080523 A Healing Conversation Between Black People and Jews (Part 2)

Jewish people and Black people. On this show, we stand on the truth that Jewish people are our brothers and our sisters, and we feel like it's necessary to have a conversation that is intent on healing some of the fraying that has taken place over the last couple of years. And again, Amy's going to join us for that, and then for our way Black History in fact, we're talking about the origin story of the NAACP. But first and foremost, it's time to discuss ba Ba becoming a better ally

BABA and Today's BABA is sponsored by Major Threads. For the finest in men's sportswear, checkmajorthreads dot com and for today's BABA, we're going to be checking out Yahoo News. The headline reads how reparations pioneer Evanston, Illinois is rolling out payments to black citizens. I'll read a bit. The city started dispersing reparations payments to locals in twenty twenty two in the form of vouchers for housing and since

and has since expanded to include cash. As talk of reparations ripples through the federal and local governments nationwide, Evanston, Illinois has become the first city in the United States to put money in the hands of black residents affected by years of discrimination. Quote. I'm excited to see that over one hundred municipalities have followed in their inspiration and

what's happened in Evanstone. We all look forward to seeing more legislation put into law, then into practice, and then dispersed. Robin Sue Simmons, the founder and executive director of First

Repair and chairperson of the city's reparations committee, told Yahoo News. Simmons, a former alder woman in Evanstone, which has a sixteen percent black population and is located about twelve miles north of Chicago, has been a pioneer in bringing reparations to one of the black communities affected by the aftermath of slavery in the United States. Quote. Most federal policy is implemented with a spark in a local community, a grassroots leader.

Every other area of government we look at hyper locally and then it trickles up to our congressional leader, she said. But Simmons recalled just having her own city in mind when she started out the journey of repairing harm to the dwindling number of black residents in the community. Obviously there's a lot more huge and a valid reason why they undertook this endeavor. So again, Yahoo, you can check it out, but we wanted to shout out credit where

it's due. That is becoming a better ally in our opinion. Now it's time to move on.

my favorite activities as anyone else. And fortunately, my high school was very, very close to a prominent Jewish community, and so there was a decent number of Jewish people there. And this is not the experience for a lot of people because there are not as many Jewish people as there are Christian people globally. It's just not a big thing, and yet Jewish people have sort of become like almost like a boogieyman in recent years. And I would like for you to speak to that first, you know, how

does that feel? And as someone who is Jewish and from a Jewish community, how does that feel? And then you know, talk to us. Do you feel like it's based in reality? Do you feel it's warranted? You know, on and on and then we'll go from there.

rise began. Statistically speaking, so any Semitism is interesting. So when I was a kid growing up in Los Angeles in the eighties, there was a lot of any Semitism. My synagogue or my Jewish school was routinely broken into, was trashed, was graffiti with with with swastikas. I would say at least once or twice a year. It would happen to either my synagogue or my school every year. I never made the news. It just was a relatively common occurrence in Los Angeles and I imagine other cities

in the country. Otherwise, a kid, your perspective is local. It's not global at all. Now. At the time, the anti Semitism that was occurring was exclusively from the hard right. It was exclusively from skinheads, Neo Nazis. The guys that I fought with routinely were always skinheads and white supremacists. And then what happened was sometimes in the late eighties early nineties, it kind of magically all went away and

you rarely heard of any Semitism. Again, it didn't really occur, and a something did happen, if a synagogue was defaced, it made news because it was so rare, and this like Goldilocks period when it went away for maybe two decades, maybe a little bit less than that, maybe fifteen years, And now it's come back, and it's come back in a more virulent form because now it's from the It's still part of the hard right culture, right the extreme right culture, but it's now also become part of the

extreme left culture. You see it from both ends. Ironically, I spent a lot of time in any Semites. I speak with a lot of them. Oftentimes I interview them and I'm talking from KKK. People were par the nation of Islam both sides. And what's interesting is they both If you ask them why they like Jews, you often hear the same responses. It's really interesting. I've always thought politics is not a linear line. I've always believed politics

is a circle. If you go so far and left, so far to the right, you end up coming back to the same place. I think history has proven that. And uh yeah, you see a lot of the same responses when it comes to why don't you like Jews? Jews control the media, Jews control economy, control armies, same kind of clap track you heard throughout the centuries of jew hatred. It's fascinating, but it's more virulent because it's now coming from both ends. And that's not a pincer

move you want to be involved in. And I think that my oftentimes Jews tend to be left of center. Right, Jews tend to vote Democrat, not dissimilar from black people. And it's because and I understand why, right, I vote more Republican Democratic, I voted, I've voted. I work for

a Democrat. But I understand why because Jews look at everything through the prism of social justice because of our history, which I get right, the the the amount of oppression that we have felt over the centuries has made us acutely aware of issues around social justice, which, by the way, is another reason why Jews were in the forefront of the issues for against racism. And I'm trying to help

black people lift themselves because we understood their history. Well, we lived that history in a lot of cases, not just in this country but globally, and we had done better for ourselves and we wanted to make sure other people didn't have to experience what we experienced as much as we could. And that's why. And so Democrats, and again, if I'm going on too long coming out.

So it is interesting to see any Semitism rear its ugly head from both sides, left and right.

to keep us divided is really how we view it. So, you know, thank you for pointing that out, because we believe that's something that we believe is true across politics, across ideologies, and across ethnicities and you also point out the extremes in that circle, and that was a I think that was a great mental picture for our audience as well. You know, as you keep going so far extreme, those extremes end up with just as much in common

as the rest of us. So in either direction too far, you're kind of going the wrong way at a certain point.

by you know, a professional basketball player. What type of things do you think stoked that or led to the popularity of a seemingly anti semitic view from a generation of black people that we hadn't seen before.

Stephen Jackson. Anyways, I I don't go through the list. So there's a lot of commonality between between them. And I hate to say it, but a lot of it comes from the Nation of Islam, I gotta say. And I think that the support of the Nation of Islam,

particularly it's leader Lewis Ferrikhon. You see a commonality among all the people who have said these things, who had then spoken about Lewis Ferrikhon in a very positive light, and they've pup they've parroted much of the words Farakhon has used and not in the Holocaust, calling Jews roaches, saying Jews are parasites, Jews control all these these these are these are oftentimes script from Lewis Farakhon, and I think that the other problem is that we've got we've

let them get away with it. And I always look, I always like to say, let's look in the mirror, or let's put the shoe on the other foot and and and see, because I think that's very clarifying. If you, for example, would say, if a white person would say those awful things but instead of just changed you for black person, that person would rightly be be vilified and will probably never work again and or or certainly not work for a very long time unless until penance was made.

But a lot of times these guys aren't made to face the same mus Yeah, there might be a couple, Oh he's got to apologize or you know, say something. The ADL organization, by the way, I don't particularly care for. And yeah, they all went through their penance of just say hey, sorry if I offended you, or you know, I'm learning more about this, but it's not real, let's be honest. I hope it was, and I hope some of them have learned. But I think a lot of

it comes from that. You know. What's also interesting, there's there's a there's this move to make Jews white people. This is something that that this is not a it's not a new thing, but it's it's it's it's kind of come back to where it was. I remember James Baldwin, the great, great, great Black writer, wrote this essay on any Semitism, and what he ended up saying was is even back then I was written in the sixties. He talked about the high levels of any Semitism the black community.

But what he said was, it's really more is Jewish people as a proxy for white people. It's really a hatred of white people. But Jewish people just tend to they tend to be the grosser at the time in Harlem where they tended to be the landlord, and and they kind of used as a proxy. And the danger of doing that is this, first of all, it's just just factually false.

but not all of us. But the reason why it's done I Remember I'm going thinking about Whoope Goldberg on the View made this point and I thought it was really dangerous where she was talking about the Holocaust and said, well it was y'all white people kind of fighting amongst yourselves. Now it was offensive in a couple levels. First of all, come dismissing the holocausts you all people were fighting esach other. And second of all, the fact that she made all

Jews as white people. And the reason why it's done is it's you know, you guys believe the term intersectionality. Do you guys know that term? Yes, yes, So it's I think it's because of the idea of intersectionality, where if because you have the intersectionality is kind of created as a first of all, intersectionality something I have a lot of issues with, primarily because it's about the connection, the connective tissue of victimhood and also based on really

economic power. So you put white people on the top of that pyramid, put black people that say, at the bottom of the pyramid, and you say, well, if you put Jews of white people, then therefore it's okay if we speak polly of them, because they're really part of the intersectional oppression that we face.

devil's advocate, forgive the expression. So for a black person, the experience of interacting with an individual who lacks melanin is a unique experience. You lack melanin that means white, right, right, or a person who's white passing. This is what I'm This is what I'm saying, So white or white adjacent, right. This is a person that if you know nothing else about me, you do know that I'm black. I wear it all over my whole body, right, So my experience

is going to be very different. I cannot hide it. My hair grows this way, my skin looks like this. This is who I am. You can tell that I'm black from across the street a Jewish person. You cannot tell that a person is Jewish from across the street. In other words, Whoopie Goldberg an example that you mentioned, Whoopy Goldberg is a Jewish woman, but you would not know that unless she said it to you, or unless

you observed her worshiping or partaking in Jewish customs. But you do know full well to sheose a black woman, and that visual in many instances where she lacks power, will elicit and approach to her or a response to her, some of which could conceivably be negative, and those of us in the no refer to that as racism, and so anti semitism. Again, my listeners may make this connection,

and I'm asking for clarification from you. Anti Semitism is something that is not by from that vantage point, not as.

beaten because they were visually Jewish, so not that. Yeah, so I agree there's a difference, but there's also similarity to.

on and on. You you realize the list. And when we do our peek, you do not have the Sikhs on.

But I recognize that there is a deep rooted history between Muslims and Jewish people that exists long before this chapter in American history, and in fact, I believe the origin might have been in the Middle East somewhere, and perhaps there's still some fighting going on there. I mostly focus on American issues relative to black people, so I

wouldn't profess to know much about Middle East policy. However, do you believe that the connection between Blacks and Jews is made through the nation of Islam and originates in the Middle East? In other words, there's there's some lineage there. No, okay, so explain.

move on to our way, Black History Fact. And so today's way Black History Fact is as always sponsored by the Black Information Network Daily Podcast, and we are going to be talking about a long history American Jews and the NAACP. This writing comes from Rabbi Lance J. Sussman, PhD. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or the NAACP and American Jews have a long shared history.

The anti Semitic posting by Minister Rodney Muhammad, head of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP, has thrown relations between American Jews and African Americans and the NAACP into disarray. First, and unequivocally, Minister Mohammed, Well, this is his asking. He needs to resign his invoking of anti Semitic Nazi meme. It was inexcusable and betrays the mission and goals of

the NAACP. I would tend to agree with that in my opinion, the NAACP at the national level needs to secure this resignation and move any doubt as to their organization's philosophy moving forward. Second, the NAACP needs who affirm

its historic mandate of fighting all forms of bigotry and discrimination. Again, I agree with that the mission of the NAACP, in their own words is to quote secure the political, educational, social, economic equality of rights in order to eliminate race based discrimination and ensure the health and well being of all persons. The American Jewish NAACP cooperation must continue and maintain its

extraordinary legacy of dialogue and I love that art all right. Fourth, the Philadelphia Jewish community needs to recognize the size and strength and continue and growth of our local African American Muslim community, the largest in the United States, and work

to build bridges between us them and others. I think it's important to keep the current controversy and historical perspective, as there are forces in both communities which want to break down the historic ties between American Jews and African Americans and empower anti integrationists and anti a cultural and a culture. How would I say a culture, a cultural, a culturistionist ideas. I believe that's all I said. Forgive

me on both sides of the debate. That would be a mistake, that would be a tragedy for Americans, Blacks, Jews, and American itself. At the same time, we need to appreciate there are difference, differences and tensions between Jews and Blacks and the United States, and at the same time, we can and must work together for the benefit of our country. All right, here we go. The NAACP was founded in nineteen oh nine in reaction to a terrible

race riot the year before in Springfield, Illinois. Among the original founders of the NAACP were Henry Moskowitz and a Romanian Jew who worked as the executive director of the Broadway League in New York. Moskowitz was joined in support of the NAACP by Rabbi Emil Hirsch, son of Keys Rabbi the late Samuel Hirsch, Julius Rosenwald, father of Keyes Lessing Rosenwald Jacob Schiff, was the leading Jewish philanthropist of the Progressive era and the well respected spring Arm family

to this day. The spring Arn Medal is one of the highest awards given by the NAACP to those who best exemplify its goals and values. The young Rabbi Stephen Wise, a leading voice of American Zionism prior to World War Two, supported the NAACP and via W. E. E. D. Boyd the Niagara Movement. Lillian Ward of Settlement House fame also

supported the newly founded NAACP. But perhaps the most fruitful collaboration between the American Jewish community, and in particular the reform movement in Judaism and the NAACP, took place in

the early nineteen sixties. In nineteen sixty two, the Union for American Hebrew Congregations UAHC now the Union for Reform Judaism RJ, purchased the old Ecuadorian Embassy at twenty twenty seven Massachusetts Avenue in Washington, d C. Northwest and launched its Religious Action Center there nineteen sixty four, with reform NAACP leaders and others huddled around the table. The historic

Civil Rights Act was written. The following year, the same coalition produced the Voting Acts Right, the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five, which was guided by the Supreme Court in twenty thirteen. In other words, the most progressive social and civil legislation in American history was born of NAACP dh American Jewish cooperation. It is important to note that the seed money for the rac was given by a reformed jew, Kiv Kaplan, who passed in nineteen seventy five.

The s gift was given in nineteen fifty five. Caplan, a Bostonian, joined the NAACP at nineteen thirty two at the age of twenty eight, was elected to its national board in nineteen fifty four, and from nineteen sixty five to nineteen eighty five served as president of the NAACP. He marched and was jailed with doctor Martin Luther King Junior on many occasions, including the Edmund Pettis Bridge crossing in Selma, Alabama. Curiously, on the back of his business card,

Kaplan always had the words keep smiling printed. There is a saying to the effect that things were never as good between blacks and Jews as Jewish liberals would have it, nor were they as bad as Black nationalists alleged tensions between American Jews and American Blacks are nothing new. As a child, again, this is Rabbi Lance J. Sussimon's words. As a child, I heard endless coded comments about blacks and was aware that Jews were paradoxically part of the

white flight movement, just as they were largely pro civil rights. Later, I learned that Doctor King Representative, Doctor King, Representative John Lewis and other African American leaders were hard pressed by Black nationalists for their integrationist views. But these tensions are secondary to the need for cooperation in pursuit of civil

equality in the United States. Hopefully, at these difficult times, American Jews and leaders of the NAACP will remember our joint heritage, our larger common purpose, and together with Kybe Kaplan and others, will find a way back to marching and smiling together. And it's signed Shabat Shalon Shaloon Rabbi Lance J. Sussimon, PhD. So we're almost done, But any thoughts on today's way black history fact from you, Amy.

relationship with the Anti Defamation League. And so our hope is that you know that there are some repairs that can take place in the Jewish community as well as some repairs that take place in the Black community amongst ourselves, and you know, hopefully we'll continue to have conversations like this and move the narrative forward. How about that?

next week y'all. Peace peace, y'all, y yo.