Racism In America
By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman
#JusticeShabbat, June 7, 2020
We are living through extraordinary times: Climate change, Coronavirus, and now riots and protests in almost every major city of the United States and around the globe, following the homicide on a Minneapolis street of a simple African American man.
One could be either a cynic and say, “so what else is new,” or as wise as King Solomon, who toward the end of his life, said that “there is nothing new under the sun.” And perhaps the King was right. After all, we’ve been there before—storms, plagues and revolutions. When I was a teenager living in Los Angeles, I saw Watts burn, and I remember well the chant, “Burn baby, burn!” that accompanied the fires in other African-American ghettoes. I remember classes dismissed when I was a student at UCLA in 1968, when we heard about the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. On that day, forever etched in my memory, groups of us sat in stunned silence, wondering what kind of world we were living in. Fifty years ago, both in memory of the murder of the Rev. King, and also in reaction to the killing of four students at Kent State University by the Ohio National Guard, I began taking part in sit-ins and protests against racism, brutality and needless war.
And that’s just me. But I was part of a movement. By the hundreds, thousands and hundreds of thousands we did our part to change the world. Have we succeeded? Evidently not. Or at least, not enough.
The protests today aren’t only about the physical slavery of African Americans. It’s about racism, which is just another form of slavery. In an article that appeared in The New Yorker earlier this week,[1] Bryan Stevenson, a civil rights lawyer and activist states that, “The great evil of American slavery wasn’t the involuntary servitude; it was the fiction that black people aren’t as good as white people, and aren’t the equals of white people, and are less evolved, less human, less capable, less worthy, less deserving than white people.”
I find these words very painful, not only because they are so true, but also because I can empathize with the suffering and degradation that people of color have had to endure because of this prejudice.
As a Jew, and particularly as a second-generation survivor of the Holocaust, I can identify with these feelings. Anti-Semitism isn’t only about Jewish religion and rituals. It’s about Jews being seen as a different form of life, not quite up to par with superior races. How many of us have been asked—not even out of meanness, but simply out of ignorance and curiosity, about our hidden tails, or horn stubs, or other physical proof of the Jew being somehow sub-human?
And yet, as a mea culpa, I reflect with shame on the racism inherent among my own people. The contemptuous and derisive terms used by Jews of a somewhat older age group—and perhaps even today—to describe Blacks. I hear the pain expressed by Jews of Color who somehow aren’t seen as quite Jewish enough. “How can you be Jewish,” they are often asked, with the implication that all Jews look alike, and that if you don’t fit the image, you can’t really be Jewish.
And I wonder, how can we Jews, subject to bigotry and prejudice throughout our history, be among those who—actively or subconsciously—be among those who practice racism today? Weren’t we Jews active in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s? Didn’t we march with Martin Luther King in the streets of Selma? Did we not work—at great risk to life and livelihood—to expose and eradicate prejudice? To register Black voters in the South? To educate and tutor them so they could enter American society as equals?
Or have we gotten lax in recent years?
Today, a clear voice emerges out of the chaos on the streets: You haven’t done enough. It isn’t enough to be un-racist. You have to anti-racist. It’s an ongoing struggle, and there can be no rest until the battle is won.
And that means that, in response to the killing of George Floyd, we Jews, as a people, must begin by examining our own souls. On Yom Kippur, once a year, we are commanded to engage in cheshbon ha-nefesh, to take an accounting of the soul. Yom Kippur isn’t so much about how we relate to God, but rather how we interact with one another, how we may have wronged our fellow human being. On this holiest of days, we look not only for the obvious and egregious sins, but also for those hidden in the darkest recesses of our soul, the ones we manage to overlook or cover up.
In that spirit, and in response to the cry of the hurt and injured, those who were lynched or shot, and those whose necks were crushed by a white supremacist’s knee, we American Jews need to engage in similar introspection today. Could we be harboring, knowingly or unknowingly, racism within our hearts? Because if we are, then we are part of the problem, and we can’t begin to change anything until we change ourselves.
Yes, Jews have participated in the struggle to desegregate, to bring justice, equality and education to African Americans. But racism is still a part of the culture for many of us.
I find racism even in the Torah, in the classification of Kush—father of the Kushite (or Nubian) tribes of northern Africa—as a descendant of Noah’s youngest son, Ham, who was cursed by his father and preordained for slavery.
With abhorrence, I find racism not only among American Jews, but also among some Israelis. Despite efforts at integration, Black immigrants from Ethiopia still experience institutionalized and personal discrimination.
We are privileged because—for the most part—we are white. For the most part, we are well-to-do. We live in neighborhoods that can afford the best schools, the best teachers, the best tutors and the best extra-curricular activities. We can afford good healthcare, and we can afford to buy good, nutritious, healthy food.
We can call the police when we feel threatened or need help—and not worry that somehow the tables will be turned against us.
Our sons and daughters can look forward with excitement and hope toward advancement in their chosen fields.
Many of us have been taking for granted our rights and freedoms, but have turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the plight of our fellow human beings, discriminated against because they are people of color, relegated to poor and crowded neighborhoods where healthcare and education are scarce and badly managed; who are systematically subjected to discriminatory laws and harsher treatment by the police and other law enforcement agencies.
This is what the riots and demonstrations in our streets today are all about. And unless we start listening, unless we start changing the system, starting with ourselves, there will be nothing new under the sun.
With all due respect and humility, I need to disagree with wise old King Solomon. I believe with all my heart that change IS possible. We see it happen every day. If it weren’t for the 1960’s and the Freedom Riders, we would still be living in Jim Crow America. If it weren’t for the Stonewall Riots, there would be no Rainbow Flag or Gay Pride today.
What we must pledge today is to carry forward this sacred—but unfinished—work. We need to listen to the grievances of our neighbors, to hear their pain, to see the fear in their eyes. We must contribute money, time and effort to legislation that would protect their lives and livelihoods. We must hold accountable those who take away their dignity and abuse their basic human rights, who conspire to “put them in their place,” who believe that America’s greatness is displayed through might and armor rather than justice and equality.
The world CAN change, but this change must begin with me and you. Each of us must pick up where the previous generation left off, and carry forward the sacred task with which we were entrusted. We pray that bigotry and prejudice be gone. We pray for the strength and determination to make it so. We pray that WE become the change we wish to see.
© 2020 by Boaz Heilman
[1]Chotiner, Isaac (2020, June 1). Bryan Stevenson On The Frustration Behind The George Floyd Protests. The New Yorker. Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/bryan-stevenson-on-the-frustration-behind-the-george-floyd-protests
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