Victimization Without Being Enslaved

“Ok, im white but i dont hate black people, i LOVE black people. Anyway, is it alright for me to feel like a victim, even though i haven’t been enslaved, part of my family are Jewish.” – cantthinkofname

Thanks for the feedback cantthinkofname,

But before I answer your question, I have a few questions for you. Why would it be okay for Jewish people to feel like victims when it is the black community that is the one currently being victimized by racial prejudices? Are feelings of Jewish victimization still valid because of what happened in another country over a half century ago? What reason do people of Jewish heritage have to continue to feel like victims? Are Nazis still somehow subjecting the Jewish people to unfair treatment? Do you feel enslavement is the only prerequisite for someone being a victim? Should a woman who has been raped feel like a victim even though she has never been enslaved? Should the family of a man murdered feel like victims even though none of the family members has ever been enslaved?

When was the last time you ever heard of a Jewish teenager being clubbed to death by seven boot camp guards? When was the last time you heard of a Jewish teenage girl being punched in the face by a police officer for breaking curfew? When was the last time you heard of a seventeen year old Jewish male getting a ten year prison sentence and convicted of being a pedophile for engaging in consensual sex with a fifteen year old girl? When was the last time we saw an unarmed Jewish man shot dozens of times over for walking down a street with a bag of groceries and pulling out his wallet to identify himself? When was the last time we saw a Jewish man go to jail and had police officers ram a broken broom handle up his ass? When was the last time an American institution such as the American Medical Association admitted that they had a history of keeping Jewish individuals from becoming doctors? I think the answer is never. So why would someone of Jewish ancestry feel like a victim today?

How many black organizations have the political clout of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), an organization whose primary concern is the interest of Israel and doesn’t even come close to having the welfare of the American people at heart? This non-American Jewish organization has a great deal of influence in the happenings of the American federal government. The Jewish community has people, programs, and organizations devoted to assuring that the Jewish state, as well as the Jewish community, flourishes and does well and has its central interest protected. It is nothing for any presidential candidate, even a black one, to announce his or her allegiance to the Jewish community and the people of Israel.

However, the black politician is careful not to appear too black for fear of appearing too sensitive to the issues that the black community faces. It is better for the black politician to appear ignorant of the conditions of the black community and tell black people to get black men to take more responsibility for the results in the black community born out of racial prejudices to keep black people’s ability to obtain education, employment, housing, and etcetera, severely limited rather than acknowledge the racial preferences that continue to hold black people at a disadvantage.

It is nothing to hear someone say that people in the black community need to pick themselves up by our individual boot straps. It is nothing to hear someone say that no one owes people in the black community anything. Black people need to learn to do for themselves. The black community will be stronger if somehow black people learn to create their individual jobs and individual educational opportunities. Black people are encouraged to separate themselves from the black community and embrace the racially generic dominant culture that is somehow overwhelmingly represented by white values. This is what we tell our own citizens.

But what politician is willing to go to the podium and tell Israel to take more responsibility for its own endeavors? What politician is willing to tell these non American citizens that we don’t owe you a god damn thing? The politicians of this country are willing to go on record and tell people half way around the world that the people of America will support you and America will protect you and will use a variety of euphemisms to express American devotion and affiliation and a sense of community while at the same time we tell our black brothers and sisters America owes you nothing. Why would anybody with Jewish ancestry feel like a victim in this environment?

To answer your question, I don’t think it is right for anybody to claim that they are a victim based solely on what happened to their ancestors or elders or anyone else. However, if the social environment that led to the subjugation of a people in the past is still practiced today, it should not be too difficult to understand that the same classification of people who were victimized in the past are the same classification being victimized today.

Despite any professions of love for anybody in the black community, some people have a tendency to think racial discrimination only comes in the form of institutionalized enslavement that may have happened a long time ago. Such overhanded and blatant racial prejudices practiced by the dominant community in the past against black people are all over now. However, now that we can rely on racial propaganda to easily explain away manifestations of blatant racism as the lack of personal responsibility in the black community, it is so much easier to tolerate racial intolerance no matter how much we may claim to love black people. We tell ourselves that the black people we love so much have never been enslaved so they can never make a valid claim to being victims of racial prejudice and make our own contribution to the perpetual state of racial disparity.