A Letter to The Nation

For the holidays, a good friend thoughtfully gave me a subscription to The Nation.  Though my politics are to the left of the magazine, I was looking forward to reading it.  And then what happens?  In what would be my second issue, The Nation runs a heinously offensive ad by that heinously offensive organization, "Facts and Logic [sic] About the Middle East" (FLAME).

So I just sent them this letter.  Hopefully my friend will understand.

Hello,

I would like to cancel my subscription. Though I haven't yet received the issue, I've been informed of and seen other peoples' copies of the Jan. 9/16 containing the advertisement from FLAME.  I in no way wish to support, receive or be connected to a publication that accepts advertisements from a group such as FLAME.

I have already seen the "explanation" in your Jan. 23 issue and the formatted response you send to those emailing to complain, and I would still like to cancel my subscription. 

It is pitiable that a "left" publication would publish an ad that violates its own mission statement and its own policy on commercial advertisement, yet for some reason because the ad is only false "political" hate-speech, then it is permitted to be published. 

Would The Nation publish an ad that denies the Jewish Holocaust?  I certainly doubt it, yet denying the existence of Palestinians is just acceptable enough to merit publication?  That is disgusting.

I am not trying to deny your right to publish such vile invectives, but if you choose to do so, I do not want to read your magazine.  I hope that I am not alone.

Thank you for your time.

1/27 UPDATE: Here's the response I received recently from The Nation.  They clearly are very concerned.

Dear Subscriber,

As requested, we have cancelled the subscription.

Please disregard any invoices or magazines that you may receive in the near future.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Patricia
Customer Service

Comments

[sexposfem]

Hey Scott,

Thanks for sending me your paper. I'm reading it and I'll let you know soon what I think.

I think along the lines of the White People and X, you should do:

-White People and Blackness
-White People and Ethnicity
-White People and Other
-White People and White Hispanics
-White People and Non-Whiteness

All of these have the same theme. In fact, I think I might write about it too. It's to suggest that whenever a white person says someone is a black, part of some ethnic group, non-white, or other, they're being racist. What do you think?

i think thats bullshit
calling someone black because theyre from a black ethnic group isnt racism. i mean, how is it indiscriminate to say a jewish person is a jew? i can understand if youre saying that some white people label people falsely or in a racist sense, but if you start saying its wrong to call a black person a black person then you'll have to stop calling a person whos white a white person and then we wont be able to differentiate whos who because the world has gone insane due to so-called political correctness.

[Zach Alexander]

I got fed up with The Progressive magazine about (many things really, but especially about) a similar thing, where they printed ads from a company selling a blatantly racist anti-Arab bumpersticker. They responded in a similar way.

I haven't gotten to read your paper yet, so I don't know about those comments...

[scott]

Wow Zach, I hadn't heard about that - kind of disheartening that these mags are so soft on this issue.

sexposfem, I can't tell where you're coming from with that comment, nor what you're trying to get at. Though, I would mostly agree with what the second commenter said. I don't understand why refering to someone/thing by what it is is being racist.

Jew's an ethnicity, not a race. Calling a Jew White would be unfair. Many of them don't want to be part of white nationalism because of their history.

Why wouldn't you be able to differentiate between two individuals without race? What do you think Jamaicans or Swedes do? It makes me wonder how you differentiate between Mutts. You could say "that dude". I wasn't say to go insane and start calling black parties "parties where peoples of African descent happen to assemble", that's silly. Because you're talking about parties, which aren't people and you're being socially loose. I'm talking about walking up to someone and say "as a black person, do you feel that X" as if this random person should be the voice of millions and knows anything about X, or as if that person had an option in being seen as black. Or saying "that black guy" as if that's all he is and when he might not really be black. Just like you might say "oh that's really gay" but if a gay prefered queer you'd call him queer not gay or really gay. If the person was forced to say Afro North American they might think twice about obsessing over someone's "AfroNorthAmericaness" constantly.

[scott]

Yeah, I think using race to identify people or to take their opinion as the opinion of an entire race is messed up. I'm not sure if it crosses the line into racist or just naive and inappropriate.

[willie mink]

Yes, calling on a black person to speak for their whole race is ridiculous. Yet, teachers do it all the time, in settings where there are few black students. To see how ridiculous it is, flip it around--if you're white, would it make any sense for someone to say to you, "So, what do white people think about this?"

Re The Nation letter--good work! Such drops in the bucket will indeed fill it . . .