People Created Racism. People Must Fix It.
It is past time to rid ourselves as a nation of this bigotry
I live in Burlington, NC, which is part of the Piedmont Triad an area in NC known for its rich musical history. Since moving here in 2018, whenever I get the chance I love playing live music in front of an audience. Over the years I have definitely gotten better at performing.
In case you are wondering my style of music is Americana or Roots music and for me that means a blend of Blues, Country, Folk and Bluegrass. A few weeks ago I discovered a song by the late great Big Bill Broonzy containing his famous lyrics "if you're white, you're alright. If you're brown, stick around but if you're Black, oh brother get back, get back, get back"
Around this same time I tweeted:
At least one person took this to mean that the Orthodox world was doing something right to which I explained that I am not Orthodox and can’t speak to that experience so I tagged a couple of Black Orthodox rabbis and got this response from my friend
We have made progress, there are a number of rabbis of color serving as pulpit rabbis but no Black rabbis and my hope is that one day our society and our Jewish communities will rid themselves of the racism and bigotry that infects our entire society including our Jewish communities.
In the United States, we sometimes struggle to see the humanity of the stranger or the other. When we open our hearts, listen to each other, we may finally free ourselves from the bigotry that infects our entire society and remember love. Love is in the Divine Spark that created the Torah and teaches us that any society we make must be grounded in kindness, justice, and fairness for all.
The Torah created an entire system based on these values. A society where we can live in communities with a sense of security and know that we will be treated fairly, honestly and equally. Even though the Torah instructs us to make a society based on justice, kindness, and fairness for all, we continue to miss the mark because we live in a society that, from its inception, was built on the idea of privileging one group over others.
For Black and brown folks, this often means that racism plays out in our lived experiences in our society. Racism is part of our society created by people, and people must fix it. Fixing racism is not impossible. It means we have to work physically and emotionally to recognize when racism shows up in our lives and do our part to dismantle the racist system we inherited in our society, which many benefit from.
As citizens, we all suffer from the ills of racism of course, differently, but we are all affected. We are all affected because we are citizens of the United States, a country built on land that was stolen from indigenous people and bodies trafficked from Africa. This created wealth for some and a racial hierarchy with whiteness at the top.
When discussing racism, many of us operate under different definitions of what that word means. I have learned that for many white people in America, calling something or saying someone is racist is possibly the worst word one can use. For many white people, racism is not a lived experience, as it is for Black and brown people in the United States. When many white people think of racism, they often hold up some of the worst examples in our history, such as the Klu Klux Klan, American slavery, Jim Crow, and lynchings. Focusing on those definitions of racism keeps many white people from identifying racism when it is happening around them or when they are perpetuating it. It also keeps many white people from understanding that racism has evolved and adapted to the 21st century.
The racism that Black and brown people experience in our society looks vastly different from the racism my grandparents experienced, and yes, it is still racism. Hyper focusing on the worst examples of racism in our history causes many white Americans to believe that they have never witnessed racist behavior. This also led many white Americans to wrongly assume that the election of the first Black president, Barak Obama, meant that racism in America was over.
When I travel to different communities, I still hear people say things like I don't see color. This is a ridiculous statement because we do see someone's skin color, and from there, we try to decipher their race. Study after study continues to show that we react differently and treat others differently because of race. In our society, if one attempts to have a colorblind mentality toward race, how will they recognize racism when it is happening right in front of them? And if one does not see skin color, how will they ever begin to know the racism Black and brown people experience in our society?
When we remember the value laid out in the Torah of justice, fairness and kindness for all, we can begin the hard work to dismantle and eliminate structures of oppression, such as racism, wherever it appears. People created racism, and people must fix it.
A healing prayer for our society