15 yr old Florida teen attacked, imprisoned, denied medical treatment

houstonhoya · Jul 13, 2014

Deji said: ↑

In the bible, there's a break in Moses' narrative, where he went to the "Land of Kush" after leaving Egypt but before the burning bush and all that. If I'm not mistaken, that's where the term first appears in bible and in any case, it's where I first heard it. I incidentally studied a lot of rabbinical commentary about it (and published a paper about it, no less) since nothing that happened during that period is in the bible itself.

But you are absolutely right that it is regarded as a racial slur. All I really have to offer is anecdotal and I can't speak for the language or the people who speak it. For one, I'm not a native Hebrew speaker, so I have my own bias as an English speaker and I simply don't feel qualified to argue linguistics. And for the other, I'm an American, so racial slurs in general are a culatural taboo, wheras in Israel, they are commonplace, even among friends, and not in a way that would be at all acceptable in any English-speaking culture. I was always told that "Americans are too PC" when I would get pissed off when Israelis casually referred to the Ivorian drummer I played with as "that ******" who would swear they meant no offense.

It also made some (but certainly not all) people who were ostensibly educated and open-minded really unconfortable when they saw pictures of my family (particularly my African-American brother-in-law and his kids with my sister, and for that matter, a Korean ex-girlfriend -- take note Sir Jackie) that invited a lot of very personal questions and rude quips that would have again been absolutely unacceptable in the US.

And that's unfortunately the way it is, and it actually got worse as I travelled to other parts of the Middle East. Saul Williams, if you know him, was shocked when he was in Ramallah and kids were waving and smiling and shouting "******" oblivious to what the word meant, especially to him.

As upset as he was, he said he had to remember it's a construct of English speakers and American culture, and even then, the last generation of Israeli and Palestinian kids learned it from TuPac, not George Wallace.

I still never got used to that.

I'm not being an apologist for Israeli racism or the dogwhistles it engages in and it would be an understatement to say that I wouldn't be the first choice of defenders for those that are guilty of it -- I'm just making it clear that Casspi has good reason to be upset about his home being rocketed.

The only thing linking the government's treatment of asylum seekers with The Conflict is rooted in the collective obsession of certain parlimentarians and their supporters of "keeping Israel Jewish" which I'm sure is not lost on anyone as to what that means. Those kinds of slogans got a lot of people elected in the last election.

I am familiar with David Sheen and I've never read anything by him that would question his credibility. He (and you) have every reason to be concerned and I don't think the mentality is going to change considerably in our lifetimes.

I saw more than the average Israeli probably did of its unguarded predjudice toward Africans because of my drummer, and there was a point where I lobbied the band to cover Mississippi ******* for which I was categorically denied due to the fact that they all felt:

1. There was no piano in the band, so it would sound awful
2. I couldn't sing remotely like Nina Simone
3. The audience I wanted to reach not only wouldn't get it -- it would likely have an opposite effect, with the audience thinking I was celebrating American segregation rather than criticizising theirs.
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15 yr old Florida teen attacked, imprisoned, denied medical treatment

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