[URBAN NOTES] Three Things I Saw on my Morning Subway Trip

• The faint shine of a subway car's front lights on the ceramic wall tiles of the tunnel, disappearing just before the car becomes visible, having rounded the bend into the southbound lane at the Osgoode station.


• A group of five people--one man in his 50s, three women in their 40s, one adolescent girl--who were apparently tourists, and who tried to board at Osgoode. One woman--"Judy"--didn't get a chance to board before the doors closed and the train left the station. After some discussion, the four left their seats (just across from mine) at Union Station and went back.


• Walking west from Wellesley station, I saw a man in his late 20s leaning against the station wall, reading a battered paperback copy of The Legacy of Heorot.

[BRIEF NOTE] Three Things Nicked from my LJ Friends Page

• Via stoutfellow, a 1936 article by two Soviet writers on their cross-country travels across the United States.


• Via zarq, a New York Times article on the fizzling of the population bomb.


• Via piratehead, the livejournal of a Miskatonic University freshman.

[BRIEF NOTE] Just One More Thing, OK?

The Tin Man reports that al-Qaeda has apparently targeted comedian and Golden Girls star Bea Arthur:

The “Golden Girls” star, now 81, was flagged by a Transportation Security Administration agent, who discovered the knife - a strict no-no following 9/11.

“She started yelling that it wasn’t hers and said ‘The terrorists put it there,’ ” a fellow passenger said. “She kept yelling about the ‘terrorists, the terrorists, the terrorists.’ “

After the blade was confiscated, Arthur took a keyring from her bag and told the agent it belonged to the “terrorists,” before throwing it at them.

As she boarded the plane, she told the TSA employees, “We’re all doomed.”

[BRIEF NOTE] Anti-Semitism's Deconstruction

Of late, I've noticed an interesting trend--or, at least, a movement towards a trend--regarding the usage of the word "anti-Semitism." This trend is based on a new understanding of the second half of that world, "Semitism," derived from "Semite."

In the 21st century, "Semitic" is a term used to describe a sub-family of the Afro-Asiatic language family. The relationship of Semitic languages to the broader Afro-Asiatic language family, incidentally, is something like that of Germanic languages to the Indo-European language family; it's a relatively discrete subgrouping. (Merlyn de Smit challenges the validity of this linguistic paradigm, but never mind.) Hebrew, the traditional liturgical language of the Jews, is one Semitic language; others include the major languages of Ethiopia and Eritrea (the liturgical language of Ge'ez, the living languages of Amharic and Tigrinya), a variety of relatively obscure South Arabian languages spoken in Yemen and Oman, the Aramaic spoken by some Levantine Christians (and used in The Passion). The most significant of the Semitic languages, though, is Arabic, sacred language of Islam and first language of almost a quarter-billion people.

This linguistic fact feeds itself into discussions of anti-Semitism in an interesting way. As I've seen it and read it, some people react to charges of being anti-Semitic--charges, I hasten to add--by denying it. In denying it, they often point to the fact that they have demonstrated sympathies for people of other ethnic groups marked by L1 fluency in Semitic languages, chief among these groups Arabs.

The meaning of words should certainly be allowed to change over time. No language can ever be static in practice, no much how much one might pretend otherwise (Académie française, stand up). This argument, though, rests upon a misunderstanding of the etymology of the word "anti-Semitism." Devised by the conservative German writer Wilhelm Marr, the term "anti-Semitic" was used by Marr to describe his rejection of the thesis that Jews could be accepted as fellow Germans, that the Jewish and German races were fundamentally different. It's worth keeping in mind that this is the time of belief in the existence of an Aryan race closely linked to the ancient Aryan language ancestral to all Indo-European languages; Jews, by origin a Semitic population like others in the ancient Middle East, came by analogy from the Semitic race closely linked to a proto-Semitic language.

A digression: Had the Muslims failed to conquer the Christians of Egypt and Syria in the 7th century, and the Coptic and Aramaic languages survived as modern vernaculars, I'm skeptical that speakers of Semitic languages would have been seen as foreign by speakers of Indo-European languages, at least in the same way. Had Europe had another religiously distinct diaspora of extra-European origins--Zoroastrian Parsis from modern Iran, say, or perhaps unusually coherent Armenian or Lebanese Christian minorities--foreignness and "Aryan-ness" would have mapped so conveniently. Neither happened, though.

It's possible to argue in favour of a change in meaning, as the West has come into contact with other ethnic groups associated with Semitic languages other than Hebrew, chief among these being Arabs. It's possible, but it doesn't strike me as a good idea. Anti-Semitism already has a well-established meaning, describing a hatred of Jews based on the supposed innate wholly negative qualities of Jews. As Andrew Reeves wrote, it's a distinct phenomenon from anti-Judaism, which attributes these qualities to the Jewish religion and allows for the possibility of Jews who've renounced their religion to be perfectly decent individuals. Phrases--"anti-Arab racism," for instance--to describe the racist dislike of Arabs already exist. Trying to assimilate this to a term which has had a coherent definition for a fair while is not only futile but a serious mistake.

I'm also worried by the undertone that I detect in the attempts to broaden the definition of "homophobia." Even granted that according to the current uses of language "anti-Semitism" is a misnomer, that's hardly a critical fault. Homophobia, after all, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with fear of homosexuals and non-heterosexuals generally--hatred is the root cause. And I can't help but feel worried at the motives of people who attack the use of the term "homophobia" on etymological grounds, claiming that they don't hate homosexuals at all, no, of course not! they only feel disgust, or pity ...

As always, paying attention to the little details matters.

[GNXP] Post on GNXP

It's a simple post on South African history. It's entirely conventional, I suppose, but it definitely needed to be said, particularly there.

Again, the details matter.