There's some Jew in you

[lavendertook]

Coworker: And your pocketbook is purple, too!

Me: Yeah, I like it. I got it from the street vender up the block. I actually bargained him down for it.

Coworker: So you got some Jew in you.

Me: I AM Jewish.

*nervous giggle from her and other coworker*

Me: Watch that stereotype there.

*she goes to talk about other coworker about business and ignores me*

Comments

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

She could have said, sorry, or, excuse me, for heaven's sake. Remember Father Guido Sarducci on Saturday Night Live? You are probably too young, but he was a great take-off of a seedy New York Italian priest that chain-smoked and wore sunglasses. He did a great monologue one night about visiting Rome and buying relics. Taking drags off his cigarette between phrases, he told the audience all about how hawkers descended on the tourists around St. Peter's, trying to sell them souvenirs and relics. "There was even a guy selling the check from the Last Supper," he said, to huge guffaws, including at our apartment. "But," he added, sadly, "it was too expensive." More laughter. Didn't the guy didn't have anything cheaper? "'Well,' the guy said, 'I've got the check for the Last Brunch...'" Hilarious laughter. "The guy still wanted way too much for it," Father Guido said, then leaned confidentially into the camera, "so I Protestanted him down to half-price." Everyone watching the show went into hysterics. (Eta: Just in case my remembered version of the skit wasn't clear enough, the tone showed that it was meant to be humorously critical of "to jew".)

Sometimes people say these things ignorantly. I remember calling my southern roommate on the very same usage back in college ("he wanted fifty but I jewed him down to twenty"). She was a very nice person, but grew up in a milieu where this was a normal expression. But events this week at the Holocaust Museum show that all anti-Semitic remarks aren't just from thoughtlessness or ignorance. Even if used unthinkingly they come out of a history of distrust, misunderstanding, even antagonism and contempt, that goes way back. Your co-worker may have spoken out of the same sort of unthinking ignorance as my college friend decades ago, but at least my roommate had the grace to look abashed, and she stopped saying it.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

Yup. Apologizing even minimally seems too hard for more people than not, in my experience thus far. I do remember him well--I grew up watching that batch of SLN crew. Though I don't remember that particular skit.

I do hope the timing of larger events have given her pause to think, but it's just as likely it hasn't.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

Maybe just your comment alone wouldn't, but she'd have to live under a rock not to make the association with what went down at the Holocaust Museum, which is right in her own backyard, so to speak.

[lavendertook.livejournal.com]

You'd think, but an awful lot of people spend a lot of time crawling and writhing under rocks like the things under that tree bole--people can be very creative in the ways they find not to make connections between things that are uncomfortable for them.

[mechtild.livejournal.com]

*sigh* You're probably right, alas.