Some prevailing social justice ideologies have a simplistic oppressor versus oppressed lens of society. They promote that, by the nature of one’s immutable characteristics, one is either oppressed or an oppressor. Of course, nothing is ever that simplistic or black-and-white, and this generalizing of people is destructive and bigoted. It is not a way to approach individual people in the real world who are, well, individuals with unique and diverse experiences and histories.
I was chatting with a young Unitarian Universalist minister, and said "I wonder if my ancestors owned slaves." I pointed out that most whites in America didn't own slaves. It was the wealthy landowners, not the average Joes and Josephines. She suggested that would be something interesting for me to look into. So I did.
I am Jewish, and my maternal ancestors were Sephardi. The Sephardi, or Sephardic Jews, are the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula of Spain and Portugal. My ancestors lived for millennia in Spain after being expelled by the Romans from Israel. Sephardi is derived from the Hebrew word for Spain.
There was the Massacre of 1391 where thousands of Sephardi in Spain were murdered and their houses destroyed. The Sephardi were persecuted and expelled during the 1492 Spanish Inquisition. As with many Spanish Sephardi, my ancestors escaped to Portugal. Not long after, there was the 1536 Portuguese Inquisition, where the Sephardic Jews were persecuted and converted to Catholicism under the threat of death.
My ancestors eventually fled Portugal and moved to different parts of Europe, including Amsterdam, Hamburg, Italy, London, and the Ottoman Empire, where they reverted back to their Jewish faith and customs. They became wealthy and prominent traders and diplomats and were one of the largest shareholders of the Dutch West India Company. One family member was knighted by King João IV and received a coat of arms.
My ancestors immigrated to New Jersey in the 1600s, where they were major landowners. They included officers during the American Revolution and Indian Wars, fighting American Indians, and they provided resources to George Washington's Army. The boats Washington used to cross the Deleware were rented from my ancestors, and the land they camped out on after crossing belonged to my ancestors. In Colonial America, my ancestors owned black slaves.
Most Sephardic Jews who remained in Europe were killed in the WWII Holocaust, and most Sephardi today are descendants of those who left Europe after the Inquisitions, moving to the Middle East and, as with my ancestors, the Americas. While most Sephardi moved to Israel after World War II, there are relatively-speaking large Sephardi populations in the United States and Argentina.
I told this history to the minister and pointed out how things are never either/or, and how peoples and individuals can be both oppressed and oppressors, often simultaneously. She agreed and said that when we look at our histories this is usually the case.
Note that this family story told here ends in Colonial America. You can only speculate about the history of the family after that. A lot happened to the family during the 1300s to 1700s, so what were the family’s fortunes in the United States after that? Did they all stay in the United States? Were my mother’s parents and upbringing wealthy and prominent or poor? What if any antisemitism or other bigotry did my ancestors experience in the United States? What was the history of my paternal ancestors? What were my and my sister’s upbringing and life experiences? I’m not telling you in order to make it difficult to categorize me and my immediate family as “oppressors or oppressed?”. The point of this post is that things are never cut and dry, and not knowable just by looking at someone.
Very well and thoughtfully explained. I wonder what it says about human society and psychology. Maybe, we are all potentially oppressed or oppressors and maybe even both at the same time in different arenas of our lives.
Ibram Kendi has made a name for himself claiming that it's all about oppressor vs oppressed. As we come from many different times and places, it's time we work to dispel that myth that we can be placed in a single box based on the color of our skin or our gender. Are you an oppressive colonizer or a persecuted Jew, or is it of no value to attach any LA els based on history. It's really a shame that peddlers of these believes that separate and label is will only create further discord and violence.