Don't Block My View With Your Disabilities: The Case Of Yonah Yahav

I don’t mean to justify what Yonah Yahav, the mayor of Haifa, said about moving the home for troubled kids from their previous residence, in one of the poor areas of Haifa, to a new house, in one of the most desirable neighborhoods, Merkaz Hacarmel.

It is inexcusable and inhuman. However,Yahav is hardly the problem, and although we should condemn his bigotry and his hateful public expressions, he is only the symptom, and it is hypocritical to blame him for all the ills of our society.

Next to my parents home in one of the quiet neighborhoods on the Carmel Mountain, very close to that Merkaz Hacarmel (center of the Carmel Mountain), that Yonah Yahav so bravely protected, there was a care center for autistic kids. We frequently saw them taking group walks, and every so often we heard very loud screams. One day, when I visited my parents, one of the neighbors knocked on the door, she was there to collect signatures to have the center removed.

Please keep reading in the Times of Israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/dont-block-my-view-with-your-disabilities-the-case-of-yonah-yahav/

Ethiopian Jews Are Not Welcome

This morning on the radio I heard, again, horror stories of discrimination against Ethiopian Jews in areas like housing and education. Apparently there is a silent agreement in certain neighborhoods to keep Ethiopian Jews  away and not let them buy or rent apartments.

It seems that in Israel today, discrimination, in many ugly forms, has become a way of life.

I would like to devote today’s post to the discrimination against black people, specifically the West Indians, from the British colonies in Britain during the 1950s. Although the circumstances are different, the content would seem very familiar.

The West Indians fought together with the British in WW2, and regarded Britain as their “mother country.” They were totally unprepared for what they found when they actually moved to Britain after the war.

The 1948 British Nationality Act  confirmed the right of all citizens of the British Commonwealth and Colonies to settle in England. After the war, the West Indians were the first group of colored immigrants to come to the UK in significant number.

The West Indians were keenly conscious of their status as British citizens. They spoke English, and their education was focused on Britain and its history. The church, often the Anglican Church, had played a significant role in their lives in their home country, and their social values had been modeled after those of British society. West Indians who relocated to Britain referred to themselves as ‘migrants’ rather than ‘immigrants’, pointing out that since they were British citizens their ‘migration was essentially the same as internal migration within the British Isles. Thus they arrived in Britain fully expecting to be integrated into the new society, believing that their life in the West Indies had taught them what to expect in Britain.

Once there, West Indians experienced great difficulties in their search for housings in Britain. Clifford Hill, a minister who worked closely with the immigrants, testifies that in house-after-house they were met with ‘we don’t take niggers’, or were politely informed that the room was already taken. They were often driven into the mercenary hands of landlords who saw their plight as an opportunity to make money.

As many more West Indians arrived, property owners seized the prospect of buying up large old houses, sub-divided and ‘furnished’ them and then let out the rooms. The choice of location for West Indians was then very narrow; they needed to be fairly near to the central London labour market and according to testimonies they generally found rooms in miserable conditions and in noisy locations near  railways or  markets.

A report published by the Fabian Colonial Bureau at that time, cites that the status of colonial migrants was determined by three factors: first, as the West Indians or African migrants were people of color they were likely to face race-associated prejudice; second, since they were  considered  foreigners, they were subject to the attitudes directed toward foreigners regardless of race; third, because some Britons associated colored people with ‘extremely low social status,’ they were likely to suffer class discrimination.

The survey quoted a typical British response to the newcomers: “I dislike discrimination but I am obliged to practice it.” Overall the study found that the attitude to the black immigrants was that of superiority. The foreigner was inferior and not really regarded as British.

In Britain of the 1950s the insufferable conditions of the West Indians led to a series of riots known as the Notting Hill race riots of 1958.

Even if Britain today is not totally discrimination-free, this, previously insulated island, welcomes cultural and racial diversity and it has become a multi cultural society .

Earlier this year we witnessed the demonstrations protesting discrimination against Ethiopian Jews. I hope that we do not continue to turn a blind eye to the injustice in our own backyard. If we do, it is likely that an Israeli version of Notting Hill riots would have to wake us up.

P.S The information in this essay appeared in my published paper about the West Indians in 1950s Britain:

“From Greenland's Icy Mountains: The Church and the West Indian Immigrants in An Unsuitable Attachment.”  Kunapipi 30/1 July 2008

The essay appeared in the Times Of israel

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/ethiopian-jews-are-not-welcome/

"What A Cute Accent, Where Are You From?"

When I asked my linguistic professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia how I could get rid of my Israeli accent, he wasn’t optimistic about my chances. I further inquired if a strong accent indicated a lack of musical talent. He answered that based on what he had read it was a matter of personal identity. There were some people, he called them the Chamaeleon type, who could speak with almost no trace of a foreign accent. In contrast,  I probably, subconsciously, didn’t want to get rid of my Israeli identity. This explanation was reassuring, it was a relief to understand that it hadn't been my fault. I am not sure if this is still a valid theory, but I am not going to look for conflicting evidence.

I was reminded of the on-going difficulties with my foreign accent when I heard an episode of This American Life number 203:”Recordings for Someone” from Jan 11, 2002

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/203/recordings-for-someone?act=2

In the second segment of this program a student who stutters makes a recording for someone with whom he talks on the phone whenever he orders pizza. In that message he explains how anxious he becomes when he encounters impatience and intolerance on the phone, and as a result his stattering becomes more severe.   

Similarly, I cannot recall a phone conversation during which I wasn’t asked “I beg your pardon?” But still  talking on the phone had always been easier than the initial face to face interaction. Since on the phone people only heard my voice they still were able to concentrate on what I had to say.

In the small towns where we used to live there weren’t that many  foreigners, and  since I fit the Caucasian square on official forms, people just didn’t expect me to speak with a foreign accent. It usually threw them off and then came the question: “I beg your pardon?”  Normally once I had repeated the sentence, the next comment was: ”what a cute accent, where are you from?”

I never thought of my accent as "cute," it was who I was. In the US it was also the conspicuous sign of my foreignness, which otherwise could have gone unnoticed. It went with me everywhere: to the grocery store, to the gas station, to my girl's school, to work etc. Some people used to talk to me in a slow loud voice as though my accent made me hard of hearing.

Others were suspicious of foreigners, or strangers as the sociologist Georg Simmel calls them. He defines "‘stranger’ as a person who comes today and stays tomorrow, whose position in a group is determined, essentially, by the fact that he has not belonged to it from the beginning, that he imports qualities into it which do not and cannot stem from the group itself."

Simmel's mention of the stranger's position in the group, and the issue of belonging were key factors in our decision to go back to Israel after 14 years in the US.

When I heard the student whose stutter worsened whenever he sensed antagonism, I realized, that stuttering and foreign accent are more similar than I had ever thought. I was lucky to be able to find a place where I am understood, sadly he does not have such a safe haven.  

Lack of accessibility comes in all colors, shapes, and sounds, often it is just a polite substitute to the word discrimination. We still have a long way to go until everyone is let in.