Racial And Ethnic Essentialism Make Everything Worse, Israel/Palestine Edition

Okay, one more take

I’m working on a very long follow-up to this piece about Coleman Hughes’s TED Talk on color blindness that is mercifully divorced from the news, and that I think some of you will find potentially interesting and informative. But it’s not ready yet, and in the meantime I’ve got something else to say about the unfolding Israeli-Palestinian catastrophe.

This is about The Discourse. I understand The Discourse isn’t the most important thing right now. The Middle East isn’t my usual area and other than being horrified at what’s developing, I have few substantive insights. I’m going to focus on The Discourse because it’s an area that bridges my own interests to the conflict. 

One of my most consistent themes in this newsletter has been my dislike of identity essentialism. Claims that groups of people, as defined by identity characteristics like race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, or gender identity, share some internal essence or other characteristic tend to stupefy and obscure rather than to edify.

While I don’t want to focus too much on the torrent of ridiculous online takes that have been generated by the massacre and by Israel’s subsequent reprisal attacks and (as I type this) imminent invasion of Gaza, it provides some prime examples that I can’t resist pointing out.