Veiled Threats
Martha Nussumbaum responds.
I’m extraordinarily grateful to the many people who posted comments on my piece, “Veiled Threats?” I note that many have come from educated and active Muslim women (in countries ranging from the U. S. to India), who have expressed a sense of “relief” at having their convictions and voices taken seriously.
I’ll begin my reply with a story. The day my article came out, I went to a White Sox game (the one in which my dear team took over first place!). I was there with two friends from Texas and my son-in-law, who was born in Germany and now has a green card. So, in Chicago terms, we were already a heterogeneous lot. Behind me was a suburban dad with shoulder-length gray hair (an educated, apparently affluent ex-hippie, like the “Bobos” of David Brooks’s book), who took pleasure in explaining the finer points of the game (like the suicide squeeze) to his daughter and two other preteen girls in fashionable sundresses. On our right was a sedate African-American couple, the woman holding a bag that marked her as working for the “U. S. Census Religion subcommittee” of her suburban county. In front of us were three Orthodox Jewish boys, ages around 6, 10, and 18, their tzizit (ritual fringes) showing underneath their Sox shirts, and cleverly double-hatted so that they could doff their Sox caps during the national anthem, while still retaining their kipot. Although this meant that they had not really bared their heads for the Anthem, not one person gave them an ugly stare or said, “Take off your hat!” — or, even worse, “Here we take off our hats.” Indeed, nobody apart from me seemed to notice them at all.
I don’t always feel patriotic, but I did then. I would not encourage a child or relative of mine to wear tzizit or, outside of temple, a kipoh. I’m a Reform Jew, and I view these things as totemism and fetishism. But I would not offend strangers by pointing that out, or acquaintances unless they were friends who had asked my advice. And that’s the way I feel about most of these things: it’s not my business. Luckily, a long-dominant tradition in American culture and law agrees with me. From the time when Quakers and Mennonites refused to doff their hats, and when both Mennonites and Amish adopted “pre-modern” dress, we Americans are pretty comfortable with weird clothes, and used to the idea that people’s conscientious observances frequently require them to dress in ways that seem strange or unpleasant to the majority. To the many people who wrote about how immigrants have to learn to fit in, I ask: what would you have liked to see at that ball game? The scene I witnessed, or three Jewish boys being ejected from the park because they allegedly failed to respect the flag? (And note that, like most minorities, they did show respect in the way they felt they could, without violating their conscience.)
I’m extraordinarily grateful to the many people who posted comments on my piece, “Veiled Threats?” I note that many have come from educated and active Muslim women (in countries ranging from the U. S. to India), who have expressed a sense of “relief” at having their convictions and voices taken seriously.
I’ll begin my reply with a story. The day my article came out, I went to a White Sox game (the one in which my dear team took over first place!). I was there with two friends from Texas and my son-in-law, who was born in Germany and now has a green card. So, in Chicago terms, we were already a heterogeneous lot. Behind me was a suburban dad with shoulder-length gray hair (an educated, apparently affluent ex-hippie, like the “Bobos” of David Brooks’s book), who took pleasure in explaining the finer points of the game (like the suicide squeeze) to his daughter and two other preteen girls in fashionable sundresses. On our right was a sedate African-American couple, the woman holding a bag that marked her as working for the “U. S. Census Religion subcommittee” of her suburban county. In front of us were three Orthodox Jewish boys, ages around 6, 10, and 18, their tzizit (ritual fringes) showing underneath their Sox shirts, and cleverly double-hatted so that they could doff their Sox caps during the national anthem, while still retaining their kipot. Although this meant that they had not really bared their heads for the Anthem, not one person gave them an ugly stare or said, “Take off your hat!” — or, even worse, “Here we take off our hats.” Indeed, nobody apart from me seemed to notice them at all.
I don’t always feel patriotic, but I did then. I would not encourage a child or relative of mine to wear tzizit or, outside of temple, a kipoh. I’m a Reform Jew, and I view these things as totemism and fetishism. But I would not offend strangers by pointing that out, or acquaintances unless they were friends who had asked my advice. And that’s the way I feel about most of these things: it’s not my business. Luckily, a long-dominant tradition in American culture and law agrees with me. From the time when Quakers and Mennonites refused to doff their hats, and when both Mennonites and Amish adopted “pre-modern” dress, we Americans are pretty comfortable with weird clothes, and used to the idea that people’s conscientious observances frequently require them to dress in ways that seem strange or unpleasant to the majority. To the many people who wrote about how immigrants have to learn to fit in, I ask: what would you have liked to see at that ball game? The scene I witnessed, or three Jewish boys being ejected from the park because they allegedly failed to respect the flag? (And note that, like most minorities, they did show respect in the way they felt they could, without violating their conscience.)
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