re: #42 ReamWorks

I’m reluctant to make this point, but in their own hateful way, the Brietbart people have identified an genuine inconsistency with Liberals and race.

There’s an umbrella term of “people of color” that’s used to refer to “non-White” people. And this is broadly set to include Latinos, though not all Latinos will agree. An interesting commentary I saw on this was from Herman Badillo who said that Puerto Ricans are in a position to chose their racial categorization, and “white” would help them more. See his book “One Nation, One Standard”

And there is some Left-Wing ridiculousness about this. There was a call to African Americans to encourage Rainbow Grocery, a local food co-op, to stop selling Israeli food. Why? Because, according to them, Palestinians are fellow people-of-color! Nevermind the majority of Israelis are of immediate mid-eastern ancestry. (My paternal grandparents were born in Gaza city, kicked out in 1929. If we were just a different religion, we’d be “people of color!”) And never mind the large number of non-Jewish African refugees living in Israel. And never mind the Ethiopian Jews. To many liberals, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about race.

I think some of the right-wingers pointing out left-wing inconsistency have a small point.

However, their larger point is one of hate—that Martin had it coming, that Stand Your Ground is a good idea, so I won’t stick my neck out for the Brietbart crowd.

Citation for the bolded component?

Generally I see “Palestinian” used as an ethnic designation, not a race. The line between the two constructs…which are both pretty arbitrary…is hard to define, but the former tends to be a cultural complex, while the latter is viewed (inaccurately) as a hereditary biological trait. They can overlap, and often do.

Making things even more complicated is that there are terms out there, like “African American” that are at once describe ethnicity and race, but also exist as a linguistic expedient for label that can be applied to census rolls and other legal documents.

And generally I see liberals trying to make liasons between subaltern groups—those that have at some time been under the toe of another group—and Palestinians.

Not quite the same thing.