Identity Crises: No Room for White Jews

Let’s revisit identity politics again, shall we? I thought the idea was that one must represent one’s identity in all things, be recognized for that identity, and respect the differences among all identifiable groups. It was especially incumbent upon marginalized minorities to participate in this progressively minded brand of politics.

But does this apply across the board, or, as we have discovered with DEI, is inclusivity, oddly enough, very exclusive?

What can’t be denied—in part because identity politics provided the death knell—is that America’s melting pot long ago stopped simmering. The menu of what constitutes Americana now features a dizzying array of à la carte options, with national cohesion no longer being the favored meal. We are left with a very busy Chinese menu of subdivided categories, which also includes Chinese.

The menu of what constitutes Americana now features a dizzying array of à la carte options, with national cohesion no longer being the favored meal .

The politics of identity is an outgrowth of this resistance to immersion. That’s why celebrating identity inspires even less agreement than our usual politics. It is no less a bare-knuckle sport. Personal offense is quickly taken. Redemption rarely granted. And yet inconsistencies abound because no one bothered to broker the rules.

Misgender someone who identifies as trans or binary, botch the culturally pre-approved list of pronouns, suggest that a woman might prefer to raise a family than smash every glass ceiling in sight, wonder about the strong attachment Islamists seem to have with terrorism, and good luck maintaining an existence on social media, or joining a sorority, or receiving tenure, or climbing the ladder at corporations where woke is more valued than work.

If you’re running for president, best to stay clear of the identity of your opponent—especially if she is a female and a person of color. No good can come of it. Donald Trump took a news cycle hit when he questioned the identity-fluidity of Kamala Harris, his contender for the White House. She has an Indian mother and a Jamaican father. She identifies as an African-American woman, but Trump suggested that earlier in her career, she opted for South Asian.

So what? People deploy their backgrounds to their advantage all the time, whether it be geographic, religious, educational, or professional. It doesn’t necessarily make them phony. Harris went to Howard University in Atlanta, and when campaigning in Georgia, her accent sounds like she’s ordering soul food in the Bayou.

Barack Obama and Bill Clinton both maintained alternating personas that could be showcased depending upon the crowd and moment. Clinton was from Arkansas, but he was also a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. When speaking to farmers, he played up his Southern roots and small-town proclivities, which he knew quite well. Obama’s mother was from Kansas and his father from Kenya—and he grew up as “Barry” in Hawaii. His “Hope and Change” came in different flavors.

You don’t have to be a secret agent to have multiple identities. Donald Trump improbably appeals to America’s heartland—with its country music, NASCAR, Friday night high school football games, megachurches, pick-up trucks and populist playlists—as if he is Williams Jenning Bryan or Huey Long. But, actually, he descends from a New York City real estate family, attended an Ivy League university, was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and, as an adult, sat on a toilet seat made of gold.

There are all sorts of special sensitivities today. In the era of Black Lives Matter, the darker the skin, the better. Most biracial people self-identify as black. And there is a strong undercurrent of concealing or denying one’s white ancestry.

Former ESPN star anchor Sage Steele damaged her relationship with her employer when she publicly stated that she would never downplay the role her white mother played in her life. She was responding to a comment that Obama apparently made about the centrality of his blackness. He must have forgotten that his father abandoned him and returned to Africa, while his white mother and grandmother set him on a path that led to the White House. In both presidential elections where he was victorious, a majority of white Americans chose him over uber-white guys like John McCain and Mitt Romney.

He shouldn’t casually disown the white side of his family.

Or maybe he has a point. After all, despite all the hoopla over differences, this is also a time of disfavored identities. Identity politics doesn’t welcome everyone. It plays favorites. Some can be consigned to the melting pot and never be missed.

Two identities, in particular, are being unceremoniously told that there’s no room at the inn—those who are either white, or Jewish. Some—those who are biracial, and Jewish—are fortunate to be able to hide both. Nowadays, Lenny Kravitz, Drake, Lisa Bonet, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Tiffany Haddish have some career decisions to make. It’s a good thing Sammy Davis Jr. is dead. He was pretty uncompromising about his tribal commitments.

Two identities, in particular, are being unceremoniously told that there’s no room at the inn—those who are either white, or Jewish.

For everyone who is white and Jewish, it’s too late. They have long been out-ed. And they surely can’t emulate the most famous “Jazz Singer” ever to don a black face, Al Jolson, who happened to be Jewish.

Take Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. He has discovered the consequences of once having had a bar mitzvah. He’s waiting around to see whether Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, will tap him as her vice-president. He is immensely popular in his home state, which happens to be a battleground state. Polling shows that his presence on the ticket would benefit her the most.

But her progressive base is vomiting at the prospect of such a selection.

As CNN recently opined, the fact that Shapiro is Jewish is problematic these days. What about recognizing and respecting different identities? Well, putting ordinary antisemitism aside for a moment, Shapiro openly supports Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas. Worse still, he shattered the First Amendment presumptions of all those pro-Hamas encampments. He wondered whether progressives would tolerate mobs of KKK sympathizers singing genocidal songs about ridding the south of African-Americans—”From Key West to the Mason-Dixon Line.”

If Harris picks someone other than Shapiro, we’ll know why. But will the politics of identity treat her decision casually, as politics as usual? She might have to tweak the First Family a bit. As the first female African-American, South Asian president of the United States, her first order of business might have to be pardoning the First Husband of his identity that knows no name.

Thane Rosenbaum is a novelist, essayist, law professor and Distinguished University Professor at Touro University, where he directs the Forum on Life, Culture & Society. He is the legal analyst for CBS News Radio. His most recent book is titled “Saving Free Speech … From Itself,” and his forthcoming book is titled, “Beyond Proportionality: Is Israel Fighting a Just War in Gaza?”