{"id":2806,"date":"2003-04-27T12:08:40","date_gmt":"2003-04-27T12:08:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.armedliberal.com\/?p=565"},"modified":"2003-04-27T12:08:40","modified_gmt":"2003-04-27T12:08:40","slug":"some-background","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=2806","title":{"rendered":"SOME BACKGROUND"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I prepare some comments on Israeli WMD\u0092s to put up over at Winds of Change<\/a>, it occurs to me that my own heritage becomes something that I should disclose, to allow readers to make a judgment on whether my own ethnic or religious affiliations might have something to do with my positions (I don\u0092t think they do, but I don\u0092t necessarily get to make that call).
\nI\u0092m a mutt. When asked, I typically identify myself as \u0093a Californian\u0094.
\nMy father\u0092s family were German Jews who left for the United States in the late 19th Century, but they didn\u0092t practice, and I\u0092m not sure if my father was even bar-mitvah\u0092ed. His own spiritual affiliations were much more Eastern, as befits his personal beliefs\u0085which can best and most simply be described as Beatnik. I read my first D.T. Suzuki book at his house when I was a young teen, and his circle of friends included a preponderance of jazz musicians, poets, and horseplayers.
\nMy mother\u0092s family were in part Hispanic, with a strong mixture of Native American and some random other strains that changed as I listened to the oft-changing stories of my various relatives. Like my father, my mother stepped away from her family and their culture as fast and hard as she could; she never spoke Spanish in my presence, and to my knowledge can\u0092t. She has reinvented herself as a Southern California charitable figure, and a strong participant in her nontraditional Eastern religion.
\nThe feature common to both of them was their efforts to personally step away from their heritage and to reinvent themselves as Californians.
\nAs a child, the strongest adult figures I remember include three men who worked for my father, and who had a strong role in raising me when my divorced parents were otherwise occupied. Each was a senior blue-collar worker, at the boundary between management (my dad) and labor (the teams that worked for them).
\nRobert (never \u0093Bob\u0094) was a sandy blonde from Kentucky who made sure I knew all the lyrics to \u0093Tennessee Stud\u0094 by the time I was ten, introduced me to Bob Wills and Johnny Cash, and explained to me as he bandaged my hands after a fight at school that you never hit the hard parts with your hands, you used your forehead, elbows, or better still, a hard object you picked up close at hand.
\nTheodis was from the back country in Louisiana, where his black \u0096 never \u0093Negro\u0094 \u0096 sharecropper father had raised ten children on hand-me-downs, help from the church, and damn hard work. Theoidis\u0092 main lesson to me was that no matter how hard or smart I worked by myself, the job couldn\u0092t get done unless everyone on the team helped. Five of us kids were hired one summer, to pick up trash and sweep the concrete slabs on one of the jobsites, and as the son of the boss, getting the work done somehow became my responsibility.
\nJoe was one of Theodis\u0092 brothers, and I\u0092ll save him for last because he took special responsibility for me. Joe showed me that a man works even when he\u0092s tired, and goes home when he\u0092s done, not before. When I was hungry he showed me that a belly full of water would hold you for a few hours until he could take me out to eat \u0096 it wasn\u0092t until much later that it occurred to me how that lesson had come to him and what it said about his growing up and how present hunger must have been. His family ate damn well, and sat together every night at the table for dinner, talking, and didn\u0092t eat while playing or watching TV or walking around the neighborhood, and so does my family now.
\nSomehow, my own heritage is \u0096 in my mind at least \u0096 a crazy conjunction of all these things.
\nIn West L.A., old Jewish men want to introduce me to their doctor daughters.
\nIn East L.A., people approach and address me in Spanish.
\nI\u0092ve been pulled off of the San Diego \u0096 Los Angeles train after a 140 mile bicycle ride down there because my skin was dark, I was unshowered and smelled, and when asleep I couldn\u0092t respond to the questions of the Border Patrol agent.
\nWhen I lived in Paris with my first wife, everyone was convinced that I was Lebanese.
\nIn Wisconsin with my second wife, everyone thought I was down from the rez. (they thought I was Native American)
\nIn Corsica, everyone was convinced I was Corsican, and when I went on to Sardinia, everyone there thought I was Corsican too, until we checked into a luxury hotel where they were convinced I was an Arab.
\nI\u0092ll admit to enjoying this confusion.
\nSomehow I see it as an advantage, but as a Californian I \u0096 like many of my compatriots \u0096 believe in the power of reinvention, and that I\u0092m not a slave to my heritage \u0096 or heritages, in my case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I prepare some comments on Israeli WMD\u0092s to put up over at Winds of Change, it occurs to me that my own heritage becomes something that I should disclose, to allow readers to make a judgment on whether my own ethnic or religious affiliations might have something to do with my positions (I don\u0092t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2806"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}