In a recent opinion piece in the Daily News, Alexis Grenell attempts to blame white supremacy and racist violence on Minister Louis Farrakhan…..
Ya know…
I’m just a little over it when it comes to ways in which some Jewish people overstep a very necessary boundary that a lot of Black people are afraid to enforce and really need to start enforcing. That Jewish folks, especially in the United States just NEED to keep on classifying themselves in public discourse and personal interaction as being non-white. As a person whose entire social context is predicated on being “othered” because of being non-white… when you all insist on emphasizing that, I must say, it’s VERY insulting. And off-putting. And I wish more Jewish people were careful about that. But it’s allowed to happen without a lot of criticism.
To be clear, none of you follow Farrakhan. Not one. Farrakhan is a speaker to and of and in the Black community. He is never talking to anybody but Black people. So when you step in the middle of his conversation, you are stepping in the middle of OUR conversation. Stepping in the middle of our conversation means that you need to give credence to our social contexts and to what our living conditions and realities are that contribute to then, how we speak to and between and with one another. And keep in mind that nobody asked anybody to do this.
That being said, let me be a translator for you since he seems to undoubtedly be speaking a language that nobody else understands.
The experience in the Black community for the last however long in terms of being taken advantage of by folks in our own communities has not been the brightest in terms of interactions and business with Jewish people. And it mostly involves housing. Which is a basic human necessity; shelter.
It should also be noted that things that I have only ever either seen in documentary of Black folk trying to create and then being shot and bombed to hell, or sat in on plenary meetings for Black folk to create and it still remaining a myth, like our own healthcare and ambulatory care, emergency community response teams, community security forces, etc, Jewish people have in their communities in plain view. To whatever degree, Black folks can’t do those things. But Jewish folks are allowed to. Black folks remain the face of welfare and what people consider the moocher class, but when rings of folks taking advantage of social services were busted recently (in NY I think) they were whole ass families of Jewish people. But WE are the undeserving poor. WE are the reasons why legislature is pushed for mandatory drug testing to receive benefits.
But when it’s convenient for you, you can just pick Farrakhan and cherry pick the stuff without context and move on.
Farrakhan in his speech tends to be concerned with outside forces taking advantage of and manipulating our people. Black people.
No it is not the same rhetoric that ends up with bombs being thrown, woman, because that bomber and no other bomber has ever listened to Farrakhan. Latif Jackson and Born Allah Justice ain’t bombing nobody. He’s going right back out to the block where he was to start with and likely lives in some unfortunate low income housing that might likely be rented to his family in subpar conditions by some Jewish folks, who live way somefreakinwhere else.
And you might be a Jewish person who means well and gods bless you but that does nothing for the rest of the circumstances and interactions with Jewish folks in our own neighborhoods that Black people tend to have. And sure, there’s a history of some Jewish folks working with Black folks for social justice causes (because I just know that somebody wants to bring that up) but that does nothing for those other predatory relationships.
Mind you. I am not a fan of Farrakhan. He killed Malcolm or had something to do with it, in my mind… and when convenient he panders to white-ish Arab folks and misses the mark in criticism of them in our communities, so…. whatever…
But… It’s just so odd, how white people just keep on bringing him up. He’s supposedly a leader to Black people and even WE don’t talk about him as much as left leaning white ppl do. And they only ever do in order to talk about how they need to denounce him. But I’m confused as to when they ever picked him up to start with lmao…. sounds like they need somebody to blame their own “isms” on and to say, “oh it’s that n*gga over there, we’re righteous folks.” As if all your hands are clean in terms of helping inequality and prejudice continue, or at the very least doing nothing AS it continues until it impacts you directly.
THAT is what matters.
If there is discourse and language in this society that you wish to change, I assure you, Farrakhan is not the beginning or end of it. And when there are times of violence against Jewish people, please refrain from making Black people any sort of mule to carry any sort of burden in order to make your point, especially with regard to white supremacy. Because from where some Black people sit, Jewish people in our own communities perpetuate white supremacy.