On Aug 19, 2005, at 7:08 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
There is a big difference between saying that I have been persecuted
for
being a jew ( I have not) and that jews have not been persecuted.. I
am fortunate
to live in the one country where anti-semitism has never been as big a
problem
as elsewhere. The US is one of the few countries that has not as part
of its
official governmental policy discrimated against jews. (in other words
jews
have not been kicked out of the us,. had their property confiscated,
denied the
right to have property, denied the right to vote etc). I do not
consider
myself to be part of an oppressed minority.
Then this is a big difference between you and me. While you've been
going on and on about subtle anti-semitism, you probably haven't felt
its effects, yet you've been suggesting that I don't understand
oppression.
You haven't seen your people dragged to death in chains behind pickup
trucks in Texas, nor beaten and left to die on wire fences in Wyoming,
and yet you have the gall to suggest I don't understand something like
anti-semitism, which is as old as homophobia (even Jews are homophobic)
and very present, very active in US society today. So much so that
there's talk about codifying homophobia, making it a national law.
In many parts of this "free" nation, my people can't adopt children
because there's an irrational, baseless fear that children will somehow
be "corrupted" by being loved, unconditionally and totally, by a
same-gender couple of parents. While Jews all across the US are free to
have children, I and my kind can't even have that right.
Howe dare you? How dare you suggest I have no understanding of lethal,
pervasive oppression?
I submit that it is you who don't understand oppression. You haven't,
by your admission, experienced it; I've lived with it every day of my
life. I have seen people like me die from it. People I have known have
killed themselves because of it. I live in a nation trying to make it
impossible and illegal for my people to marry. And you?
Don't ever presume to lecture me again about my ignorance of prejudice.
--
Warren Ockrassa, Publisher/Editor, nightwares Books
http://books.nightwares.com/
Current work in progress "The Seven-Year Mirror"
http://www.nightwares.com/books/ockrassa/Flat_Out.pdf
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