Race Card

"schvartze: Yiddish I won't pass on."


Yiddish is a dying language. It's a weird, adorable, Jewish grandparent language that's a combination of German and Hebrew. My cute 4-and-a-half-foot-tall grandparents speak it and many of my favorite words have come from this language. Bored and getting antsy from being stuck in the same place for too long? It's called schpilkis. Got some shit on your face but don't wanna say the explicative "shit"? It's called schmutz. Talking to someone at a cocktail party? You're shmoozing. Or kibbitzing. Yiddish is a language that has some wonderful and fun words that I will absolutely and proudly hand down to my kids as part of my heritage. However, there are some words that I refuse to hand down. Schvartze is one of them. Pronounced "shvatzah" (rhymes with matzah, which I am currently noshing on), it is a derogatory term for an African American.


My race card shows that racism is a thing (or should be a thing) of older generations that we should refuse to hand down to our kids.


And that's my spiel. Not too shmaltzy, but hopefully while reading this you didn't exclaim, "oy vey!"