By Gilad Atzmon

A black musician friend told me a funny story the other day. Among his sins he regularly attends  black comedy nights here in London. On  these   nights the comedians are black and the audience predominantly so. But the other night a big white young woman settled in the front row. It didn’t take long before one of the female stand up artists picked on her.

“What are you doing here, on  a black comedy night?”

“I am black,” the big white woman answered.

“surely you are not, you are very white.”

“but I am Jewish,” the woman replied

“so you  are  a white Jew.”

“But I have a big bum” the woman insisted.

The black comedian clearly didn’t approve of ‘kosher essentialism,’ she turned her back to the audience and pointed at her own petite and toned buttocks. She then faced the Jewish lady and angrily shouted at her.

“You are not black, you are just a white Jewish woman with a fat arse.”

We  are entitled to laugh, I guess, because this short punch line mocks the Jewish progressive solidarity onanism – a deceitful political spiel that is set to convey an image of empathy and leads nowhere.

It seems that within the context of ID politics, one is welcome to pick an identity regardless of any authentic considerations. The Jewish woman decided to identify as black. Yet, in spite of her ‘fat arse’ she won’t be stopped by the Metropolitan police four times a day. She won’t be detained or harassed  because she fits into a specific category within the police’s racial profiling book. The Jewish woman is somehow privileged.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrlzaBNgz-M

The spectacular British TV comedy Little Britain’s Daffyd Thomas (The Only Gay In The Village)  exposes the authenticity hole at the centre of contemporary ID politics. Daffyd Thomas is a gay wannabe. He is, in reality, a mere collection of symptoms, he basically craves someone else’s identity while being detached from any true and real notion of selfhood.  In fact, he has never been in bed with a man.