A little perspective for today, Martin Luther King Day, Jan 15, 2018. I want to invent a fictional scenario that might open the eyes of some European-American people to the feelings that people of African origin are expressing on this day.

  Preface: Some fifty years ago I was working one summer as a community organizer in Chester, PA, down the road from the college. Chester is a gritty town on the Mason-Dixon line with poor working class people of all hues. My boss was Ruth Sephus of the Chester Home Improvement project, a spunky woman in late-middle life, unstoppable, despite having had open-heart surgery not long before. (I feel she needed the surgery because her heart was too big; trying to help everyone she could.)

  I found myself trying to blend into the black community there, though I am about as Caucasian as a person gets. Ruth heard me trying to talk like the “bruthahs” and she called me aside. She said, in essence, “Chris, understand, racism is not a ‘black’ problem. It’s a ‘white’ problem. You can’t help that much by trying to be black. But you can observe, pay attention, and then go back to the privileged white world you live in and witness what you have seen here. Do you understand?

     I learned. I try to work on my own racism and feel I have an obligation to call attention to it when I see it. Yes, I’m a snowflake. But maybe this can help.

What is a scenario that could help European-American people imagine what it is like to be of African origin in the U. S. today? Here’s a possibility: Let’s imagine that today we are Jewish people still living in an alternate ‘Germany’ 150 years after the war ended the holocaust. That war was supposed to end a century and more  of brutal servitude, slavery, families ripped asunder and people beaten and killed for the lightest infractions. Despite this history, we Jewish people are still living in ‘Germany’ and make up some 15 to 20 percent of the population.

However, even though the war ended our servitude 150 years ago we have been consistently deprived of education equal to the majority population. Vigilantes have regularly killed, raped, and terrorized us to this day. Though laws seem to prevent it, we are crowded into ghettos of substandard housing where the schools, financed by the same budgets as majority neighborhoods, are consistently poor. Police patrol these ghettoes as though they are occupied enemy territory. Our sons and daughters are imprisoned for inconsequential misdemeanors and become unemployable.

Denied educational opportunities and jobs, we are regularly blamed for a low-income status that further limits our capabilities. Christians equate “poor” with “Jewish”and seem to assume we will always be so. They resist “low-income” housing in neighborhoods they reserve for themselves because they are afraid we will move into it. But when we succeed they are hardly more welcoming. Despite our centuries in ‘Germany’ we are disproportionately denied good jobs and management positions. School ratings in real estate ads signal majority people that they don’t want to share neighborhoods with us.

Although ‘Germany’ is a country famous for welcoming immigrants and inviting them to share the ‘German’ way of life, we are discouraged from blending into the greater population. If one great, great grandparent is Jewish then we are considered Jewish and ridiculed for trying to “pass” as Christian. Until 50 years ago there were laws against Jews marrying Christian people. When one half-Jewish person finally managed to overcome opposition and become President of ‘Germany’ he was suspected of favoring Jewish people and now the current president is trying to erase his legacy.

When we try to call attention to the history of continuing discrimination, inequities and prejudice by saying “Jewish lives matter too” we are scolded for being militant. The Christians seem to expect gratitude for what they have allowed us. It never seems to occur to them that they have no inherent right to decide our fate. They can’t see that there is nothing superior about how they look or what they believe. They are blind to the millions of ways we have helped shape ‘German’ society. They also can’t see that while we are a minority in ‘Germany’, we are a majority in so many other parts of the world.

Be aware of this, too. When your crowd has hurt certain people for centuries they may not be that eager to buddy up to that crowd. “Oh, why can’t Jews and former Nazis just be friends? Wasn’t that years ago?” Unfortunately, no. It wasn’t even yesterday. It’s tomorrow. Because millions of Christians in this country are still walking around thinking that because of their religion and the color of their skin they are built-in, deep-seated, eternally superior. They think that Jewish (African, Asian, Indigenous, Latino) people who succeed have overcome their own built-in limitations and managed to be as good as Christian Caucasians. They think all others are lucky to have the benefits of Euro culture.

“Look at what we’ve achieved as compared to …”

Wait a minute. Who actually achieved those great advances? Who actually did the work of building civilizations, empires? Whose hands? Whose efforts? Whose brains?

And I want to challenge the imaginations of all who read this. The deep root of racism is that people don’t want their children to marry and have children with those ‘others’. Why? Are you harboring the idea that those kids lose something by mixing their ethnicity? Biology says they are stronger. Will they lose their culture? Perhaps some of it. But they will also gain another culture, and a wider perspective. Will they be subject to discrimination? Stop discriminating and fight for respect for all people.

It is my deep conviction that there is surpassing beauty in all the peoples of this world. Look around you. It’s inspiring. Don’t be afraid to experience how you are enriched by being in the company of wonderfully diverse people. And here’s a secret: Humanity has barely tapped its full potential. If we encourage each of us and all of us to find our highest potential we will lift each other to new heights.

 

P.S.: Jewish friends may point out that this scenario is not really imaginary. Of course it isn’t; but that only reinforces the seriousness of the metaphor. All racism is evil poison.