Displacing kinship

This week in North Philly Notes, Linh Thủy Nguyễn, author of Displacing Kinship, write about family history in the aftermath of the Vietnam war.

I have a clear memory of the day that, at 18, I realized that my parents were refugees from the Vietnam War. Struggling to order more rice at a Chinese restaurant, confusing the waiter as I spoke mixed Chinese (mom) and Vietnamese (dad), my sister laid out the details. She had for several years been taking college courses about the history of the region and the war. It sounds like a ridiculous thing, to be so detached from family and national history, but mine is a typical second-generation immigrant story about children not knowing about their parents’ pasts. This version is now, perhaps, difficult to imagine for the generations having grown up consuming Vietnamese American cultural productions, as Viet Thanh Nguyen, Ocean Vuong, and Thao Nguyen have reached mainstream popularity.

What I encountered about the history of this instance of forced displacement and the US response to it was a vast gulf in what the children of refugees, the second generation, knew about their parents and their pasts and what policymakers and social scientists knew about them. When the first cohort of 130,000 mostly Vietnamese refugees arrived in 1975, few expected a diaspora that would amount to over 2.2  million Vietnamese Americans. Policy makers and scientists made quick work of predicting their successful assimilation into the country, speculating that their ties with the US government, projected model minority status, and proximity to white values would spare them the “downward assimilation” faced by their Black and brown neighbors. This inclusion, of course, came at the cost of their own histories and relations.

Why does it seem that so much of the art and writing of children of Vietnamese refugees is singularly focused on searching for origins and longing for parental affection? Social science and policy framings of refugee successes in America are matched in volume by narratives of familial discord and trauma by the second generation. Displacing Kinship: The Intimacies of Intergenerational Trauma in Vietnamese American Cultural Production is my response to emerging dominant narratives about family history and that war. The book was inspired by seemingly constant popular culture evocations and my students’ comments about what they called the intergenerational trauma of the war – an idea that seemed to do more to mask than explain the alienation they experienced from their parents. It is my attempt to contextualize for the children of refugees from the wars in Vietnam, but also for all children of immigrants, that the reasons for our disconnect from our histories is structural, though it is experienced interpersonally.

Second-generation texts situate themselves in relation to the past and their family history, and squarely in the war. My close readings of Vietnamese American art, music, and writing revealed that behind the emotional weight and heaviness of the texts was a sense of mourning for the family relationships that were destroyed. These were destroyed not only by the specificities of the war and its aftermath, including environmental destruction and economic embargoes, but also, as I emphasize, the larger systems of white supremacy and racial capital that shape U.S. interventions and the day-to-day lives of refugees after they have been resettled. Much of the pain and suffering described in the texts I analyze was much more about everyday experiences of fighting to make it in the U.S., stories of parents struggling to make ends meet, scenes of watching white neighbors yell racist vitriol, in short, the experiences of poverty and racism.

In Displacing Kinship, I explore the reasons the Vietnamese diaspora feels separated from family histories and ultimately call for new ways to relate to ourselves and our own communities. It is my hope that once we can identify the conditions that have alienated us from these histories, we can forge new liberatory cultural politics rooted in connection and attachment to radical possibilities, rather than increasingly conservative identity politics.

The struggles of Black migrants and refugees are everyone’s problem

This week in North Philly Notes, Philip Krestedemas, coeditor of Modern Migrations, Black Interrogations, writes about the impact of the wet foot/dry foot policy.

The U.S. government’s wet foot/dry foot policy for Cuban and Haitian refugees, which was rolled out in the mid-1990s, is often cited as an example of the racially biased double standards that are baked into U.S. refugee policy. Under this policy, Cuban asylum seekers who touched ground on U.S. soil were eligible to receive asylum. Haitians who did the same thing were detained and returned to Haiti. But on closer inspection, the wet foot/dry foot policy is not just a story about how Haitian refugees were treated differently from Cubans.  It’s also a story about how the exclusionary treatment of Haitians established a precedent that weakened asylum rights for all Caribbean asylum seekers.
            The disparate treatment of Haitian and Cuban asylum seekers is most apparent in the way the “dry foot” criterion was applied (i.e., what happened once refugees reached U.S. soil).  The “wet foot” criterion was applied the same way to Cubans and Haitians. This wasn’t much of a change for Haitian refugees. For Cuban refugees, on the other hand, it marked the end of the more generous “open arms” policy that had been in effect since the early 1960s. Under the “open arms” policy, Cuban refugees were fast-tracked for asylum whether they were apprehended at sea or on the shores of south Florida. Under wet foot/dry foot, this generous asylum policy was limited to Cubans who touched U.S. soil. Cubans who were apprehended at sea were treated no different from Haitians. 
            The saga of wet foot/dry foot is just one example of a story that has repeated itself many times over in U.S. history. Black communities are often the first to be affected by deprivations, coercions, and incursions on personal liberty that, eventually, spread to the wider society. Modern Migrations, Black Interrogations aims to give the reader an insight into the depth of this problem, examining it from several theoretical, historical, and geo-political vantage points.The book’s contributors note that anti-Black racism doesn’t just describe a group-specific experience of race; it is foundational to the structures of thought and feeling that gave rise to the modern world. One implication of this analysis is that the problems that Black people contend with can tell you a lot about problems that pervade our entire society. 
            Think of a house that is built on top of a sinkhole. The people on the bottom floor of the house are more at risk of falling into the sinkhole. The people on the upper floors of the house may not feel the same sense of urgency to address the problem and may feel comforted by the thought that they are in a somewhat better situation. But they are ignoring the fact that when the foundation finally gives way, everyone’s falling into the hole. 
            This may not be a perfect metaphor, but it captures a dynamic that is very common to the Black experience. Haitians, for example, were the first U.S. refugee population to be subjected to mandatory detention. Thirty years later, mandatory detention is not only standard for most asylum seekers in the US., it has become the norm for how governments around the world manage refugee populations.  The same can be said for the interdiction practices initially rolled out to control Haitian asylum seekers in the 1980s. These were expanded throughout the 1980s and 1990s to all refugees trying to enter the U.S. by water, imitated by European governments in the 2000s that were trying to control flows of African and Asian refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean, and were also cited as a precedent by the U.S. government in the 2010s when it rolled out programs to control the growing numbers of asylum seekers (mostly Central American, but also including Haitians and many other nationalities) at the US–Mexico border. These are just some examples from the recent history of U.S. refugee policy.  You can find similar processes at work in the U.S. history of mass incarceration, predatory lending practices in housing markets, unsafe work conditions in low-wage employment sectors, medical neglect in the health care sector, and the list goes on.
            Although Modern Migrations, Black Interrogations is focused on the migrant experience, it engages this experience with an eye to the bigger picture I’ve just described.  Our analysis is premised on the understanding that the Black experience can be used as a starting point for diagnosing problems that affect everyone, and also in a way that elevates the value of Black life. But in order to do this, we have to step outside of the ways of seeing that normalize all of the problems I’ve just described. This sums up  the purpose of the book—to invite the reader to take this step.
 

The issues raised by this blog will be discussed in more depth at a free webinar hosted by the Acacia Center for Justice, to be held on Monday, February 26, 3pm (EST), featuring faculty from Morehouse College, Temple, and Bowdoin Universities and guest speakers from Undocublack, Families for Freedom and the Haitian Bridge Alliance. Click here for more info and to register.  

An interview with Jonathan Graubart

This week in North Philly Notes, we repost an interview with Jonathan Graubart, author of Jewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism, which first appeared in the Academe blog on November 6.

BY JENNIFER RUTH

The situation in the Middle East demands the best of all of us. Yet so many capitalize on the moment to harness the conflict to their own domestic “culture wars” agenda. Typical are op-eds like this one, arguing that contextualization, when in support of Palestinian refugees, amounts to little more than illiberal “identity politics.” In another one, Simon Sebag Montefiore, writing for the Atlantic, short-circuits attempts to raise the context of mid-century colonialism by heaping scorn on “the decolonization narrative,” calling it “a toxic, historically nonsensical mix of Marxist theory, Soviet propaganda, and traditional anti-Semitism from the Middle Ages and the 19^th century.” We need more forums where we hear from academics who have thought long and hard about the history and can move us past the binaries that have come to dominate the discourse—academics like Jonathan Graubart, professor of political science at San Diego State, who wrote this post and whose book Jewish Self-Determination Beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and Other Pariahs was published this year.

Jewish Self-Determination Beyond Zionism places readers in dialogue with thinkers like Martin Buber, Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Ella Shohat, and, of course, as the subtitle indicates, Hannah Arendt. I just finished Graubart’s chapter on Arendt and was reminded of all the reasons why “The Decline of the Nation State and the End of the Rights of Man” in Origins of Totalitarianism remains one of the most important pieces ever written. The “solution of the Jewish question merely produced a new category of refugees,” Arendt wrote, demonstrating how linking self-determination to nation-states has produced a crisis of statelessness in every part of the globe. Graubart’s deeply insightful and necessary book enlists Arendt and other voices to establish “a foundation for a contemporary dissenting Jewish perspective, which challenges the fundamental premise of Zionism and reconceives Jewish self-determination to require a just and interactive co-existence among Jews and Palestinians” (4).

I asked Jonathan if he were willing to answer a few questions for the blog and he graciously agreed.

JR:  Why did you feel compelled to write this book?

JG: I’ve been active in the Jewish peace and dissent movement for about thirty-five years and in scholarly research on Israel-Palestine for two decades. The grim direction of Israeli society and its stance toward Palestinians led me to undergo a fundamental probing of what went wrong with Zionism and of how to reimagine Jewish self-determination to be compatible with a just coexistence of Jews and Palestinian Arabs. For inspiration, I looked back to a group of far-sighted dissenting Jewish Zionists from the pre-state era, who I label Humanist Zionists. They looked to the ancient holy Jewish site of Palestine as a base for invigorating Jewish life globally, reviving Hebrew as a spoken language and developing just institutions and practices informed by the best of Jewish and outside values and traditions. In opposition to the mainstream Zionists, they opposed a Jewish nation-state because doing so would subjugate and displace the majority Arab population in Palestine and elevate realpolitik and state interests over Jewish renewal and social justice. More generally, the Humanist Zionists warned the Zionist movement—albeit with no success—against embracing nationalism and imperialism, the two umbrella dynamics that proved devastating to Europe, the world, and to the Jews in particular.

These dissenters were not a large group but included influential Jewish figures, such as Martin Buber, Judah Magnes, Henrietta Szold, and, my personal favorite, Hannah Arendt. They proposed a binational federation that would allow for a just and egalitarian coexistence of Palestine’s Jewish and Arab communities. Although the Humanist Zionist vision lost out, I have found that its insights for advancing both a reckoning of the harms inflicted by the Zionist project and a new vision of Jewish self-determination have become more important than ever.

JR: Has the reception of your book been impacted by the Hamas attack and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza?

JG: These events have sparked greater interest in my book. I’ve had receptive audiences when presenting my book to universities in the US and England and been invited to speak on multiple media outlets, including Al Jazeera Arabic, a progressive Black radio station in Philadelphia, and the Majority Report with Sam Seder. People are much more interested in learning about alternative visions and programs for coexistence. Most gratifying has been the warm reactions I’ve received from Jewish college students. To be sure, my book talk was cancelled at both Oxford University and Cambridge University because of pressure placed on the sponsoring departments to avoid topics that appeared overly critical of Zionism.

JR: Apart from the book, you have a long record of criticizing Israel’s grave abuses of human rights and international humanitarian law, as reflected most recently in your op-ed for Common Dreams, “Why One-Sided US Condemnation of Hamas is Morally Tone-Deaf, Self-Absolving, and Counter-Productive.” You have also raised regular concerns about the efforts of mainstream American Jewish organizations to chill critical discussion on college campuses of Israeli policies. What do your experiences tell us about the current state of academic freedom in the US?

JG: There has been a growing disjuncture over the past several decades on American campuses. On one side is a robust criticism of Israeli policies and US complicity and empathy for Palestinians. This shift extends to Jewish students, who are much more likely than older Jews to consider Israel’s treatment of Palestinians a form of apartheid. On the other side are campus Hillels, affiliated Israel-advocacy groups, and a network of well-endowed Israel-advocacy groups ranging from far-right groups, such as the Canary Mission, and centrist ones, such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Part of their advocacy consists of weaponizing the charge of antisemitism to discredit individuals and organizations they deem hostile to Israel. Guided by the definition from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), which employs the expansive language of “double standards” and disproportionality, the Israel-advocacy networks have lobbied colleges and universities to classify anti-Zionism, support for boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS), and other strong criticisms of Israel as antisemitic. Crucially, they are backed by high-end donors and leading politicians. In 2019, President Trump signed an Executive Order that empowers the Department of Education to apply the IHRA definition of antisemitism as a guide to find violations of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.  President Biden has not rescinded this order. Advocacy groups have already mobilized this new legal tool to take on university programs linked to Middle East issues. [JR: See the AAUP’s 2022 Statement “Legislative Threats to Academic Freedom: Redefinitions of Antisemitism and Racism”]

The Israel-advocacy networks primarily target two categories of people and organizations. One is critical Jewish academics, such as myself, who link our analysis to a distinct Jewish perspective. We are seen as dangerous for disrupting the narrative that all Jews identify closely with the position taken by the establishment advocacy groups. At San Diego State, a number of local groups and individuals have warned Jewish students away from certain of my classes, and appealed to university leaders to either have me removed from public panels on Palestine-Israel or properly “balanced” by a supposed “pro-Israel” Jewish voice. Because I am a tenured professor sufficiently invested in these issues to sustain personal attacks and at a campus where academic freedom is mostly protected, I have not been silenced. Not all Jewish academic critics, however, have enjoyed my luck.

The second targeted group are primarily Arab and other Muslim students and groups, such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Hard-right Israel-advocacy groups, such as the Canary Mission and Stand with Us, openly intimidate students with hostile questions, especially women wearing hijabs, and place students on various “wanted” lists of antisemites and terrorist supporters. At SDSU, I have seen a number of students traumatized by such “doxing” and others who have decided not to express a critical opinion in public. The organization Palestine Legal maintains a more comprehensive compilation across the country of such instances.

The current conflict has intensified the intimidation campaigns. Hillel International, the ADL, and others are encouraging Jewish students to file Title VI complaints. The ADL and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law are imploring universities to investigate their SJP chapter for giving material support to terrorists. Florida has already moved to ban SJP from its colleges. Importantly, the attacks are not limited to those who arguably expressed support for the initial Hamas invasion but extend to all those who added an “and” to their condemnation of Hamas’ atrocities. Anyone who has provided a broader context and/or also condemned the nature of Israel’s horrific response has been accused of “moral equivalency” and soft on terrorists. In other words, the very act of providing a broader understanding, an essential task of universities, is now deemed as antisemitism or, in the case of Jewish critics, “self-hating.”

Sadly, antisemitism, as well as Islamophobia, has surged in the US, including on college campuses, and demands condemnation and proactive measures. But mobilizing the charge of antisemitism to suppress much-needed scrutiny of Israeli actions is not the way to proceed. As Hannah Arendt argued decades ago, the answer lies in solidarity with all oppressed and probing scrutiny not just of outside persecution but the wrongful actions of one’s own community. The zero-sum, hardline nationalist path chosen by partisan Israel-advocates represents a step backward, an anti-antisemitism of fools.  It is, thus, more urgent than ever to reinvigorate robust discussion and scrutiny, which demands vigorous defense of academic freedom and freedom of expression.

Jennifer Ruth is a contributing editor for Academe Blog and the author, with Michael Bérubé, of It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom and co-editor, with Ellen Schrecker and Valerie Johnson, of The Right to Learn: Resisting the Right-Wing Attack on Academic Freedom, forthcoming from Beacon Press.

Jonathan Graubart is a professor of political science at San Diego State University who specializes in the areas of international relations, international law, Zionism and Jewish dissent, Israel-Palestine, the United Nations, normative theory, and resistance politics and the author of Jewish Self-Determination beyond Zionism: Lessons from Hannah Arendt and other Pariahs.

Examining the global migration crisis, human rights, and xenophobia

This week in North Philly Notes, Heather Smith-Cannoy, editor of Emerging Threats to Human Rights, asks, Do things really get better once forced migrants escape dangerous conditions? 

In September of 2015, the tiny body of a 3-year old Syrian refugee washed ashore in Greece. The gut-wrenching image of a small, innocent child trying to escape a brutal civil war with his family, only to drown in route to a better life, was not one that I could shake. Little Aylan Kurdi’s tragic journey struck me especially hard because he was the same age as my son. Until that day my research on human rights had always been about the impact of laws on people in far off places—women in Hungary, civilians in UN protected combat zones, and political prisoners in Central Asia. But the image of his small body, face down on the shore fundamentally changed the way that I think about human rights in a rapidly changing world.

Emerging Threats to Human Rights is my attempt to look beyond the traditional boundaries that defined how I had thought about global human rights.  Rather than studying one group of people, in one particular county, Aylan Kurdi’s story showed me to that to wrestle with emerging threats to human rights in our world, I needed to look across the human experience to understand both the causes of flight and the possibilities for the fulfillment of rights after flight. In other words, do things really get better once forced migrants escape dangerous conditions?

In collaborating with the talented academics, attorneys, and activists that contributed to this volume, we arrived at three interwoven themes that capture a new way of thinking about human rights within a process of migration. When sea levels rise, for example, where will people who call small island nations their home go to seek refuge and what will be the status of their rights what they arrive in that new community? If violence erupts in one’s country of residence and they flee, do they have a chance to improve their lives in their new country? When governments dismantle citizenship rights, effectively stripping people of their legal status, what happens when they try to escape?

Collectively, this anthology examines three causes of migration—resource depletion, violence and deprivation of citizenship, which, to varying degrees compel people to leave their homes in search of safety and a better life. We find that violence generates more refugees than resource depletion and deprivation of citizenship but together these chapters show that escape is only the beginning of the story. When people escape dangerous conditions, their prospects for a full life depend critically on where they land and how they get there. Contributors Money and Western conduct a global macro analysis of rights fulfillment in one chapter. They show that the fate of forced migrants depends on three factors of the host state—governance quality, access to resources, and the availability of citizenship for new migrants.

Contributor Kerstin Fisk shows that when refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Ethiopia sought asylum in South Africa, they were instead subjected to organized xenophobic violence carried out with the support of the South African government. In the chapter I wrote, I show that as Rohingya refugees are stripped of citizenship by their government in Myanmar, they run for their lives to boats waiting at sea. Traffickers use the opportunity to exploit people desperate to escape genocide. The cover image of the book shows some of those Rohingya refugees who made it out of Myanmar successfully. That image comes from the largest refugee camp in the world, Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh.

In the time it took to put this volume together, the global migration crisis has only intensified. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees reports that as of September 2019, there are more than 70.8 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, unquestionably the worst migration crisis on record. I hope that Emerging Threats to Human Rights will start a conversation about the human rights and human dignity of the world’s growing migrant population and serve to counteract a rising tide of xenophobia.