DON’T FALL FOR CYNICAL ATTEMPTS TO DIVIDE THE JEWISH AND BLACK COMMUNITIES: The Only Group That Wins When That Happens Is the Far Right
By: Sharon Levin
Tags: Democrats, Republicans, Anti Semitism, African American, Jewish

DON’T FALL FOR CYNICAL ATTEMPTS TO DIVIDE THE JEWISH AND BLACK COMMUNITIES: The Only Group That Wins When That Happens Is the Far Right Sharon Levin Feb 12, 2019·3 min read

Before I start this essay, I’m going to ask you to remember who the real enemy is.

Need a reminder? Watch this video:

Thanks. Here goes.

Reading the newspapers over the last six months or so, they seem to be promoting a storyline of increasing conflict between the Jewish and African-American communities. And, as people have posted/commented/argued about it, more and more attention has been focused on this issue.

The problem is, when we participate in this manipulated debate, we are letting our real enemies off the hook. Go back and watch the video again. Then, let’s have a conversation about what’s actually happening in America today.

Hate is ascendant in many parts of our country. This is in large part because — thanks to the support of white supremacists — the Republican party as led by Donald Trump has fanned the flames of racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, islamophobia and about every other kind of hate you can think of.

These people are in power. They are in the White House. They are in Congress. They are on the Courts.

And I say to everyone in the Jewish and African-American communities: You have to remember the white supremacists hate us all.

I’m not naive. I know that that there are Jewish people who are racists. There are African-Americans who are anti-Semitic. And that isn’t right. But while we are arguing over these isolated events, the hate groups are taking over the country. We must see the forest for the trees.

EVEN IF THE ONLY THING THAT THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN AND JEWISH COMMUNITIES HAD IN COMMON WAS THAT THE FAR RIGHT HATES US AND IS IN POWER, THAT ALONE SHOULD BE ENOUGH FOR US TO COME TOGETHER TO FIGHT THEM.

And that is exactly what the hate mongers fear. So, they need us to keep fighting each other. They know that the busier we are arguing, the less we are paying attention to them.

And this year they’ve doubled down on this strategy and are focusing even more time on fomenting the divisions between our two communities.

Last week at the State of the Union, Trump — the same man who said very fine people marched in Charlottesville yelling “Jews will not replace us” — decried anti-Semitism. This week, the Republican party focused on a tweet by Representative Ilhan Omar, a new Member of Congress who is a Black Muslim woman, that, unfortunately, included a long-used stereotype about Jewish people.

Think about this for a second. They want us to be more upset that one of the most junior members of the House sent out a tweet (that she has apologized for and that have been decried by the Democratic leadership), than we are that the most powerful person in our country was OK with Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. (The Washington Post just ran a very good article on Republican hypocrisy on this topic.)

DON’T FALL FOR IT.

The Jewish and African-American communities MUST work together to defeat hate. We’ve done it before. Throughout the second half of the 20th Century we worked together (along with other communities of color, minority religions and so many others) to create one of the greatest legal revolutions in history. Laws that supported racism, religious intolerance and sexism were overturned and replaced by new laws that created legal barriers to discrimination.

Of course, these steps forward didn’t solve the problems of racism, anti-Semitism and prejudice. There is still so much work left to do.

Together, we can achieve other successes in promoting tolerance and acceptance.

For instance, we could vote those who support the hate groups out of office.

But to do this, we can’t be distracted by the far right’s attempts to divide us.

If we are, they will win.

And then we all lose.