soon see the relationship end, it has to do more with her utterly working-class background and her being five feet tall than with her ethnicity per se. Again, I’m not seeking to justify the elements in my reaction — just to honestly note them. I’m not into self-deception.
Parenthetically, I find your statement that the intermarriage rate among Asians is 40% a tad at odds with my impressions. Hispanics do seem to become just more white people given a generation or two. Blacks try. You sure it’s the same with Asians? There’s some intermarriage — but surely not 40%.
it has to do more with ….her being five feet tall
;) short people got, no reason to liiiiiive.
i am 5 ft tall. there are worse things in life, like being crippled inside.
link to youtube.com
Hmm. Well I could say in all honesty that some of my best friends (or at least some of my son’s best friends) are five feet tall.
However, I’m sorry I said it. Not much else to say.
My wife is, it goes without saying, a real balboostah, but she towers over me. She has to bend nearly to a crouch to kiss my upturned, shining face, while I raise one shapely calf behind me. And that’s even if I raise myself to my full short.
It’s at 37 % according to the latest American Community Survey(which is sort of like a social sciences census done every couple of years). But this masks the fact that Asians are now the biggest single immigration group coming to the States(bigger than hispanics), which many people don’t yet know about. And this matter a lot, as you’ll shortly notice.
Asians also increased at the highest rate(percentage wise) of any ethnic group to the States over the past decade, much to the fact of immigration. Hispanics were going there but the last three years of the 2000-2010 period saw a large exodus of Hispanics back to Mexico and a stem in immigration. Pew came out the other week with a report that stated that net migration from Mexico to the U.S. had fallen to zero and possibly even went negative.
So with all this Asian immigration, what does this mean for intermarriage statistics?
Well, all social sciences research uniformly point to the fact that foreign born are much less likely to intermarry racially than native born. This is because of language and cultural barriers. And the fact that when you come to a new nation, if there’s an active diaspora there, you typically tend to go to that diaspora to seek help, financial support and you often find a spouse there.
And about 75 % of all Asian workers are foreign-born, which is in of itself pretty incredible that the intermarriage rate is still so high despite it all. Among the native-born Asians, you’re seeing rates of 50 % or higher for many groups.
According to the 2010 census Korean-American women born in America intermarry with non-Asians(almost always white men) at a rate of 60 %.
The most racially conservative Asian group is Indian-Americans but if you look at native-born Indian women, then the intermarriage rate is 37 % among women alone(and this only to white men), a small percentage marry hispanics, blacks etc but at exceptionally low rates(1 or 2 %).
There are very substantial gender discrepancies for all Asian groups, not just East Asians which is the stereotype and this hasn’t really been resolved and is a source of great tension within many Asian communities. The black/white gender discrepansies are narrowing rapidly and even so, very few white women actually marry black men and that pairing has the single highest divorce rate of all interracial as well as monoracial couples.
Now, again, most Asian adults in America are foreign-born. So why do I focus on native born? Because native born are immersed with American/Western culture and give a better look at that ethnic community in it’s natural setting, rather than an imported community which is self-segregating the first few years when coming to America and/or other Western nations, which is often the case when someone comes to America at an adult age without knowing much of the language and little of the culture other than some Hollywood fiction.
Also, even if Adults are mostly foreign born, most children are either US-raised or came to America at an early enough age so as to become fairly assimilated. And it’s these children’s marriage stats that will drive much of the future intermarriage.
But Asians now have higher median earnings than whites, so ‘marrying up’ isn’t the case anymore. Why this rush to intermarry with whites(because Asian-black or even Asian-hispanic intermarriage is fairly rare, even if increasing a little bit? Beats me. But cultural reasons have to be employed for this one as the economic ones ran out long ago.
“Asians are now the biggest single immigration group coming to the States (bigger than hispanics)”
Some of whom are only five feet tall!
‘…According to the 2010 census Korean-American women born in America intermarry with non-Asians(almost always white men) at a rate of 60 %.
The most racially conservative Asian group is Indian-Americans but if you look at native-born Indian women, then the intermarriage rate is 37 % among women alone(and this only to white men)…’
This leads to the rather pleasant thought that white men must be greatly in demand.
Therefore, in order to avoid social tension and frustration, I suggest that polygamy be legalized (but only for white men) .
I suppose that if Romney wins, one of the few compensations might be that he might prove culturally receptive to the idea. After all, his father was born in Mexico precisely because his family had moved down there in order to practice polygamy in peace. (I don’t know if that’s actually true, but I suspect shots at Romney around here are pretty safe).
“Therefore, in order to avoid social tension and frustration, I suggest that polygamy be legalized (but only for white men)”
We already have that, Krauss, but in the US it masquerades under the rubric of serial monogamy. I’m not sure, but I think you can masquerade under a rubric in the US. We still have some rights, you know!
“I suggest that polygamy be legalized (but only for white men) .”
Another Romney voter.
“the need to separate ourselves so as to insure our safety”
This need is not about safety. It is about enduring as such.
jewishgoyem: “This need [to separate ourselves] is not about safety. It is about enduring as such.”
Exactly. Zionism is no longer mainly about a Jewish state in Palestine but about maintaining Jewish separateness—or, to put it bluntly, antigentilism. Without Israel and Hitler (G-d and the Devil) Jews would have long ceased to exist, like Etruscans, Provencales and other groups remembered only in history books. And what would be the loss? People would read Sholem Aleichem in translation, just as they now read Aeschylus and Virgil.
I wish I could add something to this discussion, but I can’t, really. After 22 years, I have to face the fact that my marriage, far from any considerations of sociological, religious or cultural factors, was based on sex, pure mutual lust. Sure, that might be enough to last til the end of our lives, but not much more.
OK, this thread has been drifting from subject to subject; I’ll tackle but two.
@Annie Robbins: as a 5 ft 4 in man, I for one am thankful to have been born and raised in Argentina, not the US or Sweden. You went to the dancing clubs and half the girls were shorter than that. In my next life, however, I’ll move to the US and marry you.
@Americans commenting here: although your professed reason for occupying yourselves with Israel, rather than Saudi Arabia or China, is valid (it’s your tax dollars that are killing and maiming kids), that reason doesn’t apply to those of us whose countries don’t donate to the Zionist cause. My reason is more powerful in that it can apply to anybody: I am more concerned with Israel because its human rights violations (evidently far milder than China’s) are a) vehemently denied and b) committed in the name of morality. It makes no sense to repeat time and again what everyone agrees about. It makes much more sense to devote time to disputed issues, especially one in which the victim is consistently blamed by politicians and the media.
Right! Neither China, Saudi Arabia nor any of the other places often cited as “worse than Israel” claim to be guided by principles of humanism, democracy, etc.