The Human Question

Coming from a predominantly Jewish neighborhood and doing community organizing work in predominately Black neighborhoods, the relationship between the Black and Jewish communities has been a pet issue of mine for some time. I've never been able to get to the bottom of it, it's like a key puzzle piece in their unease with each other was missing from my understanding; I somehow knew the Black community had committed a grave offense against the Jewish community, I just couldn't figure out what.

After looking into the Farrakhan issue over the past few days, I am shocked and appalled with what I've found. No wonder people hate Farrakhan so much; the man has blood on his hands. I've been researching the Crown Heights riots for the last few days. It's incomprehensible, and yet it's not, because it's not the first time… but there, then? I wonder if Obama understands all the implications of the statement "the past isn't dead and buried, it isn't even past"?

Obama says he wants to mend the relationship between the Black and Jewish communities, but we cannot do that without acknowledging and understanding the depth & rudiment of the problem.

Farrakhan published a book "The Secret Relationship between Blacks and Jews", spewing anti-Semitic propaganda, and a few months after its publication an anti-Semitic riot broke out in Crown Heights, a neighborhood in Brooklyn. The riot started after an automobile accident involving a Jewish driver where a Black child was killed.

More than 100 police officers, some in riot helmets, surrounded the accident scene as more than 250 neighborhood residents, mostly black teen-agers shouting "Jews! Jews! Jews!" jeered the driver of the car, a Hasidic man, and then turned their anger on the police.

The New York Times: Fatal Crash Starts Melee with Police in Brooklyn By John T. McQuiston Published: August 20, 1991

Two people in the neighborhood were murdered in anti-Jew hate crimes later that night. Over the next three days rioters ran around Crown Heights screaming anti-Semitic slurs and committing hate crimes. During the riot and its aftermath, New York City's first Black mayor, David Dinkins, fucked up like Bush did Katrina, resulting in Giuliani's election in '93.

For those of you more familiar with Black-White racism than anti-Semitism, imagine picking up a copy of the New York Times with a picture of a few Black men hanging from trees. When you check the caption it reads "New York City, 1991". How would you feel? Given the history of anti-Jewish riots preceding the holocaust, the emotional connotation is the same, and that is exactly how I feel right now.

I, personally, feel less safe than I did before I read about this. I used to think this couldn't happen here, today, and that's why I didn't understand why people hated Farrakhan so much. Words are just that, crackpots talk shit on the internet all day and night; it's the people who listen to hateful words and act on them who are the problem. It never occurred to me something like this could happen here, but it did, and that scares the hell out of me. A New York Times commentator (and former executive director) , A. M. Rosenthal said "American Jews who do not understand that the same kind of political thugs will try now to lead the same kind of street thugs to burn Jewish property and break Jewish bones in other cities are blind to reality, deaf to history -- and suicidal." He's right, in that if nothing had been done to stop to it, it probably would have spread. Perhaps that's just fear talking on my part and his, but knowing what has resulted from such things in the past it doesn't require much imagination to draw a conclusion like that.

They say "all politics are personal". A few months ago I was at a café in my neighborhood with two friends or friendly acquaintances, one made a somewhat racist comment which starting a long discussion deconstructing it. This was memorable because it was the only time I ever 'lost' that argument. All three of us had been physically attacked by Black people at some point in the past. The person who made the racist comment which started the conversation admitted that his discomfort came from the fact he'd been harassed and assaulted by a group of Black kids making anti-Semitic slurs when he was much younger. The third person there and I both have suspected that what happened to us had something to do with their perception we were Jewish. Though I try to tell myself it had nothing to do with it, because I have no reason to believe it did, it's a suspicion I can't get out of my mind, despite my conscious effort to do so. Is any of this rational? Of course not, but people's reaction to violence never is. It's human.

I understand the issue of Black against Black crime and violence is a much bigger issue than Black against Jewish crime and/or violence, and that if leaders in the Black community had any control over it, they would have addressed the issue in their communities a long time ago. I know people take the attitude that criminal behavior by members of their community outside their neighborhood is the police's problem, not theirs. The police do deal with it, but not without hurting innocent people in the process. Racial profiling, putting innocent people in prison, and arresting old ladies for crossing the street in the wrong place, as Giuliani did, is not a solution.

What is inexcusable and unforgivable, is blaming Jews for the problems in the Black community. That attitude is destructive to both our communities, and cannot be tolerated if we're going to rectify the relationship between our communities. I understand that poverty, desperation, and lack of education, create an atmosphere where myths and superstitions thrive; all the more reason not to spread hateful lies about others. People like Lewis Farrakhan who spread lies blaming Jews for the problems in the Black community, for slavery, and/or spew other anti-Semitic bullshit, are responsible not only for the division between our communities, but for hurting & killing innocent people.

It's not like this kind of crap ended 20 years ago either. Just this February a Black preacher passed anti-Jew hate flyers around the district of Jewish congressman, Steve Cohen, who represents a predominately Black district in Memphis, Tennessee. Not only that, but they were mailed to Cohen's office, and to leaders of the Jewish community in Memphis.

"Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen and the Jews HATE Jesus," the headline read in bold letters…

Last week, he circulated another flyer with a similar headline and inflammatory message. In part, it read: "... If this district was predominantly Jewish, Steve Cohen and the Jewish voters would NOT elect a Black to this office."

Rep. Cohen is dumfounded. "I don't know where this man is coming from. This is bizarre. It's just ridiculous," he said. "I didn't think things would be this stark" before the campaign begins.

TriState Defender: Jews Hate Jesus Flyer, The Source

If you want to build trust between the Black and Jewish communities, censure Reverend George Brooks for the anti-Jew hate fliers he spread around Memphis denigrating Judaism and Cohen. Spreading such inflammatory lies about Judaism has killed before, and can again. These flyers are a threat to the Jewish community in Memphis, and Brooks should be held accountable for them by his peers. Representative Cohen has acted admirably through this affair in not making a commotion out of it.

The best thing Obama can do to fight Brooks' despicable actions is to endorse Congressman Cohen, and issue a strong condemnation of Brooks & everyone who tolerates his behavior. We must ensure such appalling tactics backfire, so they aren't used again. If Obama were to personally address this issue, it would be a step in the right direction to rebuild the relationship between our communities, and could help alleviate some of the remaining doubts about his commitment to the Jewish community. Cohen was one of Obama's earliest endorsers, he has been campaigning for Obama, and against the charges Obama is anti-Semitic, since the beginning of Obama's campaign. Obama endorsing Cohen would help both candidates, but more importantly it's the right thing to do.

The Jewish community has been unbelievably patient in not publicly drawing a pattern from this kind of crap, perhaps too patient, as the pattern is clearly evident for everyone to see. Not talking about these problems won't make them go away. People are reacting emotionally to these issues despite their failure to recognize them intellectually; then the Black community takes offense at that seemingly irrational response, and uses it to as confirmation for the stereotypes causing the problem. It's a destructive cycle, and it has to stop.

We cannot mend the relationship between the Black and Jewish communities until anti-Semitism in the Black community is addressed. As Wright said, you can't keep stepping on someone's toes, and expect them to accept your apology. It is my suspicion the never ending questions about Obama & Israel aren't about really about Israel at all, but are a roundabout way for people to ask for an assurance they can trust Obama more than they could Mayor Dinkins. Am I suggesting Crown Heights is a factor in this election? Yes, things like that cannot be forgotten, and what happened there is still too close to another open wound for it to be forgiven. We've been avoiding these issues for almost 20 years now, but as America is about to elect its first Black president, we can avoid them no longer.

I've seen the Farrakhan issue described by saying he offended "powerful Jewish leaders"; it's not the people in power you should be concerned about, but the helpless and innocent people dead or injured because of the things he said. To rebuild the relationship between the Black & Jewish communities, it's not only Obama who needs to denounce Farrakhan, but respected local leaders in the Black community. When people like Reverend Wright denounce Farrakhan, Brooks, and stand up to anti-Semitism in their communities, the relationship between our communities can be restored. I will take your hand in this effort, but I need someone to take mine in return.

Violence = Fear = Stupidity = Hate
To perpetuate any of these is to perpetuate them all.

How can this cycle be broken?
How do the wounds of history hurt?
Can we ever recover from attempted genocide?

I know this; human nature is static, it does not change with time, with race, with money, or religion. There are good people, bad people, and everything in between, of every color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, class, in every nation on this Earth, in the past, in the present, and into the future. This is human nature. Culture, community, and family change the way we express these qualities, but they do not change the qualities themselves. We are all intrinsically separate, prisoners within our own minds, unable to comprehend anything outside of our perception, and yet we are a part of a whole greater than ourselves, forever bound together in the ever shifting interdependent web of humanity. What happens when we tear this web with violence, fear, stupidity and hate? Can it ever be repaired?

I know of at least two tears in the web our existence, one is slavery and the other is the holocaust. In both of these atrocities we see the full destructive potential of violence, fear, ignorance, and hate, in all its horror, the worst that humanity is capable of. We don’t like to talk or think about these things, as they are revolting to decent human beings. We don’t like to admit to ourselves that as human beings we are no different than the victims or the perpetrators of these atrocities, so we imagine that we are somehow better than the people who did these things, different than the victims, but we are not better or different than anyone. Those of us who are descend from the victims cannot imagine we are somehow different from our grandparents who were directly victimized, and we live with a sense of vulnerability from that, which affects our outlook on life and our sense of self. It is a type of fear I don’t believe I can explain to someone who has not experienced it, a fear of history both the Black and Jewish communities understand all too well; to everyone else, I ask you to respect that we feel this way.

A feedback loop between racism and anti-Semitism has been created, because each community takes offense at the other’s defensiveness. We don’t talk about it, we don’t think about it, but we act on it unknowingly, and make it worse. Both communities are afraid of the past, and are often so blinded by the horrors they have been subjected to that they are unable to comprehend they are not the only ones who have been traumatized by history. The psychology surrounding how these things affect us is surprisingly similar; it’s just the triggers and sensitivities that are different. The Jewish community takes relatively minor crimes like theft and vandalism much more seriously than others because of what these things have lead to historically for us. Little things others would take lightly or brush off as a practical joke upset us, and our oversensitivity is sometimes perceived as being the result of racism, when it is, in fact, the result of our own historical sensitivity.

In my work with ACORN I was able to speak to many people on the other side of the city about their perceptions of us. To them our predominantly Jewish neighborhood is just another rich white neighborhood the police are over protective of. Years ago, Blacks and Jews had a thriving community right outside of downtown, in an area known as “The Hill”. It is my conviction that integration and cooperation makes us both stronger, and the old Hill exemplified this. Towards the middle of century the Jews moved from the Hill to Squirrel Hill, a still predominately Jewish neighborhood a few miles away. I’ve heard all kinds of stories about the logic behind this move, one of the more interesting ones is even on Kos; few, if any, of these stories recognize that the timing of the move coincided with the holocaust. I doubt the Black community recognized that at the time either, as they were too involved in their own struggles to realize what their Jewish neighbors were going through at the same time, and vice-versa.

We can’t undo history, but we can move forward being sensitive to the scars it’s left. Blacks aren't the only people on the planet who've been victims of systemic violence and are still sensitive to reminders of it. Obama was right in quoting Faulkner’s “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past,” the horrors of the past, and the destruction they wrought are still with us today, and this doesn’t just apply to Black/White racism. The solution is not something which can be implemented through politics, but something each one of us must do in our daily lives. If you want see an end to bigotry, no matter what color, religion, and/or sexual orientation, you are, WASP to Black transgender atheist, treat everyone with dignity & compassion, and be sensitive to things which may upset others for personal or historical reasons. A person who has been personally victimized may never be able to deal with people, places, or things which remind them of that traumatic experience. Some people have the strength to move past such things, but that is more than we have a right to expect from anyone. If that’s the reason for someone’s irrational behavior, let it go. Human beings don’t, and can’t, react rationally to certain things; we must accept that fact about ourselves and the people around us. To be insulted by someone else being an imperfect person is absurd, we are all imperfect.

The best thing that can be done for race relations is to give each other the benefit of the doubt; assuming prejudice and expecting that assumption to be disproven makes people uneasy and causes more prejudice. We are all imperfect and we all do things that unintentionally offend others, no one likes to admit this is true, that we could have done something wrong, so we carelessly assume that every time anyone seems to treat us differently than we would like it’s because they’re prejudice against us; racism its self has become the scapegoat for our inherent flaws as human beings. Whenever someone treats us differently than we would like, instead of examining our own behavior to see if we have done something offensive, or trying to imagine why they might have done that, we assume it’s because we’re Black, gay, Jewish, Muslim, etc. Then we act defensive and feel sorry for ourselves, instead of remembering that the other person is a flawed human being just like we are, that they make mistakes just like we do, and other people’s actions aren’t always about us. Let us all look in the mirror for a second before blaming others for their reactions to us. As Gandhi once said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world”, it is the only way to end racism and bigotry.

Take Time Out

When you see them
on a freeway hitching rides
wearing beads
with packs by their sides
you ought to ask
what's all the
warring and the jarring
and the
killing and
the thrilling
all about.

Take Time Out.

When you see him
with a band around his head
and an army surplus bunk
that makes his bed
you'd better ask
what's all the
beating and
the cheating and
the bleeding and
the needing
all about.

Take Time Out.

When you see her walking
barefoot in the rain
and you know she's tripping
on a one-way train
you need to ask
what's all the
lying and the
dying and
the running and
the gunning
all about.

Take Time Out.

Use a minute
feel some sorrow
for the folks
who thinks tomorrow
is a place that they
can call up
on the phone.
take a month
and show some kindness
for the folks
who thought that blindness
was an illness that
affected eyes alone.

If you know that youth
is dying on the run
and my daughter trades
dope stories with your son
we'd better see
what all our
fearing and our
jeering and our
crying and
our lying
brought about.

Take Time Out.

~Maya Angelou~