Today, a friend of mine was accountable and vulnerable on Facebook. She opened a post discussing her move to understanding that #AllLivesMatter and colorblindness did not, in fact, serve her friends—especially those who are Black—the way she intended. This friend is one of the people who I feel has the best energy in the world, the deepest intentionality, and whose misguided moments in race-based conversations are easily met with compassionate understanding from me, because I understand and completely feel her love for every living creature. This friend was accountable for her Whiteness and White Privilege, even as she’s an obviously Orthodox Jewish woman in a very specific Hasidic neighborhood of NYC. Her post included the image of a black circle with the words “Shut up and listen!” in white.
A comment from a woman who shares her neighborhood stated, “Sorry, I live in [neighborhood] and don’t have white privilege.” Reasons were listed that do not negate white privilege and made thinly veiled references to the tense nature of the relationship between mostly White Jews and their Afro-Caribbean neighbors as examples of reverse racism.
I came out of Shabbat and Shavuot to the same news as these two ladies did. I feared for my husband, myself, my daughter, my sister. I feared for staff and readers of TribeHerald. I calculated backlash from the protests being turned into riots, braced myself for the pain my newsfeed would likely bring, including from well-meaning White friends, especially the Jewish ones.
Thankfully, most of my newsfeed was filled with solidarity, understanding, and posts of growth like the one my friend created. Sadly, there will always be ones like the commenter wrote. My blood pressure rose slightly as I read that, and in a state of more anger and rage than I usually allow myself to express in these exchanges—particularly as a person who professionally moderates and facilitates difficult conversations about race—I responded. Angrily, and in teaching mode:
“Also, you absolutely have white privilege. There’s no such thing as reverse racism. Prejudice and discrimination, including race based, are both very real and can go in any direction. Those are what you’re experiencing. Racism is by very definition entrenched in structural power. My [personal] experience in [their neighborhood] as a frum woman does not enjoy any of the tinges of white privilege. I say none of this as an attack, but I am too tired of being attacked, or at risk of attack, to soften these tones today even though it’s literally the work I do. I have a workshop called Exploring Ashkenazi. If me expressing this in a frustrated and very pointed way hasn’t forever turned you off to exploring these things with me, I would be more than happy to compassionately and empathetically walk you through the points I’m making and the exploration of why at another time with the workshop.”
This particular commenter seemed to take away from my own and others’ comments that this was a time to listen and learn and her only response was a beautiful one.
But don’t worry, someone else would come to her rescue! Another commenter wrote the following under our posts, and in reply:
“How ridiculous Jews have white privelege(sic)?! We must have missed the memo when we weren’t allowed into schools, programs(sic), violence and the holocaust to name a few. And still I don’t acknowledge this insane race baiting where everyone should apologize for the color skin they were born into. You don’t like it take it up with Gd but trust me that racism doesn’t get rid of racism.”
my response.
“There being a point in history where (white-presenting) Jews didn’t have white privilege does NOT mean you don’t have it now. Also, loving (not. really, hating. and feeling really offended and deeply wounded, once again, by the festering wound of the continual verbal papercuts that people like you give me with statements like that) that your post totally dismisses that I AM JEWISH AND CLEARLY SAYING I DON’T HAVE THAT WHITE PRIVILEGE. SO, NO, I’M NOT SAYING *JEWS* have white privilege. I’m saying “white-presenting” Jews. You aren’t dealing with ANY of that now. How about when it’s hard for me to get my kid into schools, or to choose which schools are appropriate to put her into, because of the fact that some schools still teach the curse of Cham as though it’s a real thing? My 15th generation descendant of Tosfot Yom Tov daughter, whose mother (me) walks into those school offices carrying the weight of having collapsed in the DC Holocaust museum not at Shoes (some reason that didn’t get to me, who knows) but 3 exhibits later as I saw, at eye level, a photo of my own great uncle on the St. Louis, when he and my great grandmother attempted to join my grandfather in the U.S. My grandfather who had come over after getting kicked out of his Gymnasium for being Jewish. And then met my grandmother once she was finally able to be back with her family in London, and he was stationed there during the war. And they raised my mother and her siblings with a Christmas tree as a thanks to the nuns who sheltered her as a child of kindertransport. DO NOT. try. to come at me. with Holocaust bullshit as reasons you don’t have white privilege. I will mop the floor with that. Because that Jewishness, and having a grandfather who was kicked out of his Gymnasium for being Jewish, and a grandmother and uncle who were on the Voyage of the Damned, and a mother who had grown up in a convent so she could LIVE did NOT stop my mom from having to leave me in the car as a teen when she visited one client for her outside sales job because she knew he was racist, and her white privilege allowed her to be fine in there EVEN THOUGH he knew she was Jewish.”
I realized that I had not addressed her straw man arguments, and continued in a second post, tagging her again:
“Also, for the record, [commenter], who said anyone should be apologizing for the color skin they were born into? (although jewish communities around the world do basically ask that of me on a regular basis, thankfully not the ones I am ingrained in). And what race baiting? Also also, I LOVE the skin I’m in, and HAVE taken it up with G-d many times in my life, including when it was difficult for me to navigate. I love that I get to teach my fellow Jews about avoiding sinat chinam in such an amazing way. I love that even now, when I’m not doing it in the normal way I do because I’m just too angry and hurt, there’s a space for me to express that. G-d gave me the skin I’m in for so many reasons. Just because I acknowledge the difficulties and fears that I face as a consequence of people’s reactions to race doesn’t mean that I have an issue with it, any more than just because I acknowledge difficulties I and my family of origin have faced as Jews, including Ashkenazi, German Jews in Germany and England, and as New York Jews now, due to anti-Semitism make me have issues with being Jewish.”
Am I angry? Yes. Am I hurt? More than I even know, and it’s where so much of the anger stems from. Some of us have both stories. I can personally compare the multi-generational trauma of being the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors and being Black in America, because both of those stories are mine. Please don’t use the plight of our strong survivors to deny the privilege you enjoy today. Use it to empathize with those who are suffering the same discrimination and fear that our family members, regardless of how assimilated, began to feel in the days and weeks leading up to Kristallnacht.
I came home and my mom told me she was feeling offended at the post by a friend of hers. This friend is a Black woman, a few years older than me, and a former co-worker of my mom’s. She posted on Facebook an ask for her white friends to engage in this conversation with her and get ready to be uncomfortable, as she has to be all of the time.
My mom stated that as someone who was married to my dad (z”l) and has raised two biracial children, being very present and using her white privilege to her advantage as necessary and as an ally to her own children, she does not appreciate being stroked with a broad brush. She began to list social identities that are not privileged and stated that she has experienced that same discomfort. And I said to her, EXACTLY!
I explained to her that her friend wasn’t stating that the white people she was speaking to had never in their lives been uncomfortable. Just that in this conversation, it was their turn. And that if anything, my mother should use her own experiences to empathize rather than be offended. That the ask was about this conversation. There is no broad brush saying all white people are bad, all white people are ignorant, no white people have any experience that is remotely comparable in any area of their lives. It’s saying, “Can we please have the conversation where you, person who can see this so we are close enough in some way for you to have access to my thoughts, acknowledge my constant pain and discomfort in this area, even though it may have seemed that it didn’t exist because I keep it so silent.” It’s saying, “If you feel like there’s oppression you’ve suffered that this post is diminishing, use that experience not to play Oppression Olympics, but to empathize and ally and build… to understand what this aspect of my life is, daily.”
And I’m saying, I face both anti-Semitism and anti-Blackness. Do not diminish my testimony of life as a Black woman with cries of experiences with anti-Semitism; I live both. And when I’m in the sequestered Jewish community where I should be emotionally safe from anti-Semitic experiences, I still experience anti-Blackness; sometimes loudly, and sometimes just as curious, gentle, othering. When I’m in Black spaces, I may still risk that anti-Semitism.
I am thankful that G-d gave me the skin I’m in and the relationship with Him that I have. No piece of me feels like my intersectionality is a mistake. All it asks of you is to take a deep breath, realize that asking you to acknowledge my pain and struggle doesn’t invalidate yours, and work together, so that we all Can Breathe.
