The education of Spock/ The Final Wexler Oral History

Leonard Nimoy was one of the most famous people to walk the earth during the height of his career. He gained fame for playing the pointy eared Spock on the original iteration of the beloved show Star Trek. Nimoy was hailed as an American treasure, however Nimoy's origins are everything and anything but American. In his interview with the Wexler Oral History Project, Nimoy transitions between English and Yiddish seamlessly, a highlight was him reciting a quote from Hamlet, in Yiddish. This is because Nimoy was a first generation American, his parents were Jewish immigrants from Western Ukraine. Nimoy's parents had a rather intense immigration story, even for Jews escaping the "Pale of Settlement" a largely Jewish region in Russia/Ukraine. His father walked from Western Ukraine to the Polish border, while his mother and grandmother hid in the back of a merchants wagon underneath hay, all the way to the Polish Border . For all their efforts, they eventually made it to America and settled in Boston.

Leonard Nimoy was born in America, and his early life is a reflection of what we have read about urban Immigrant life during the 30's and 40's. He details how the floors of his childhood apartment building in the West End of Boston, were segregated between Jews and Italian immigrant families. "You could tell who was where from the smells that came through each door." He talks about how his childhood group of friends was had a unique and diverse ethnic background. Yiddish speaking Jews hailing from Ukrainian & Russia, both Northern and Southern Italians, all in one neighborhood. "The Italians spoke Yiddish, the Jews spoke Italian." In many ways, he speaks of a first hand experience of the "Gumbo" of America, a concept that I find to be more appropriate than the "melting pot." The Gumbo analogy fits because these unique groups retained their unique cultures or flavors, while these flavors all combined to create a fantastically diverse neighborhood.  Given that experience, it is perhaps apt that his defining role as Spock came in such a diverse show. Star Trek was a show that advocated for pluralism by featuring a literally multi racial crew from blacks, to Scots, to Russians, to yes, "Vulcans." Nimoy further remarked on how his life prepared him for a connection to the character, because "Spock is an alien wherever he is...and I knew what it meant to be a minority, in some cases an outcast minority." A point that many viewers could identify with, which is likely responsible for the characters enduring popularity.

Here is the video itself

A step before immigration, the DP Camps in post WW2 Europe/ Wexler Oral History Project Part 2.

Following the ghastly, appalling, and heinous events of the Holocaust, European Jews were not immediately given their freedom.  Instead, most were placed in Displaced Persons camps, set up by the Allies after the end of the war. The camps were not unlike the migrant camps of the modern world, and were initially likened to the concentration camps. This was rather factual, as many of the DP camps as they came to be known, were actually reused concentration camps. A cruel twist of fate that left survivors of the Holocaust still living behind barbed wire fences for many more years. Life in the early camps was hard, yet after what they endured, a sense of hope emerged. This quote found on the website of Yad Vashem (the premier Holocaust remembrance museum/ organization in the world.)

"The desire for life overcame everything - in spite of everything I am alive, and even living with intensity."-Survivor Eliezer Adler

Further, the Wexler Oral History Project interviewed Leo Weitzman about growing up in the DP camps. Weitzman who was featured in the previous blog. Gives a testimonial to the level of joy in being alive. He details how being one of the few children, he was constantly fawned over, given candy and how he could do no wrong. This was due to the fact that many adults had lost their own children, as those who could not provide hard labor were sent straight to death during the Holocaust. In truth, the camps were a rehabilitation center, of the communal variety. As Weitzman describes that life in the camps oddly resembled a adhoc "shtetl" or Jewish Village prior to the events of WW2 and the Holocaust.

In both articles, the core theme, is that while life in these refugee camps was hard. They also served as a way for Jews to be together again, experience joy again. To reclaim some of the humanity that had been stripped from them. Which is an immensely powerful thing.

The Wexler Oral History Project

The Wexler Oral History Project, is a part of the Yiddish book center in Amherst Massachusetts. There they have collected many books, pamphlets, passports, and many testimonials to create a better understanding of the immigration experience of American Jews. The website has many testimonials filmed by the Wexler project. One in particular caught my attention however, and that was the story of Leo Weitzman. Who came with his family in 1951, after surviving the Warsaw Ghetto "by just days" and years in the "Displaced Persons" camps that the Allies established. Weitzman describes not only a bewilderment with the sky scrapers of New York City, but the immediate culture clash he witnessed between the new Jewish immigrants, and the "Americanized Jews" of previous migratory waves. A phenomenon that the book and our class has briefly touched on.  I include a short part of his interview, the rest of which can be found on the website, and their youtube channel.

“Those kids had no business leaving home in the first place.”

A recent Washington Post article, covered how the town of Worthington Minnesota has become the epicenter of a debate raging across America. The 13,000 person town of Worthington, has accepted more unaccompanied minors per capita than all but one city in the United States, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. While most of the kids who are settled in Worthington just want to go to school and hopefully live a better life. Their mere presence has divided the town. The division comes down to how to fund the critically overcrowded schools.

 While the issues of immigration, and unaccompanied children at the border are national issues. The debate was localized, in the last 5 years, the school board and advocates have tried to get a tax measure passed to further fund the schools. For 5 consecutive years, 5 different variations of the tax measure have failed to pass. The driving force behind their failures seem to be a group of white farmers, and many "old" residents of Worthington. Who feel it is not their responsibility to "pay for illegals." The result of the measures failing to pass is that children are being taught in former maintenance sheds, while neighbors boycott each others businesses over their stance on the measure. The divide is so severe that when a local priest praised immigrants, he was booed from the pews and later received death threats.

It all points to a deeper divide in this country, that goes passed the immigration status of LatinX or any immigrants of color. That for a long time progressives have preached that ignorance, lack of exposure other cultures was behind conservative xenophobia. However this story serves as a notice, that exposure, does not always lead to a better understanding or acceptance. Which will hopefully force conservatives and progressives to further examine the root cause of the intense disdain immigrants face all over this country.

First class service, Second class citizenship-The Great Migration

The great migration in America, is a term for really two blocs of African Americans leaving the southern United States, for western and northern cities. While the large number of push factors draw the most study, not many sources look at the pull factors. The lack of study of pull factors is likely down to Americans having relatively few examples of mass migration within its borders. So naturally we want to know what made people leave vs what brought people to California, or New York. As a young nation, most migrations that have entered the mainstream American consciousness happened during the 18th and 19th centuries, and were mostly connected to manifest destiny or inspired it.  Here in this blog we will discuss both the pull and push factors that caused this mass exodus of African Americans from the South, in a point by point style.

Push
The often discussed push factors of the great migration, can be traced back to not only slavery, but the utter failure of reconstruction in the South. After a short period of political empowerment African Americans were subjected to one of the most intricate forms of legalized discrimination the world has ever seen. These push factors include:
-The Jim Crow Laws: Jim Crow laws were designed specifically to socially,economically and politically stifle blacks
- Voter suppression while part of the Jim Crow laws, was also done in an extrajudicial fashion. This was done by mobs and hate groups (mentioned soon) intimidating black towns and neighborhoods.
-Hate groups/organizations like the Klu Klux Klan not only terrorized African Americans, but in 1925 the Klan had as many as 4 million members and, in some states, considerable political power.
-Circle back to the political issues, African Americans and Tejanos of Texas were forced to live in cities, towns and states that were literally run by the Klan

Pull Factors
The less discussed parts of the great migration are, less discussed because in many seem obvious. However it would be a disservice to simplify the complexity of the situation by just saying well, the North and California, did not have Jim Crow Laws. That would be in fact false, as the one of  last cities to desegregate their schools in the United States was in fact Boston Massachusetts from 1974-1988.
- Yes, the lack of obvious threat to ones safety based on the color of your skin. (It has to be said.)
- Enclaves, the Great migration occurred in waves, thus  black enclaves formed. This led to cities like Chicago, and New York attracting African Americans in large numbers, who knew someone already there.
-Employment, both Chicago and Oakland served as terminals for the rail lines.
            I.African American men found work as porters on the sleeping cars, and became known as "Pullman Porters." These very jobs created a new phenomenon in America, a black working and middle class. Its union also created a bloc of political power African Americans had not seen since reconstruction.

Article can be found here
Brief intro to the Pullman Porters can be found here

Tope Folarin and the demographics of Utah

Tope Folarin is an award winning author and Rhodes scholar, who garnered his acclaim for his book entitled A Particular Kind of Black Man. In the novel based around his life, Folarin describes the unique experience of growing up as a first generation American with Nigerian Immigrant parents. That itself would be a good basis for a book, however the twist is that Folarin grew up on Ogden Utah, with his family being the only black family in the town. Here in the article Folarin discusses an often overlooked segment of the immigrant population, black immigrants, in this case African immigrants.

Utah is an outlier state demographically, that has somehow maintained its homogeneity, staying at 90% white even in 2019. It is that homogeneity that caused many "awkward" or downright troubling incidents in Folarins life. He details how one child tried to "rub the brown off of his skin, until the child cried because he couldn't" or the time a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints, told Folarin that "if he was virtuous on Earth, he could be her servant in heaven." All pointing to the fact that Folarin was likely the first black person they had seen in real life, or at all. James Baldwin wrote about this phenomenon during his travels of Europe. At the heart of his point was the fact that it is an experience that almost white people will never experience. Now 50+ years later, in America, African migrants are experiencing the same phenomenon. Which begs the question how and why did African Americans almost entirely avoid Utah during the Great Migration? 

To answer this question we do not have to look farther than who founded Utah, and who its primary inhabitants are. Utah since its founding, has served as a gigantic enclave for the almost entirely white Church of Latter Day Saints.  A religion that from 1849 to 1978, officially prohibited men of black African descent from being ordained to the priesthood. This is particularly discriminatory, since the LDS has a policy of "lay priesthood" meaning any male member can be ordained. Essentially barring African Americans-and black Africans from joining. So in truth Utah was established as a quasi-white only state, since business, politics and social affairs were all built around the Church. Any black person would be condemned to a second class life.

However Folarins story can be seen as one of breaking down barriers as he explains later in the interview. Many LDS members who were teachers, and coaches took him under their wing, and helped him on his way to becoming a Rhodes Scholar. Many of whom admitted that he and his family were the first black people they had met. This kind of slow integration/education combined with the small amount of Latin X and Pacific Islander migration is slowly changing, at least the citizens of Utah exposure to non white cultures.

Joe Arpaio making another run for Sheriff

Immigration and civil rights advocates let out a collective shriek in pure frustration at the news of Joe Arpaio is making yet another run for Sheriff of Maricopa County. Arpaio made national news during his 6 previous terms as an immigration hardliner giving himself the nickname, "Americas toughest sheriff." During the media storm that engulfed Arizona following the passage of SB 1070 in 2010, Arpaio became a national figure for aggressive policies towards Latin-X migrants. It is worth noting that while SB1070 passed through the Arizona state legislature, it was opposed by the ACLU and The Department of Justice. In fact it was largely struck down by the Supreme Court of The United States after the Justice department sued the state of Arizona. This did not stop Arpaio or his deputies from following the guidelines of SB-1070, which allowed for mass discrimination against Latin-X individuals regardless of their immigration or citizenship status. So flagrant were the violations that a federal court ruled that "Arpaio's office profiled and illegally detained Latinos and violated their constitutional rights,” A year after 1070, the Justice Department found the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office to be rife with “a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos.” Which points to the real controversy around Arpaio, which is the fact that his practices are not those of a law enforcement agency, but those of an oppressive local government. The policies simply made it legal to detain someone on the basis of their skin color and their ethnicity. So while across the nation outrage spreads over the treatment of migrants in the horrific camps, here is a case where the Republican-Alt right side has a visible face approving of the policies.

It is very worth mentioning that Arpaio defeated in 2016 by Paul Penzone, a Democrat. Which early polls suggest is likely to occur again, given that Arpaio's reputation was further stained by when he was convicted of obstruction of Justice. The former Sheriff was only saved a possible jail sentence by way of a pardon issue by President Trump.

Article