White Jews, racism – a view from the USA
JVL Introduction
We make no apologies for printing this 2020 article in 2023. Diane Abbott’s poorly worded letter on racism and prejudice and the disproportionate reaction to it have, nonetheless, provoked some interesting explorations of racism and antisemitism, which should be a good thing. We feel this piece is a valuable addition and which may be difficult for some Jewish people to consider. Structural antisemitism has been real in the US and UK but this is no longer the case and Jewish leaders must stand firmly against the systemic racism which Black people experience.
Despite the differences between the US and UK, Feldman’s points apply equally to the Jewish Leadership in the UK: “… we have to start thinking about race, and we need to use an equity lens for every decision we make. We can’t just condemn the blatant racism we see on a cellphone video, but – like searching for chametz before Passover – we need to find and root out the racist structures and policies undergirding all aspects of American society. It is hard to argue that any American system – education, healthcare, law, social welfare, etc – isn’t stacked against Black people, and Jewish leaders at all levels of these systems have to push harder for change and improvement. We have to challenge the status quo – even though the status quo got us to this point and undermining it may have negative ramifications on our white-skinned Jewish community.”
This article was originally published by Jewish Insider on Sun 20 Jun 2021. Read the original here.
White Jews – Wake Up. We’re Part of the Problem.
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Reading this fine piece made me feel as if I’d dipped my head in a bucket of ice-water. There is for something so obviously true about all of this as an English Jew with a working knowledge of inner-city life I wonder at myself for not seeing this as clearly as Matt Feldman has seen it, though it has been staring me in the face.
Of course Jews are no longer suffering in their communities the kind of abuses that many Blacks and Asians routinely do! Something I and many others have tried to get across to Zionist Israelis who claim that the only way we Jews can save ourselves from a future Holocaust is to make aliyah, is that the Jews who are at greatest risk from attack – a risk they have incurred through their own compliance with a profoundly oppressive regime – live in Israel, not in Europe, not in the USA.
Clearly, there are communities in the USA and Europe who face great physical dangers just because they are who they are and live where they live, but they are not normally Jewish. Jews might meet with prejudice, but, bar the rantings of the racist ideologues, they do not as a matter of course meet with the outright hostility that certain other communities suffer.
So it is certainly right that Jews ought to remember that many of the horrors our recent ancestors faced are being visited, in one form or another, on non-Jewish communities; and they deserve the help and support that our recent ancestors found very hard, even impossible, to come by.
We care for the Palestinians, as we should: but we should care for all who know, as Jews historically have done (and may again), what it means to be at the rough end of racial bigotry.
As usual, you don’t need a Ph D to recognise the truth staring you in the face. Likewise, I heard about Diane Abbott’s article and its condemnation and did not need to read it to guess she was simply expressing a truth, perhaps clumsily. We are now so familiar with this scenario. What we see and hear all around us, that is real, is denied by the propaganda. Another example is the way LP members who said they had never encountered anti-semitism within their branch of the LP were disbelieved. Our own experience, the reality of life in Britain, counts for nothing.
There are a number of adjectives that I could use but they still wouldn’t do justice to this excellent article by Matt Feldman, the way he has written about the subject of his life as a white Jew, stirred my emotions as he described how he came to realise that he had such an advantage to get on in life, I couldn’t stop thinking about another JVL article I read earlier today, it was written by Gavin Lewis, he described his life growing up in England and the different ways racism affected him, from racism derived by ignorance with no malice to being beaten up and picked on regularly by racists , including the police all because he was black. The contrast was in being White and receiving financial help in various ways, which led to being middle class and financially independent and Black, with only prejudice and racism to live with was and is staggering. It also makes you understand why Diane words were actually much closer to the truth. I would suggest that the only error she made was that she didn’t take into account that the racists would have a field day because of the way she phrased her comments.
Going back to Matt’s article, as he grew older the realisation of how lucky he was compared to being black, drove him to challenge racism head on.
Very thoughtful and thought provoking.
As a non Jewish or black person I agree with everything he said.