In the eye of the beholder: the case for bringing back the invisible minority status
What if we adopted a broader conception of the minority experience?
I was sitting with an Israeli friend while in first-year university filling out forms when I observed them do something interesting. When they got to the section asking you to check a box indicating your ethnicity, they put a tick in the box for “other,” and on the line provided wrote “Jewish”. When I asked my friend why they did that, they looked at me and, matter of factly stated, “well, we’re not White”.
The concept that Jews are not ‘White’ was nothing new to me. I had, for some time, been grappling with my disconnect from the “White girl” narrative that was so frequently imposed on me. But I had never seen someone declare so unabashedly that, as a Jewish person, they did not fit into the options for ethnicity provided by the standard boxes. I was inspired. The next time I filled out a form asking for my ethnicity, I too checked the box for “other” and wrote “Jewish” on the line provided. I have never gone back.
As a child, my mother explained to me that I was part of an “invisible minority”. The concept of there being visible and invisible minorities, I believe, was somewhat prevalent during my childhood, and has now seemingly disappeared. Being part of an invisible minority meant that I grew up living an experience that those around me weren’t necessarily aware of. It also provided the language and parameters to differentiate my status as a minority person from someone who visibly wears their difference without having to engage in comparison or competition.
The introduction of the intersectionality hierarchy, the rules which now govern who is and is not a minority person; who is and is not White; and who is an oppressor and who is oppressed, did away with the category of invisible minority. Because I am a fair-skinned Jew, I am categorized as ‘White’. And so, on the spectrum of oppressed to oppressor, I am placed towards the latter end. But this all fails to recognize the times that swastikas were drawn on my desk, teachers and colleagues made snide remarks about Jews or jokes about Auschwitz; it fails to encompass the argument my parents had to engage in for my schools and sports teams to recognize that I had holidays that do not align with the Christmas-Easter holiday schedule.
I had been thinking a lot about the loss of my invisible minority status when drama erupted late last week on Instagram. Every year, dancers from around the world apply to spend one week in Lausanne competing for scholarships and positions in ballet companies. It’s like the Olympics of ballet. When a photo of this year’s finalists was posted on the Prix de Lausanne’s Instagram, which included dancers from the United States, China, Brazil, and Australia, someone commented that they would have liked to have seen more people of colour. And while on the surface, this reaction to a week-long ballet competition seems a fair observation, It ignores the diversity of bringing together the best ballet students from all around the world for a genuinely meritocratic competition. Except, there were non-White dancers in the finals this year, particularly from China and Japan. As there have been for the 10 years, I have watched the Prix de Lausanne, including Black and Latina dancers, on many occasions. But instead of drawing attention to the process for selecting dancers or the diversity among those selected, the Prix de Lausanne stated there was a lack of diversity in classical dance as an ongoing issue, furthering the controversy and finally concluding in the issuance of a formal apology and retraction of the comment.
What that comment brought home for me was how much we miss when our only marker for diversity or inclusion of minorities is what we can see. Because not every minority experience is one that you can ascertain when looking at a photograph. When Shale Wagman won the Prix de Lausanne in 2018, it was a big deal because he was the first Jewish dancer to do so. But the weight and symbolism of that achievement were likely not visible to many outside the Jewish community, even though Jewish ballet dancers are absolutely few and far between.
And Jews are not the only invisible minority. Think about the deaf or LGBTQ+ communities and ask yourself if you would be able to identify that these individuals are living a minority experience from looking at a photograph? Probably not.
When we do away with acknowledging invisible minorities, we erase the experiences of so many individuals whose lives are impacted daily by being a member of a minority. No alternative terminology is offered to encompass this reality. Instead, it has become increasingly difficult for these individuals to have their experiences recognized as legitimate and deserving of consideration.
Merely looking like those around you does not guarantee your safety. Because of the volatility of the Jewish minority experience, I have never squarely fit into the North American idea of racism or minority experience because it relies on fitting into one of two very narrow categories. I do not fit these categories, and I shouldn’t be forced to find a way to do so. I do not want to be comparing my encounters with racism and discrimination to those of a person of colour because the way we confront these things are very often fundamentally different. But mine is no less harmful. We need to bring back a framework within which my experiences as an invisible minority can be taken seriously without needing to rank them against the experiences of other minority groups.
We need to start recognizing the complexity of minorities. This means validating racism, discrimination and minority experiences that are not necessarily dependent on the colour of your skin. Because the human experience is not skin deep, and we cannot all be defined by the face we show to the outside world, even when that face is allowing us to blend in. We should bring back the invisible minority status. This will involve accepting that diversity cannot always be judged by what we see in photographs, and recognizing that just like books, we might need to look at more than the cover to understand what we are seeing.
Interested in learning about positive depictions of the Orthodox Jewish community? Check out my article published this week in Hey Alma.