How Yiddish Thrives In New York →
(via negevrockcity)
Holy shit. Somewhere, my mother is having a coronary right now. Meanwhile, this:
Twenty years ago, Mr. Mason himself regretted being quoted as describing David N. Dinkins, the Democratic mayoral candidate, as “a fancy schvartze,” invoking a Yiddish word, often used derogatorily, for a black man. Mr. Mason later apologized. “I’m a comedian,” he said then, “not a politician.” He was criticized for calling President Obama the same word during a show this year, but told the entertainment Web site tmz.com that it was no longer a pejorative term.
is classic. Jews can be just as racist as anybody else. The term’s passive, but still incredibly derogatory; if you were to confront someone from an older generation of Jews about using it, they’d look at you like you’re critcizing them for calling the sky “blue.” I’ve seen it happen with my own family. Same with “fagelah” (gay) “shiksa” (depending on the context, can mean anything from “gentile woman” to “dumb aryan bitch”), and “goyim,” which is an umbrella term for gentiles, period (note the linguistic resemblence to the word “golem”). Furthermore, I have no doubt in my mind that Abe Foxman’s used every one of these words several times in his life (for those of you that don’t know, the ADL mostly exists just to seperate Jews from everyone else by projecting Zionism as everyone else being racist).
Luckily, younger Jews don’t give a shit about Yiddish for anything other than its pop culture context, as something that once distinguished Jews (like media control!) from everyone else, that’s thankfully fading fast. The last thing the world needs is another way to be a closeted racist.
