There is a pernicious undercurrent of envy and resentment that finds solace in seeing the Jewish community criticised like this, in a way that would lead to howls of outrage if directed at people of colour
December 1, 2022 12:47
Stating that hate is hate and should be battled against wherever we find it shouldn’t be a statement that requires further clarification. As Dr Martin Luther King once put it: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
And yet we are faced with a landscape of bigotry that is made up of mountains and valleys, where some of those on the receiving end see their struggle set atop a mountain while the suffering of others languishes in a valley.
The splintering of movements that once saw discrimination against one minority as a common cause for action has led to what seems like a competition around who has the greatest right to the claim of being the most persecuted.
I find this very odd. I am not of African heritage but found the rallying call of Black Lives Matter to be sobering, vital and worth amplifying. I am not a Muslim but find Islamophobia as much my fight as it is that of Muslims. I am not gay and yet try to be an ally to LGBTQ+ communities by using the platforms I have to help transmit their experiences. I am a Buddhist, not Jewish, but when the recording artist formerly known as Kanye West tweeted, “I’m a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I’m going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE”, it disgusted me as much as any racist epithet directed at people who look like me.
Yet some tried to explain away this blatant and worryingly threatening antisemitism as just “Kanye being Kanye” — or even worse, attempting to justify the social media post that the rapper/producer/over-priced trainer designer finger-vomited out. This man is a cultural icon to many and, while some people feel, like me, that his legacy is now indelibly tarnished by this hate mongering, others refuse to see it. There is a constituency that instead holds him up as a martyr for freedom of speech, a victim who has been shut down for telling the truth.
There is a pernicious undercurrent of envy and resentment that finds solace in seeing the Jewish community criticised like this, in a way that would lead to howls of outrage if directed at people of colour. It is hypocritical and exactly what the far right wants to happen. By dividing ourselves we do their bidding, allowing them to emerge from the chaos empowered and in control.
Confronting and overcoming our own prejudices is essential if we are to effectively combat the real enemy: fascism. Understanding that the Jewish community’s fight is mine and mine theirs feels natural to me, but the equivocation that some bring to this conversation concerns me and undermines the cause that we must all share — the battling of intolerance wherever we see it, especially when it is from within our communities and directed at other minority communities. Melanin alone should not be the sole membership card of the oppressed, with everyone else having to stand in line behind us. In 1939 Billie Holiday sang about “black bodies swinging in the southern breeze”. The song, which became her biggest hit, was called Strange Fruit and its lyrics concerned the barbarity of the death by lynching of African Americans that took place in the southern states of America. Originally a poem, it was written by Jewish school teacher Abel Meeropol. When asked about the song in 1971, Abel said: “I wrote Strange Fruit because I hate lynching, and I hate injustice, and I hate the people who perpetuate it.”
In America the Black Jewish Entertainment Alliance works on building connections between the Jewish and African American communities. They also act to reconfirm the fact that the battle against injustice is a joint enterprise, not a solitary one. Their Twitter account recently retweeted a statement by the legendary basketball player Kareem Abdul Jabbar: “Black people have to know that when they mouth antisemitism they are using the exact same kind of reasoning that white supremacists use against blacks.”
I have spoken out against anti-black racism from within the Asian community, and consistently challenge bigotry and prejudice wherever it rears its ugly head. We are living in divided times and the ability to be able to empathise with the struggle of others, even though we may not immediately see that struggle as our own, is the bond that will help us all to realise that hate is indeed hate.
Nihal Arthanayake is a BBC Five Live presenter. His book, ‘Let’s Talk — How To Have Better Conversations’, is out now
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