Tag: prejudice

Returning Home

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

My everyday was so much easier in Germany. Antisemitism didn’t play silly buggers with the ground I walked on there, as it does in Australia. Australian antisemitism is mostly gentle and kind, but no less troublesome for that. Until I went to Germany I had no idea of its place in the general scheme of things, but now I understand that, too. Five weeks where I could literally be myself taught me that I am not the heart of the problem. Nor is me being Jewish. I know about what is wrong with Australia and why bigotry triumphs right now. Around me, many people are raging about Nazis, but doing nothing about the gentler and more insidious racism. Whatever I do to handle this will be uncomfortable, and if I don’t do anything I will also be uncomfortable.

How did Germany teach me these things?

It still has all the history that cause the Shoah. It’s dealt with some of it supremely well, and other parts not at all. My research project concerned how Germany handles its Jewish past, especially the past up to 1700. I explained I wasn’t a German historian, but a French/English one. I was entirely open about my Jewishness, but also about the parts my family played in the war. There were no closed doors. In fact, it was quite the opposite. People wanted to talk to me and tell me their views and hear what I had to say. They were excited by my questions and chased things up for me: we all know a lot more about Jews in the Saarland, about the relationship between lebuchen and honeycake, about the Jews who never returned to Germany, about medieval expulsions and why they were not always as they seemed, about Roman Jews in Germania… and a whole lot more. There will be a book. In fact, nearly half the book is already written (and needs a publisher!) but this post is not about that book.

I was able to use my experience to better understand the 1930s in Germany and why so many non-Jewish Germans were silent then. Also why everyone’s favourite patriotic children’s author was murdered. The murder was death camp stuff: tragically normal that year. The silence, however, was mostly not intentional. I strongly suspect that the vast majority of non-Jewish Germans did not hate Jews and are still trying to handle what happened. Many people closed doors for emotional safety because life was too full of problems. Small lives became smaller lives. Some of them closed doors to keep out people (Jews, Roma, people with the wrong politics or sexual preferences) who might make their own lives more difficult in a chancy decade. There was fear; there was selfishness; there was small life syndrome. The actual hatred was confined to a much tinier portion of the community than we mostly think.

Those who accepted the Nazis, or got on with their lives despite the Nazis are perfectly normal people. Good people who mostly led good lives. They silenced those around them without hate (or with only a little hate, not enough to murder or throw stones) and when the worst happened were terribly shocked. I learned a lot about things from how shocked people were and how, three generations later, they are still determined to fight and ensure this does not happen again. They are still dealing with their families being a part of the horror. Good people who discovered that goodness is not enough by itself, that silencing and closing doors and leading small lives can feed terror.

Australians are doing the small life thing to most Jewish Australians. I’m largely not dealing with hate. Three people I know well clearly hate me because I’m Jewish, only three, out of hundreds. The occasional hate mail is just that – an occasional nasty piece of email from a nasty piece of work. Most of the others who make my life more and more difficult are agreeing with politics that silences or isolates (why I am so worried about the Aussie Greens – anyone who backs them without pushing them to talk to the Jewish community as a whole is helping close doors) or they are dealing with impossible situations personally and do not have energy left to find out why I’m missing from this place or that, or… there are a number of other possibilities, but they all come down to preferring small lives above shared lives.

The biggest thing I noticed in Germany was how much easier life is when one doesn’t have to do a bunch of work to be heard. In Australia, I have to run an extra mile before anyone will listen to me, because I have to prove I’m someone who deserves a little attention. I have to open closed doors. Some of the once-open doors are locked and I have to beg for a key. All attention I previously had for my books, my classes,Women’s History Month, and a truckload of other things is immaterial to the world around me. at home Bookshops do not stock my books. Reviewers won’t review my books. And this applies to the vast, vast majority of Jewish writers.  In Germany, scholars and students looked at my books and my work. My life’s work is important and interesting. I could also talk openly about my research and its impact and everyone talked openly back. Me being Gillian is sufficient.

I’m not going to spend the rest of my life contacting politicians and people I used to work with and social activists who knew me, once upon a time. I wrote to them when I could before I left, and they never answered. I am still the person who can give excellent policy advice on these things. More so now, in fact, because of my current research. I’m still the person who spent twenty odd years of her life fighting for human rights for many people, and teaching people how to fight for themselves. I am an expert they need to talk to, but their doors are closed. Those politicians and activists and most of Australia’s left have chosen small lives. If someone doesn’t bother to read my email because I’m no longer the right person or the known person, or assumes that someone else will be more acceptable, then that’s their choice. All those choices have been made. I will not write any more letters.

If someone wants to talk with me, I am still the expert I once was. I discovered this is Germany. I don’t teach what one has to do to prevent or limit the spread of bigotry: I teach how things happen and tools that can be used. Choices and paths are for the person dealing with it in their every day. I once made a living providing history and understanding and tools, and had completely forgotten about that part of my life, because of the amount that part of my life has been sidelined. Right now, just getting to see anyone and get a decent conversation that may or may not lead to changes is like running a marathon. To run marathons, one needs spoons. I’m chronically ill. Another thing I discovered in Germany is that one can lead a much better life with a chronic illness if one doesn’t have to battle to be heard.

I’m still very happy to help anyone deal with identification of bigotry, whether they are themselves unintentionally excluding, how cultural tendencies push towards how we see people. However, I’m not well, and I’m not willing to spend all my energy explaining why I can be useful (very, very useful) at this moment in Australia’s history. I tried that, and it took all my energy with no results. I left thinking that I was not the person I thought I was, and had nothing useful to give. Now I realise, thanks to the last five weeks, that it is Australia that has changed and that I am simply one of many people dealing with the downside of that change. Being Jewish is my everyday, but that everyday results in closed doors. Much of Australia is quietly and gently hiding itself from anything that might cause it emotional distress, and one of those subjects if being Australian and Jewish. Simple descriptions are applied to us and who we are and how we live our lives is not considered something worth knowing.

If you want to talk to me about these things, and the shape of prejudice in society and how to handle different manifestations of that prejudice, then I’m happy to help. Ask me. Don’t wait for me to find you. If you want to scold me for being Jewish or thinking Jewishly or keep me out of things until I know my (polite and submissive) place, then you’re not seeing me.

If you want to know who is pushing me aside in this way, just look at groups of people or events I have been involved with in the past. If I’m not there, ask the event people why. I am not given reasons why – I’m just excluded – so I can’t speak for them.

If I am at an event and especially if I’m talking about things that matter to me, then please celebrate, for the people organising that event are not closing doors. They’re not taking the lazy path into bigotry. Their lives are bigger than this.

 

PS For those who are curious, I was a Research Fellow at Heinrich Heine University for a month, and was doing research supported by Deakin University. I owe both universities a great deal, for helping me understand the incomprehensible.

On Smiling and on Adjectives

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

I posted this on Facebook today:

How do I know it’s Chanukah? Because a child has stood in my little corridor, looking at the door of the linen cupboard very intently. As soon as I make myself known, I am asked “May I open the door?”

“No,” I say. ” You will be disappointed if you open the door. Look what the sign says ‘Narnia is not behind this door.'”

One of the less-talked-about differences between being part of an accepted majority culture and of being of a minority one (whether accepted or not accepted, safe or not safe) is that we all have shared jokes and winces with majority culture folks. Think about how deep Christmas resonances are from now. In fact, from two weeks ago. Think now of how few and very limited the resonances are for Chanukah… if you’re in the US. If you’re in Australia they’re fewer and mostly private. There isn’t a broad shared Jewish culture of any kind in Australia that is not mediated by Christian mainstream culture.

What this means in terms of our everyday is that we have to build those resonances, one step at a time. For me, my resonances for Chanukah include inviting children over and making latkes with them, teaching them how to invent their own rules for dredel (because that’s what my family did when we were young) and so forth. But they also experience my flat in a different way to other visits. Because Chanukah is so enmeshed with experience and fun, they look at things and see things and want to ask questions.

I put that sign on my linen cupboard years ago. I’ve influenced it in my fiction. I’ve told people about it. And yet, even with children who have visited before and know things very well, when they reach a certain age (about Lucy’s age, actually, when she first goes through a door into Narnia) they see that sign on the door and ask the question.

This year A (the child in question) snuck back later and checked out the cupboard. If he tells his family about it and it comes back to me, the question will be whether it is always a linen cupboard. This is what happened when his older sister tried the door a few years ago. His little sister is reading Harry Potter for the first time by herself, so she will have Opinions. It will become a part of “What happens at Gillian’s every Chanukah.” Because he checked it alone, I couldn’t pose that question. They are all asking each other, now, “Did you see the sign? Did you open the door?” The interactions after that and with me are always different, but they’ve become a normal and wonderful part of Chanukah.

Some of the cool things we do because we’re not surrounded by people who do the things we do can be very special. The relationship my adopted nieces and nephews have with this single door is one of the most special of all. It fits in nicely with a chat I had with other friends, later that night. None of the tidy and often accusatory label that are thrown my way fit me at all. I am not, as some of my students used to explain, an adjective: I am a human being. That notice on that door is one of the bits of my life that proclaims this. Anyone who doesn’t see the notice or dream about it at all, is missing some of the best parts of my life.

Another discussion we all have every year is why the spelling of a single word can vary so much. And another, a more adult one, is why the politics of a particular bit of land were so fraught just before 167 BCE. No-one asked why I always tangle the Hasmoneans with their predecessors, which is simply because I am dreadful at names.

Complexity is I herent in Jewish life. These small things are the everyday complexity, like not being able to safely wear anything in public that indicates I’m Jewish. The questions of children and the passionate argument about spelling are so much better than some of the ways we are told to be and to think as Jews.

This coming year, when anyone tells me who I am and what I think because they know so much more about my Jewish self than I could possibly do, I shall think of my honorary nephew, standing outside that cupboard door and wondering if it really could lead to Narnia. And I shall smile with the happy memory. And anyone who genuinely thinks of me as an adjective and not a person will see that smile and be unsettled. My smile will be like that sign on the door. It might lead where the unsettled person thinks, but …

Identifying bigotry, bias, and poor judgement

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

Today’s post was going to be short and simple because today I feel very short and rather simple. Except it’s my least favourite topic and it’s the topic that governs so much of our everyday. So it’s long and complicated.

Because I often encounter prejudice, I have ways of measuring how far it extends so that I can avoid problems and problem people when there are no solutions. I don’t walk away from anything lightly, but I need ways to assess if an event of group has become unsafe for me or if I’ve become so much a second-class citizen that I cannot be certain my voice will be heard when a problem arises. I have walked away from something just this week, which is why this post is so very personal.

These are some of the things I use to look for incoming problems and for current problems. Every one of them relates to experiences from the last month or ongoing issues. They don’t work for extreme prejudice ie I had no way of predicting the Molotov cocktails that were thrown at a building I was in or hate mail I received. I cannot gently walk away before bad things happen. It’s not a complete list in any way. In fact, it’s simply the tools I’ve had to use this last week.

1. Red flags.

Indications that someone doesn’t see things the way I do, and (the ‘and’ is important) may act on their viewpoint in a way that’s, at best, uncomfortable, or at worse, dangerous. I avoid someone who lives locally to me, for instance, because they always want to talk about Israel or money: I’m Jewish, so I must always want to talk about Israel or about money – those are two red flags. There are other red flags for other aspects of my life. Some of them relate to being safe as a woman, some being safe as a person with chronic illness and disabilities. This last week I’ve encountered ten red flags from three people. Red flags often feel creepy to people in the same group. They’re indications of where a path can lead. When I mentioned one of them (the gender-related series) their response was “That’s so creepy.” While they’re not themselves dangerous, they can lead to bad places. One red flag won’t make me walk away from a person. We all make mistakes and we can all be stupid, after all. A consistent display of red flag behaviour, however, is a safety issue.

I first try to address the behaviour, because some of it is copying others. If telling a person “This hurts me” or “This makes me uncomfortable because…” doesn’t change anything, I have to get out.

2. Equality of access

One of the easiest-to-spot evidence of othering is when two people have equal background and put equal work in and one is rewarded while the other has to move on. This has applied to me more in Cnaberra than elsewhere in Australia. I can teach a subject for years and have amazing student ratings and full courses every time and then be dumped from the institution without notice (ask me about why I’m not at the ANU one day) or be told that, while other people are remembered by the organisation, I have to apply as if I’m a new person. I ask about my records with them and they say, “We’re not looking at history.” Except they do… with non-minority writers. Because of my disabilities, I have limited energy and not a lot of income, so it’s very easy to make something impossible for me by making it a two day job to apply for something that will give two hours income. If I weren’t in such a small community and if I didn’t hear that others are not made to jump through the same number of hoops and that their experience is counted and that most of the jobs I have to apply for as if I’ve never been seen locally are given to people whose names have come up in discussions… I’d assume it was a level playing field. There are, in other words, organisational ways of othering and of keeping undesirables out.

It took me a long time to realise this was happening. My moment of illumination came when someone carelessly said “We can’t consider you because you’re not experienced enough. The others have more qualifications, too.” This sounds innocuous. Except… I have two PhDs, a teaching qualification, 30 years teaching experience, ten novels, thirty years organising experience, non-fiction published on the subject. even the occasional award. What did my replacements have? About 1/10 of these things. What works in my favour outside a bigoted community is an actual impediment within one.

3. Fairness of treatment

This is so complicated in real life, but it comes down to “If you have two incidents at an event, are they being treated using the same set of values and the same approach/process and are all people involved in them being treated with equal fairness.” This includes communication about the incident. It’s so very personal at the moment that I’m not going to give an example, because it’s a bit triggery. Triggers are things to be avoided.

4. Being included

Who is at a social event and why? How are they treated? There are some once-close-friends who I will not dine with any longer because they only include me when they want to prove they’re not bigots and when I am at the same table as them they talk down at me. I’m only allowed to speak when spoken to. I have to respect the social order.

Or, from the other direction, is there someone who is continually left out even though they technically belong in a particular group? Are there events that don’t include this one person time after time? And, if asked, do the orgnaisers simply assume someone has asked them? Additionally, if the person is disabled, does anyone even both to ask “What do you need us to do so that we can include you?” or is the assumption made early on that it’s easier to invite everyone and expect that they won’t be able to come.

This kind of thing is very badly recognised and handled in Australia because we don’t like to admit we do it.

5. When specific racist/problematic things occur, how those in charge react?

When there is hate mail or stones or Molotov cocktails or something else, how do the people in charge handle it? For years I was the go-to person for advice on these things. Now I’m told socially, “Look, antisemitic event in Canberra. You should know.” It’s done with apparent sympathy, but no support, and no sense of how I may feel to be told of a Hitler salute and that it was handled with less effort than the amount taken to deal with issues where I was seen as the guilty party. And that’s the caring people. It’s a red flag that the allies only see themselves as allies. This relates to people from majority background, or some other minorities. It also includes people who come from minority backgrounds but do not have the life experience to handle problems for others from that background, but who think that they do – this is a very sticky and thorny area. All of these people can unintentionally compound a problem. It’s also a red flag that the wider community accepts something.

There is one very difficult area here. I said that it was a very sticky and thorny area in the previous paragraph. What is this sticky and thorny area? Passing: ie it includes people from the same minority background who can ‘pass.’ Some of us have knowledge about handling difficult issues, and some do not. Just because someone from a minority passes, doesn’t mean they have the knowledge to make wise decisions… and it doesn’t mean they don’t have this knowledge. It depends so much on the individual.

If I weren’t public, for example, about being Jewish, I could publicly skip all the cultural and religious aspects of Judaism and pass as white in Australia. It wouldn’t negate my knowledge, and I was brought up traditionally and so have a fair amount of that knowledge, and my historical knowledge is mostly relating to Europe, which deepens my understanding. I know stuff, in other words, and can give good advice if asked. (The red flag for me is who rushes into things without asking, but that is an offshoot of 2 – experts who are not seen as experts because they are being othered so their expertise is not acknowledged.)

A very well-known group that has ‘passed’ is those Sephardi and Mizrachi Jews who went into hiding for their own safety. Many Sephardi Jews were killed after Inquisitional interrogation brought out that they ate Jewish-style eggs, or salad on Saturday afternoon ie that they hadn’t relinquished all Jewish culture. Some remained Jewish in secret and a few of them are emerging into the Jewish world now. Most converted to Christianity or Islam and remained safe but lost hundreds of years of heritage.

For anyone who can pass, it can be simply not telling people about your private life and that can save you from so many mean places. I choose not to hide, and these last two years I’ve questioned my own wisdom in making that choice. Anyone who cannot hide, of course, has to deal with a lot more garbage than those of us who can and those of us who do. How those in charge of a place or an event react to problems hurts those who cannot and those who will not hide their minority identity consistently and often.

This is not even close to a complete analysis. It’s based on my experiences, mostly over the past year. There are bigger and much better analyses. The first place I send people who want to get a handle on this is https://nyupress.org/9781479840236/white-christian-privilege/ While Joshi’s book is about the US, the first three chapters in particular apply to Australia. Why is this so important? Many of the people who cause such problems have good intent and are otherwise nice people. They don’t, however, have a solid way of measuring their world view, understanding how it affects their thoughts and actions, and using understanding to handle bigotry. The work is often given to those who are bigoted against, which means that the experts are also the ones who need support. It means, also that those who have to deal with all these things in their everyday have to be willing to take on, as voluntary work, helping privileged people. Step one is understanding, and Joshi’s work is the first step in the path to that. Just the first step. Right now, I really wish more people in my home town would take that first step.

Ironically, I sued to teach these subjects to public servants. I was thrown out of that job without notice and without even a letter saying “Sorry we’re losing you after 20 years.” I found out I’d lost the job because of a notice saying “Your email account is being cancelled.” Manifestations of prejudice are varied and some can only be handled by walking away.

Story Matrices – the story behind Gillian Polack’s research

personby Gillian Polack
schedulePosted on

Today I’m wildly busy, but also celebrating. The research I’ve talked about at science fiction conventions for years is finally in print. Thanks to Luna Press, a Scottish SF publisher with an academic branch. The book is Story matrices: Cultural Encoding and Cultural Baggage in Science Fiction and Fantasy. The reason I’m so tired and so very delighted is because this book was almost lost to the world because Canberra had bushfires and the bushfires made me ill. I had a week of doing normal everyday things before COVD hit Canberra and since then I’ve not been able to go to libraries, to attend face to face meetings and so much more. I’m not entirely a well person and so I’m one of those who have spent most of COVID seeing people only online. Occasionally I get out and pretend life is normal, but I’m always wearing a mask and it’s always risky.

Despite all this, my little study of how science fiction and fantasy is important in cultural transfer and explanation is officially available. It’s not the mega-study that I had intended, but, as someone earnestly said to me a couple of months ago “it’s much easier to read than it would have been if you’d written it the way you told me you would.”

There are so many things I want to tell you about this book.

I want to talk about how hard it is to write any book through brainfog and with lungs that don’t fully work. I want to explain that air should be breathable, not riddled with particles.

I also want to talk about how difficult it was to avoid the usual explanations of writers we no longer trust. Aided by the brainfog, my first draft kept falling into bad explanations of the changing relationships between Marion Zimmer Bradley, JK Rowling and their readers. I then looked at what I wrote and realised that I was doing exactly what my book explains: I was telling stories about them that explained who they were and their life choices. But my book isn’t about their life choices nor how we react to them. That I dislike a whole bunch of things about MZB’s private life and get angry about JK Rowling’s opinions about my friends is, to be honest, not useful. These are my emotions and my ethics and my personal opinions.

I need to get past the ethical questions and the personal. My research explains that how we tell stories is damned important. I needed to understand how we include our ethics and our thoughts about others into our work, often without knowing we’re doing this. I needed to write it out clearly. That was surprisingly difficult. Now that the book is out and people can read it, I’ll find out if I’ve succeeded.

It’s urgent that we understand why harmful stereotypes keep being updated and complex understanding of human beings is only appropriate for certain kinds of novels. This is why, instead of describing my own personal reactions of this author or the other, I needed to explain how novels give us tools that support one interpretation or another. I had to explore what some of those tools are and explain how they work.

My original plan was for a comprehensive explanation that changed the world. Life reduced this to an introduction, with lots of different entry points for readers and writers, so that they can explore for themselves the bits of the world they want to change. I looked at unique culture and shared culture, at what story space is for a reader and what it is for a writer, at how we build worlds for fiction and to play in. Understanding how Rowling and MZB’s work fits into this, helps us understand how their life choices creep into their fiction and gives us the capacity to understand which parts of that fiction are good and which are worrying. It takes us past stereotyping and into how that stereotyping plays out in novels.

This book is the next step after my History and Fiction work. It’s the precursor of a deeper exploration. Right now, I’m looking at how fairy tale retellings and fantasy world building operate in certain novels. Now that Story Matrices is out, I need to deepen my understanding of how we do what we do and what that means for our writing. I especially need to understand how the nicest people can use racist and bigoted cultural elements in their work, and how the most terrible people can write immensely popular and well-written novels. I need to do this non-judgmentally, because I am also capable, as a writer, of doing all these things. Instead of saying “What a terrible thing this writer has done”, I want to look at works and say “These are the techniques the writer has used.” Readers can make their own decisions about ethics and are perfectly capable of judging for themselves, but it really helps to have useful tools.

How culture is encoded into fiction and the cultural baggage fiction carries is not a simple matter. It’s a mosaic sparkling with colour and with outlines that move and perspectives that change. It’s easier to give simple descriptions and to announce, “I understand this.” It’s so simple to hate a book without understanding what the writer has actually done, what we’re reacting to with such force. There is a price for choosing the easy route. Our everyday lives become riddled with material we read in our fiction or watch on TV or in movies, or in comics or… in any narrative.

With the best intentions in the world, we can spread prejudice and support hate. That’s the extreme case, the one that’s right now playing out in a war in Eastern Europe, in the collapse of politics in Pakistan, in the Middle East, in Sri Lanka, in Myanmar and in may other places. I can see those stories in the convoy folk who descended on Canberra in February and have been giving us a hard time ever since.

So much of the things we do in our lives is influenced by the stories we love. Story Matrices is one step on my journey to understanding this. In a perfect world, it will help readers and writers see what we put into novels and what we take out of them. It will give us back choices about the aspects of culture we want to accept.