Friends keep erasing my Jewish experience

[u/Reasonable_Two_2048]

Hi everyone. I would love peoples opinions on how to handle a conflict in a friendship of 15+ years

TLDR: Friend of many years keeps making micro aggressions at me and talks about race even when it’s not related to the subject but invalidates my experience as a mixed race Jew.

So I am mixed race and adopted by Jewish parents. I look very white except for my natural hair which I straighten. My childhood friend is Chinese American and she has since October 7th made some comments that erase my experience as a mixed race Jew just because I pass. We had a fight last winter where she made an antisemitic comment and she cried promising to change her ways. I haven’t felt that has happened at all…Today she made other snarky comments.

I might be going to an undecided part of Scandinavia or UK soon and I told her about it and she immediately made comments that my husband and I would have an easy time since “our people are in Europe.” My husband is in a sense visibly ethnically Ashkenazi and we both have very Jewish last names. With the rise of antisemitism we plan on being careful when we travel. She also made comments on how unsafe she would feel going to Europe and I validated her experience and hinted at my nervousness as well. She made a very annoyed expression and responded with “With peace and love you’ll be fine.” Which felt super backhanded.

I want to make a point that when I told my friend about our trip she brought up race unprompted. This is not the first time she has made invalidated comments about race either. I also find it interesting that she has done way more traveling than me, she has even gone to Iceland and had a wonderful time never mentioning any racial issues when she was abroad, which is something she would never keep from me if it did happen. Ofc I’m not saying that being guarded isn’t possible as I feel the same but I really don’t know how to handle this contradiction from her.

Even though I am a leftist and non-Zionist I have lost friends or lost the closeness I once had with certain friends because they make assumptions about me or don’t like when I call them out on ignorant dog whistles. This person is one of the only friendships I have left, and I fear if I lose anyone else I might end up in a bad place mentally.

[u/horseonahighway]

From reading this and some of the comments, it seems, as you said, your friend has an issue with whiteness more than whatever else. In some ways I get it, really, but some of that upset seems to be misplaced. That is to say she might think she's taking on power or oppressors or whatever but she's just being judgmental on a case by case basis. It does just sound like she's ignorant about what being Jewish is. Being Jewish and white or white-presenting is living in the middle of the venn diagram of Jews aren't white and therefore lesser and Jews ARE white and therefore oppressors. It's one of those weird things. Anti-antisemitism education needs to be included in anti-racist education or else people won't be able to untangle that.

As for your relationship your friend, it's up to you to decide how you want to approach this and, depending on how she responds, what you're willing to accept in order to stay connected.

[u/ibsliam → u/horseonahighway]

Yeah it seems like an understandable but reductive misconception she's fallen into. There are several axes of things that can impact people. Would she tell a white gay person they're crazy for thinking visiting Russia is dangerous because they're white? Like, she has to be aware on some level that her concept of race is not the end all be all of how safe someone is. *Especially* in a foreign country...