Forming an identity in the Twilight Zone: Navigating of the White Social Order among Second Generation Ethiopian jews in Israel
For Israeli-born members of the Jewish Ethiopian community, forming a coherent and stable identity is difficult, due to the complicated and layered nature of their experience. Repeated exposure to difference and foreignness at critical junctures in their lives, leading to racism and discrimination, turns the forming of a safe and unthreatened self into a difficult and sometimes impossible task. This sort of process may involve recognizing blackness and reclaiming difference through the formation of political awareness. Such awareness includes a preoccupation with the question of blackness, the answer to which involves moving toward global and external realms. Although the local context for this discussion is unique and challenges the global context, political conceptualization, even based on the development theory proposed by Frantz Fanon or on political texts related to Steve Biko’s struggle in South Africa, may hold great actual and psychological value for the lives of black Ethiopian-Israelis.
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