Partial tolerance forces the tolerated into double lives of exposure and concealment

Evidence

This meant that on the one hand they did not yet want to participate actively in the killing, and on the other, still professed openly an antipathy toward Jews and a horror of inverts. This in turn resulted in that typically equivocal situation in which the new members could not confess their identity openly, and yet could not hide it either. Such were the conditions from which arose the complicated game of exposure and concealment, of half-confessions and lying distortions, of exaggerated humility and exaggerated arrogance, all of which were consequences of the fact that only one’s Jewishness (or homosexuality) had opened the doors of the exclusive salons, while at the same time they made one’s position extremely insecure. In this equivocal situation, Jewishness was for the individual Jew at once a physical stain and a mysterious personal privilege, both inherent in a “racial predestination.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 261

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘equivocal situation’ produced when a group is admitted but still stigmatized — a transferable mechanism for minoritized identity under conditional inclusion.