Six years ago, I wrote a piece called “Let Them Riot In The Sea Of Injustice,” on the riots in Ferguson over the murder of Michael Brown. In that piece I lamented the fact that black life meant nothing, that:
“As a people we must no longer accept the racist biased opinion formulated by the system and its supporters to promote the ‘ideal peaceful black protester.’ It seems America only listens to the angry black person on CNN shouting and destroying property yet scolds us for not acting like that wonderful dear passive Martin Luther King Jr.”
And since those six years, nothing has changed in the state affairs of black people in North America. Once again, we see riots and looing over the death of George Floyd and now David McAtee, Breonna Taylor and James Scurlock who was only 22. Black life I have concluded has never been of importance of the white structured state. White sanctioned murder of Black people has all but been condoned by various white people, white Jews. In my piece six years ago I said the following:
“I called on direct violence and confrontation and an end to this passive non-resistance stance that I had long held so dear. For years now I accepted that as black people we must accept the narrative of non-violence and peaceful protest to advance our goals. In some respects, I still agree with that vision, but after the events of what has occurred this week…not so much.”
This burning passion for justice has never stopped flowing in me. Direct confrontation is a must now, whatever some may say in white liberal society. It is time to directly confront the murderers who believe black life is so awful, that they can put a knee on a black man’s neck and put their hands in their pockets. As I see tear gas and flash grenades being thrown at peaceful protesters in the US, I cry out. I cry out in some effort to end this madness. However, it is of no use to change the minds of white society through non-violent means. The most effective way is not to educate, but to put ourselves in resistance towards the state. Many of you reading this may think I believe in advocating to attacking police officers, but no. We must block the roads, we must block the police from entering communities, we must organize ourselves and boycott stores that have treated black people horribly. If we as a people want change, justice, we must all fight for it. We can no longer be complacent in a world not ready to see black liberation.
I have always fallen back to Martin Luther King Jr over the years for various points to convey a message that people understand. In his last speech before the day he died, he gave his famous “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop” speech. Passionately, he argued that America should be true to what it said on paper. America and Canada have failed to live up to this goal. They have failed because the bodies of black and native men, women, and children continue to pile up each year. In this speech King makes it clear we most likely will not see the promised land of racial equality and justice. He says that while wanting a long life he knows that it will not happen. Hashem has granted him the vision to see it on that mountain top. But I no longer believe in that mountain top. I no longer believe that we as a people will get to that mountain top.
Thomas Hobbes argues the social construct theory. The theory is “In the absence of political order and law, everyone would have unlimited natural freedoms, including the ‘right to all things’ and thus the freedom to plunder, rape and murder; there would be an endless ‘war of all against all.’ Therefore, free people establish a political community in which a social contract is created where they all gain security in return for subjecting themselves to an absolute sovereign, one man or an assembly of men.”
However, if the people are subjected to brutal force time and time again, is it not their right to rip up that contract and demand a new one? Is it not time for black people to rise in opposition to the position of violence that we have faced in the past 400 years of violence and persecution? My answer is yes, some may disagree or agree. However, America has failed in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
In the previous article I called on the Jewish community to do more:
“I would argue yes, as Jews we have experienced more than enough sorrow and torment, but as people of colour, we have experienced downright double degradation. I won’t be that person however who claims it is this perfect world in the Jewish sphere, because it’s not. On top of dealing with the injustice of the state system we must also deal with the injustice of the Jewish system. We must deal with those comments questioning whether we are truly Jewish to downright discrimination in rabbis refusing to marry us.”
Nothing has changed in the past six years that I breathed life into those words. We still have discrimination among rabbis towards Jews of colour, we still have blackface during Purim, we still have the excuses every time a black person is murdered by police. The Jewish system has only become worse with no change. Change it seems is like moving a mountain, an impossible task. While there have been letters of condemnation through the North American Jewish world, even some Orthodox Jewish organizations, I am unsatisfied with their performance. Until they wake up and return to the 60’s where Jews worked alongside blacks to fight for civil rights, there can no longer be a relationship.
As much as it pains me to say it as a black Jew, my fellow white Jews have done little to nothing to combat police brutality. Maybe I’m wrong, and I will accept that. However the track record proves me correct, which pains me beyond imagine.
I love being black and Jewish, but I am tired of being treated as an unequal member of the tribe and a scorn to white society, who sees nothing but an uppity Negro demanding fair rights and social justice. I was asked by a white friend recently about the riots and the looting. He asked me if I could ever condone such violence if white people rioted and destroyed black businesses and communities.
Rosewood, Florida came to mind.
Tulsa race massacre came to mind.
The Ocoee massacres in Florida came to mind.
I told him that white people have been looting from blacks in the last 400 years and some even have the audacity to claim that aliens must’ve built or made these artifacts, rather than believing Black society could have done it. That’s what I call privilege!
I am tired, so tired of seeing this violence against black people start up again. In Canada, police may have thrown Regis Korchinski-Paquet, a black woman, off her balcony. The black body has no protections against a structural justice system bent on punishing black people severely. It seems one can not even breathe and be black in this society. I believe I have become numb to police violence. Just the other day I thought if I were stopped, by police, thrown to the ground and had an officer place his knee on my neck, I’d tell him simply to just end my life. You the reader sitting reading must think such a thought is unnormal, that you must not think that way.
However, when you are conditioned in a society to hate your inner being as a black person, you no longer want to live in a society where your skin is a death sentence.
Steve Biko the famed anti-apartheid activist from South Africa, would coin the phrase, “Black is beautiful.” On some days I think that, and I love myself. On other days I realize I will be judged carefully by every action I make as a black man from white society. That burden is continually existing. At one time in my youth, I prayed that the divine creator would turn my skin white because I could not bear the racism I went through as a child.
I ask the reader these questions: Would you want to live in the shoes of black people? Would you want black skin? Would you want to be subjected to the abuse we face daily whether online or in person? If the answer is no, I believe you.
If it yes, I consider you a liar.