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Untangling the images that shape our thinking  This essay uses the backdrop of comics and superheroes to highlight how we our unconscious bias has been form through childhood images. When people took to the internet to criticize the new Black Batwoman, it reminded me how we had green superheroes and a dog before we had a popular Black superhero. This essay explores how that harmed us and provides us tools to undo that impact.
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We won’t achieve true justice for anyone until Jews are included in social justice  There’s this bizarre bias, especially among the social justice left, that Jews live in their own post-racial world. Where their ethnicity and identity aren’t worth our protective efforts. Where the Jewish experience is no different than the white experience.
Forget that white Jews are just 70 years from their slaughter where they weren't white enough or that they endure more hate crimes than any other religious group despite being only 2% of the U.S. population. Half of the world's Jews and 60-65% of Israeli Jews aren't white anyway. They are Jews of color. This essay explores Jewish identity and why it's time to literally stop whitewashing Jewish identity. Mark Twain once said that travel is the cure to racism  Travel is one of my favorite things in the world. On a deeper level, it allows us the opportunity to meet and get to know people who are not the same as us. The unintentional result is that we get to undo ingrained unconscious bias we have towards others.
This essay uses my 2021 visit to Istanbul to highlight the idea of ending racial and ethnic distancing to eradicate our deep biases. A reflective commentary poem  Wearing a mask
Quarantining in your home for 14 days Having a post removed on Facebook Someone from the other party winning an election Getting blocked by a follower on Instagram Eating meat Vaccine Passports Abortion Background checks at gun shows Taking a COVID test before entering an event High gas prices Obamacare Critical Race Theory The Insurrection at the Capitol Deporting people who enter the U.S. illegally Texas’ new abortion law Magazine clip restrictions Anything that’s not the Holocaust Blacks and Jews once modeled a path to end racial distancing  To escape the horrific racism and systemic oppression in the South, beginning in 1916, millions of southern Blacks migrated north and west to places like Chicago, East St. Louis, Compton, Oakland and Baltimore. And to Harlem, which at the time was home to a sizable Yiddish-speaking Jewish community, also trying to make their own way in a still challenging America. Blacks and Jews were each other’s neighbors, customers, and employers.
One result of that was Black men and women becoming Jewish cantors. Cantors lead the Hebrew (and back then Yiddish) prayer songs on the Sabbath and Jewish holidays. This odd entry into Jewish religious life presented an opportunity for Jews and Blacks to get to know each other and end what I call racial and ethnic distancing. This essay explores that fascinating time in our history. |
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