i recently had the most unpleasant and provocative experience of being asked a question laced with historical resentment: 'why did you hate us so much?'
i, a young australian, had been transformed and held to answer for the eastern european peasants that had made life so unpleasant for the grandparents of my young australian questioner - jews that had left eastern european in the 1920s.
though it was said slightly tongue in cheek, i found myself upset to the point of fury. a fury not about history, but about the inheritance of history. rather than feel angry with the implication that i inherited the guilt of one group of people, i was angry with the implication that i had not inherited the suffering of the other. the dirty issue of ethnic association (or nationalism, which is essentially the same thing) had reared its ugly head, and allowed me to ponder the matter.
i'm not sure that i quite believe in ethnicity, and i reject the idea of inherited guilt, inherited suffering, inherited thoughts and even inherited proprietorship of culture and cultural properties. after a few generations, so little is truly known and even less is truly understood about our backgrounds that they meld into a common background, and our collective achievement as human beings and our similarity as a species means that all history is our own. the suffering of prisoners on the slave ships bound for the americas in the 1600s and the hopes and fears of those who survived the atomic bombs in japan are as much my own personal inheritance as the tribulation of those involved in the prague spring or the eureka stockade. ultimately, it comes down to which stories are told and which stories we listen to. perhaps this is what ethnicity really is.
it saddens me that with such a wealth of human history, some stories are told over and over again, whilst others are simply forgotten, as if all people were not equal. i note with mispleasure that yet another film about the 2nd world war is currently in theatres - one of thousands in recent memory, all seemingly told from the same perspectives. the gypsies of europe were almost wiped out in the nazi concentration camps in the 2nd world war - why haven't i heard their stories (my stories)? is it because this group lack political power or organisation that their stories (my stories) are less important? no - just less told, and thus less remembered. english, french, jewish, german, and (especially) american perspectives of WW2? yes thanks i've heard those ad nauseum and now i've grown bored. i want some new perspectives and new chapters from our collective history from which i can learn something about myself and the human condition. please tell, because i'm listening.
coming back to the initial question that upset me. imagine for an instant that my questioner and i had DNA tests proving that we had been accidentally swapped at birth. would i now be any more or less jewish than i already am? would he? would i have a deeper anger (or of more concern, a right to a deeper anger) about the treatment of eastern european jews by eastern european gentile peasants 100 years ago? my answer is of course no - how could superficial regard for labels affect your own lifetime of real experiences, and the significance of our collective human history - whichever arbitrary part of it you may have listened to over the course of your life? i'm not saying that i would or wouldn't feel more or less jewish or gentile - that's beside the point. i'm saying that these labels are counter-productive. we as individuals and societies are a product of our stories - and in realising that we share in common with all other people the human experience, we take ownership of all human history and are enriched by it because it is our own personal history too. my people built the great wall of china, the pyramids, and the sydney harbour bridge. my people built the burma railway and they forced people to build the burma railway. my people executed people in death camps and were executed. my people enslaved others in africa and were enslaved in africa.
and yet...! young australian men, born in australia and speaking english as their first and often only language can still beat each other to a pulp in the street for reasons they're not really sure of, claiming an anger inherited from their supposed serbian/croatian/greek/turkish/insert-ethnicity-here background (one sided stories that they have been told). i once met a man who introduced himself as 'czech' and even had a tattoo of the czech republic on his arm, but when i started speaking czech he admitted to not understanding a word and having never been there - in fact on further questioning it was his great grandfather that had emigrated to new zealand and married a maori woman a century ago, so that not even his own grandfather spoke the language. i was amused, and then deeply saddened and finally frightened by this display, as it spoke of the need in our weak psychology to feel a sense of belonging to a special group that is somehow better or different to everyone else, even where there is no rational basis for that association. perhaps this void can be filled with nationalism or a strong sense of ethnic association and lead to anger and violence. but perhaps it can be filled with a sense that we are all part of the same group - an amazing group of human beings with a common history that binds us together. and perhaps this sense of unity will give us a basis for moving forward in a world where we really are all part of the same big family.
i, a young australian, had been transformed and held to answer for the eastern european peasants that had made life so unpleasant for the grandparents of my young australian questioner - jews that had left eastern european in the 1920s.
though it was said slightly tongue in cheek, i found myself upset to the point of fury. a fury not about history, but about the inheritance of history. rather than feel angry with the implication that i inherited the guilt of one group of people, i was angry with the implication that i had not inherited the suffering of the other. the dirty issue of ethnic association (or nationalism, which is essentially the same thing) had reared its ugly head, and allowed me to ponder the matter.
i'm not sure that i quite believe in ethnicity, and i reject the idea of inherited guilt, inherited suffering, inherited thoughts and even inherited proprietorship of culture and cultural properties. after a few generations, so little is truly known and even less is truly understood about our backgrounds that they meld into a common background, and our collective achievement as human beings and our similarity as a species means that all history is our own. the suffering of prisoners on the slave ships bound for the americas in the 1600s and the hopes and fears of those who survived the atomic bombs in japan are as much my own personal inheritance as the tribulation of those involved in the prague spring or the eureka stockade. ultimately, it comes down to which stories are told and which stories we listen to. perhaps this is what ethnicity really is.
it saddens me that with such a wealth of human history, some stories are told over and over again, whilst others are simply forgotten, as if all people were not equal. i note with mispleasure that yet another film about the 2nd world war is currently in theatres - one of thousands in recent memory, all seemingly told from the same perspectives. the gypsies of europe were almost wiped out in the nazi concentration camps in the 2nd world war - why haven't i heard their stories (my stories)? is it because this group lack political power or organisation that their stories (my stories) are less important? no - just less told, and thus less remembered. english, french, jewish, german, and (especially) american perspectives of WW2? yes thanks i've heard those ad nauseum and now i've grown bored. i want some new perspectives and new chapters from our collective history from which i can learn something about myself and the human condition. please tell, because i'm listening.
coming back to the initial question that upset me. imagine for an instant that my questioner and i had DNA tests proving that we had been accidentally swapped at birth. would i now be any more or less jewish than i already am? would he? would i have a deeper anger (or of more concern, a right to a deeper anger) about the treatment of eastern european jews by eastern european gentile peasants 100 years ago? my answer is of course no - how could superficial regard for labels affect your own lifetime of real experiences, and the significance of our collective human history - whichever arbitrary part of it you may have listened to over the course of your life? i'm not saying that i would or wouldn't feel more or less jewish or gentile - that's beside the point. i'm saying that these labels are counter-productive. we as individuals and societies are a product of our stories - and in realising that we share in common with all other people the human experience, we take ownership of all human history and are enriched by it because it is our own personal history too. my people built the great wall of china, the pyramids, and the sydney harbour bridge. my people built the burma railway and they forced people to build the burma railway. my people executed people in death camps and were executed. my people enslaved others in africa and were enslaved in africa.
and yet...! young australian men, born in australia and speaking english as their first and often only language can still beat each other to a pulp in the street for reasons they're not really sure of, claiming an anger inherited from their supposed serbian/croatian/greek/turkish/insert-ethnicity-here background (one sided stories that they have been told). i once met a man who introduced himself as 'czech' and even had a tattoo of the czech republic on his arm, but when i started speaking czech he admitted to not understanding a word and having never been there - in fact on further questioning it was his great grandfather that had emigrated to new zealand and married a maori woman a century ago, so that not even his own grandfather spoke the language. i was amused, and then deeply saddened and finally frightened by this display, as it spoke of the need in our weak psychology to feel a sense of belonging to a special group that is somehow better or different to everyone else, even where there is no rational basis for that association. perhaps this void can be filled with nationalism or a strong sense of ethnic association and lead to anger and violence. but perhaps it can be filled with a sense that we are all part of the same group - an amazing group of human beings with a common history that binds us together. and perhaps this sense of unity will give us a basis for moving forward in a world where we really are all part of the same big family.
