THIS SERIES:
This sheet accompanies Isn't It Time for Rereading Exodus -- Episode 4: Who Are We NOT? Related free, downloadable booklet and links to the full paperback text are found at Rereading4Liberation.com. Subscribe to the podcast and JOIN DISCUSSION (Thinkific Platform)
TEXT NOTES:
Wherever possible without changing the meaning, translations below are slightly adapted to avoid unnecessarily gendered language. Some old-fashioned expressions and grammatical forms are also updated. In a few cases, as noted, translation is provided by another Sefaria user. In addition, I use "Mitzrayim" and the invented "Mitzrayim-ites" along with Yisrael and Yisraelite to emphasize that references are to biblical places and people, not any nation, ancient or contemporary.
Joseph found out it's dangerous to be a dreamer. Just like Joseph's brothers, society today has three ways of dealing with dreamers. Kill the dreamer. Throw the dreamer in jail (the contemporary "cisterns" in our society). Or sell the dreamer into slavery; purchase the dream with foundation grants or government deals, until the dreamer becomes enslaved to controlling financial or governmental interests.
-- Dick Gregory's Bible Tales with Commentary. (Stein & Day, 1974), p.70
The butler in the Joseph story symbolizes America's treatment of Black folks. The butler used Joseph's talent as an interpreter of dreams and he promised to tell Pharaoh about Joseph. As soon as the butler got himself comfortably back in Pharaoh's palace, he forgot about his word to Joseph.
America was built on the sweat, toil, and talent of Black folks. But when the work was done and the talent utilized, America quickly forgot its debt to Blacks. Black folks helped lay down the railroad tracks, but they could only work as porters after the trains started running. Black slaves picked the cotton, but the garment industry belonged to white folks.
-- Bible Tales, p.73
See Genesis 40.
"Representations of Change: Gentrification in the Media" by Gabriella Modan and Katie Wells" IN Capital Dilemma: Growth and Inequality in Washington DC. Editors: Derek Hyra and Sabiyha Prince. Routledge 2015
Full article available for download.
See especially segment on "Mechanics of De-agentification" and Conclusion, quoted below.
Race, class, and yoga studies play a large role in media stories about gentrifying neighborhoods. They are some of the most easily observable sociopolitical correlates of gentrification, and they surely make can iterative contribution to attractiveness of neighborhoods (iterative in that real estate investment, house flipping, and other land/property-based activities often preceded or at least co-ocurred with new middle-class DC residents moving in). However, the personal choices of individiual to move into neighborhoods where thy have more economic and/or symbolic capital than current residents do not adequately explain how gentrification happens. The focus on semiotic signfiers of race and class, the fears of displacement they evoke, and the tensions they cause in gentrifying neighborhoods, while important for understanding DC's cultural politics, obscures the critical role of political and business players in creating, sustaining, and strengthening gentrification.
"Representations of Change: Gentrification in the Media" by Gabriella Modan and Katie Wells, p.321
from the Conclusion:
When writers' agentive choices make it seem commonsensical to think of gentrification as an autonomous force of nature, it is difficult to intervene in the process. Like actual forces of nature such as hurricanes, the commonsensical role for people is one of responding to the result of the force, rather than proactively shaping the process, as we saw in the data with the mentions of mayors who were cast as responding to--rather than paving the way for--gentrification.
...We believe that awareness of the linguistic choices we make and their ideological effects is the first step in reframing gentrification as a result of political, economic, and cultural actors. Such a reframing would enable a stronger focus in media and other public and casual discourse on the causes of the structural inequalities that have led to gentrification and that gentrification continues to foster. -- p.328
Look again at the early Exodus story, considering its narration: Who are we? Who are we NOT? Who is an agent? And what parts of the story are told as though everyone were reacting and responding, not taking action?
(8) A new king arose over Mitzrayim who did not know Joseph. (9) And he said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. (10) Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.” (11) So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor; and they built garrison cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses. (12) But the more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out, so that the [Mitzrayimites] came to dread the Yisraelites. (13) The Mitzrayimites ruthlessly imposed upon the Yisraelites (14) the various labors that they made them perform. Ruthlessly they made life bitter for them with harsh labor at mortar and bricks and with all sorts of tasks in the field. (15) The king of Mitzrayim spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, (16) saying, “When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the birthstool: if it is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live.” (17) The midwives, fearing God, did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live. (18) So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, letting the boys live?” (19) The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Mitzrayim women: they are vigorous. Before the midwife can come to them, they have given birth.” (20) And God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and increased greatly. (21) And [God] established households for the midwives, because they feared God.
-- Fox translation (Schocken 1995) slightly adapted