So much seems to be happening all at once. We’re still coping with adjusting to new phases of the pandemic. Then there’s the riots and protests, the civil unrest. The recent race issues breaking through the surface are continuing unabated. The conversation, though, seems to be getting out of hand.
Personally, the term “white privilege” rubs me the wrong way. In fact, to my ear it sounds almost condescending and disrespectful to anyone who is black, as though everyone who is white holds oneself to be some privileged prima donna above nonwhite people. While I know the meaning of the term is meant to connote having an advantage and nothing more, it still seems to be a term that just labels another group without really allowing for any nuance of life experiences.
This new simplistic label culture and dialogue that has become au courant feels so stifling and limiting.
Black Lives Matter, the concept, yes of course! It’s a no brainer. We are all just people, children of G-d, equal in G-d’s eyes. Intrinsically, no one is better or worse than another. Yet, the radicalized institutional organization of Black Lives Matter, founded with anti-Semitism built into its charter at the time — no thank you. And while yes, black lives themselves matter, something in this term leaves me uncomfortable, as though it owns the patent on victimhood and all other lives or struggles whatsoever.
Certainly, I understand, Black Lives Matter is a cry triggered because it seemed black lives were treated as though they didn’t matter, and in that sense, it certainly resonates deeply.
While the struggles and challenges in the black community are all too real, this recent unrest has become a kind of carte blanche way of painting the landscape of the black community in a one dimensional and skewed way. It is shifting the narrative to solely a victim narrative, without making room for the successes and development of many black lives that have grown by leaps and bounds for many who live with an ethos of empowerment and a sense of personal agency.
This is not to say that systemic police accountability shouldn’t be ratcheted up. The horrendous and heartbreaking story of Aurora’s angelic Elijah McClain, may he rest in peace, is law enforcement gone wrong to the nth degree, and must make us realize that something significant has got to change (but for G-d sake, not defunding the police!).
These labels, though, paraded as avant garde dialoguing, is becoming inescapable and, to be honest, quite ridiculous. There is a palpable feeling of fear that I have in speaking around progressives. I feel like I can’t really be “me” or honest in sharing my thoughts.
It feels like the pandemic and this civil unrest are currently fused in New York City.
At least that’s how I experienced it when I saw the famous and prominent golden Prometheus sculpture in Rockefeller Center. Due to the pandemic and the desire to model and promote mask safety awareness to the public, Prometheus’ mouth is secured in a mask around the mouth.
In a cliched psychological projection, what I saw, however, was an expression of what I’d frustratingly been feeling: the muzzling of speech and opinions that don’t fit into the leftist zeitgeist and people’s inability to listen to another point of view. I, of course, am not referring to obvious parameters of acceptability, such as, G-d forbid, legitimiz- ing racism.
In the spirit of this label culture that has become so superficial and ubiquitous, this week I heard for the first time the term, “Jewish Privilege.”
I’m sorry, say that again? Can you please explain to me what this even means? While yes, I do in fact feel gratitude in being Jewish, how does this term, in context of white privilege, even work?
Slavery in America ended in 1863. About 80 years after that, came the genocidal mass murder of the Jewish people. So how exactly does “Jewish Privilege” fit into this picture?
Even more than that, this suffering Olympics is getting out of hand. If you insist on this mentality of who had it the worst, unfortunately, the Jewish people do carry the gold medal for this one. But it doesn’t mean massive pain doesn’t exist for others and it doesn’t mean we don’t need to do better in empathizing with other persecuted minorities’ pain.
If anything, refracted through our experience of Jewish persecution, we can reach deeper and connect to the place of understanding and vulnerability that other persecuted minorities carry.
It feels like the world is churning and on the cusp of repairing and shedding some old bad models, prejudices, taken-for-granted status quos, and other wrongs that must be righted. America’s history is laden in glory, but also in sin. Residual racism is real. And I need to do better and learn and understand more about it. In this vein, this sumer I plan on exploring the book Carry Me Home by Diane McWhorter, and the Warmth of Many Suns by Isabele Wilkerson.
I’ve intentionally been regularly walking the Harlem Meer recently. It’s the northern most part of Central Park. To my surprise, it is completely at dissonance with the bitter and out of control picture the media paints of the black community. The atmosphere is one of summer relaxation.
Strikingly, the Meer and the media’s depiction just don’t match. I am making an effort to talk to people there. Intermittently, police cars even drive through the pastoral scenes, as they are allowed access to the walking path that surrounds the peaceful pond. Evening after evening, the reflection of the sun setting over Harlem Meer is ever so pleasant and peaceful.
These unorchestrated, uncontrived, natural, real-life conversations and real-life moments and human contact seem so far away from the prevailing “white privilege” “Black Lives Matter” narratives. It’s the living embodiment of what these terms purport to represent, which, however, only seem to create and drive division and hostility.
