I spent some time with a friend of mine over Thanksgiving who is a quarter Native-American. He visits his Inupiaq relatives in Alaska every year. He towers over them at over six feet tall, a trait inherited from his Dutch grandfather, and at home in L.A. is often mistaken for Hispanic or if he lets his beard grow, Middle Eastern. Once, in a traffic skirmish, a guy yelled out his window for my friend to "go back to your own country," to which he retorted, "I'm Native fucking American, asshole!"
We were having drinks with a couple of girlfriends of mine and he told us that his family justifies celebrating the holiday of the white man who stole their lands and slaughtered its people by purchasing everything with the federal funds they receive each year as compensation for the aforementioned atrocities. Then my Eskimo friend disparaged the expenditure of federal funds to maintain a Jewish state thousands of miles away. I said jokingly that I didn’t understand the need for it since we already have New York and he added that an Israeli friend of his says the same thing about Beverly Hills. But I thought he had an interesting point when he asked why it should be different for the Jews. One woman at the table started rattling off the standard diatribe about Jews being kicked all over the globe as if anyone present honestly didn’t know. Yes, he countered, but what about Native Americans? Why not create a state for them? There are countless numbers of persecuted tribes in the world who don’t enjoy the same protection, many who have suffered genocide at the hands of those who displace them.
In a fantastic Pop!Tech lecture, Richard Dawkins questions the special significance allowed to religions. Why is it, he asks, that we consider it rude to challenge a person’s religion but acceptable to challenge just about everything else related to lifestyle? Who we have sex with, what kind of parents we make, what sports team we root for, our political views, our aesthetic taste, what food we eat, etc. What makes religion so special? He counters religion's attacks on science by showing that science is a study built on critique and sharing of information. Science is a discipline that has evolved by its members proving each other wrong and changing the public’s beliefs 180 degrees, over and over again. Perhaps, he suggests, it’s that religion cannot withstand critique so those organizations have protected themselves though a fabricated sense of reverence that tell us not to question.
I'm certainly no expert on the Israeli conflict but it made me think about the role of religion in how nation states are created.
4 comments:
--Well hey, just look around the Middle East. Other countries were partitioned for other reasons, including convenience to the French and the traditional warlords grabbing as much as they can. Of course, religion is always popular, as in, e.g., Pakistan's partition from India, but I don't know if it really gets a special place in the partitioning picture.
Though, why are you asking about Israel's `need to exist'? I don't really understand Saudi Arabia's need to exist, or that of Pakistan, Kurdistan, Luxembourg, Macedonia, France, or any other country. But there they are nonetheless, taking up space on the map. The US continues to give military support to Saudi Arabia, even though its need to exist is unclear.
--Are you saying you don't mind when people question your lifestyle choices like diet and sexual preference? I don't think Miss Manners approves of those questions either. But if religion does have a special place in it all, it might be because people have slightly less choice about what religion they wind up in. It used to be that you were born into a religion and that was that, and most of the world is not yet to the point where you can pick a religion like picking a sports team. I.e., the more of a choice something is, the more you get to question it, and it's unclear how much a choice religion is.
Please don't go there bunny. You certainly don't know enough about your own country to even begin to talk about other countries and religions.
I knew I'd get a reaction to this post and decided to post it anyway.
First of all, I think everyone has a right to question everything, whether it's polite or not is another question.
Secondly, the lecture I refer to is absolutely fantastic and makes excellent points about how children are indoctrinated into religion (and nationality for that matter) without their consent.
Third, I don't necessarily agree with my friend but think that the question of why the US would spend so many resources supporting a nation created for a disenfranchised group across the globe but not spend the same resources to create a nation for Native Americans is very interesting.
And finally, I have no opinion on Israel except that I think it's a bit of a tragedy (illustrated in this month's National Geographic about people who live surrounded by walls that they either think protect them or are trapping them).
I dislike it when "anonymous" people leave scathing comments. If you are going to leave a comment, sign your name. PS: It wasn't only scathing, it was rude.
Israel was created to give the US a foothold in the middle east.
Follow the money!
The reason we give them so much money and keep our troops over there is because America wants the oil.
The Native Americans didn't have any oil. That's why they didn't get their own state.
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