Ep 75: Whoopi Goldberg, the Oppression Scale, and the Emotional Thermometer

In this edited version of a Facebook live that April recorded after Whoopi Goldberg’s comments and the controversy that followed, April digs deep into her analysis of the reactions many in the Jewish community expressed. Internalized terror and persisting unhealed trauma–elicited by the Holocaust and centuries of persecution–among white Ashkenazi Jews has caused an understandable misalignment between those folks’ emotional thermometer and the actual thread of danger on the oppression scale. Despite the elevated blood pressures the situation has caused, it seems clear to April that compassion (for ourselves and others!), healing, and solidarity across lines of difference will lead us toward the future we want. 

Trigger Warning: This episode is not for you in this moment if as a result of this controversy, you are feeling terror or are in a panic mode.

Check out our discussion/reflection questions for this episode:  https://joyousjustice.com/blog/jews-talk-racial-justice-ep-75

Watch the original conversation from “The View” that stirred this controversy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhITfM4bqO8

Watch the full, unedited Facebook Live video:  https://www.facebook.com/1706639/videos/4889145714509771/

Learn more about Brené Brown and her book “Braving the Wilderness”: https://brenebrown.com/book/braving-the-wilderness/

Find our more about Annie-Rose London and their work: https://www.annieroselondon.com/

April mentions her Cherokee, Chickasaw, and Choctaw heritage. Find out whose land you reside on here:  https://native-land.ca/

Learn more about Joy DeGruy and her work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy_DeGruy

Read more about Dr. Lewis Gordon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Gordon

Learn more about rapper Mos Def: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mos_Def

Listen to Aly Halpert’s song “Loosen Loosen”:  https://soundcloud.com/aly-halpert/loosen-loosen

Find April and Tracie's full bios and submit topic suggestions for the show at www.JewsTalkRacialJustice.com

Send us a question, idea, insight, or thought: https://joyousjustice.com/jews-talk-racial-justice-questions

Learn more about Joyous Justice where April is the founding and fabulous (!) director, and Tracie is a senior partner: https://joyousjustice.com/

Support the work our Jewish Black & Native woman-led vision for collective liberation here: https://joyousjustice.com/support-our-work

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Transcript

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This week, instead of our usual conversation, we're sharing the content of a talk April did last week, using the vehicle of a Facebook Live. April responded to the controversy and conversation around Whoopi Goldberg's comments about the Holocaust on the television show, the view, April's intersectional identities, and her sharp analysis make her uniquely poised to put words context and perspective to reactions many in the Jewish community were experiencing. But few were fully understanding. This is Jews talk racial justice with April and Tracie, a weekly show hosted by April Baskin and Tracie Guy-Decker. in a complex world change takes courage, wholehearted relationships can keep us accountable. So I'm not going to talk a lot about this, but I want to start and I have several starts. Hashtag ADHD, but um cancel culture is not bigger than us. It is us. And or at least, we animate it. And it is within our power over time to find ways of meeting very real and important needs, and often chronically, historically, unmet needs and supporting each other. So that once those needs are met, we don't find other routes from a place of sincerity but other routes as in like pathways that aren't healthy, and they can also harm and hurt other people. This is like multiple feces, around histories of black trauma, around histories of Jewish trauma around how to think about trauma informed justice work about how to integrate multiple needs, and what it looks like about how oppression operates and some of these things we're going to get into but in typical how my brain works fashion, I forgot what I was starting there. So if there was something I was supposed to be finishing Guess I'll come back to them comments are in another video, I wanted to start out by sharing a quote from one of my favorite books that is by Brene Brown. And I think this is in multiple books, but she wrote this book that I think a lot of people read but isn't as popular but I love it feels like my life called braving the wilderness. Alright, so some of you might recognize this, but it was helpful for me to reread this morning. Because this is an orientation that I think could be helpful for a lot of us right now. Strong back, soft front Wildheart. This is a quote from Roshi, Joan Halifax, quote, All too often, our so called strength comes from fear, not love. Instead of having a strong back, many of us have a defended front, shielding a weak spine. In other words, we walk around brittle and defensive, trying to conceal our lack of confidence. If we strengthen our backs, metaphorically speaking, and develop a spine that's flexible, but sturdy, then we can risk having a front that is soft and open. How can we give and accept care? How can we give an accept care with strong back, soft front compassion, moving past fear into a place of genuine tenderness. I believe it comes about when we can truly be transparent, seeing the world clearly and letting the world see into us. I've been spending years developing different social justice and mysticism strategies that I am applying in this instance. As I mentioned before, there are many things I could say. And I'm being incredibly intentional, and went through a tremendous analysis amount of analysis and review this morning and thinking and I put things in different categories and buckets of work for later down the road. Once joyous, Justice has more infrastructure and and support and is has is further along in our really exciting, fantastic developmental journey. Then there are the things you know that we want to fund and resource and or get support around resourcing. And then there's the more shorter term things that are somewhere in between, then there's I would love for it to be now and or in the future. There's some specific conversations that I will only have with specific communities because the thing is that I need to share. Nothing ever justifies racism or anti Jewish oppression. But racists and bigots leverage that against our communities. So I want to be thoughtful in some of the things I share and, and restrict it to say what I think is only absolutely necessary seeds to plant at this time. Okay. So so yeah, so this is not all of my analysis, this is not all that to say this is not thorough and complete. This is me lifting up things that I think are especially helpful and useful right now. And what I would encourage all of you to do it to is to try to integrate as many as you can, and if some of them feel like a stretch, just take on the ones that you have within reach right now. Okay. All right, you're ready to do this now. Okay. I continue to see that. A lack of trauma informed analysis is part of what allows these convergence moments to have so many problematic elements that with time and deeper learning and analysis are avoidable in the future. And here's my take, and I'm reluctant to share this, but I gave a caveat at the beginning. So if you didn't hear that I gave a caveat that if you are in a tender place, don't listen to this right now. Okay, I'll be this video will be here when you're ready to hear it. Okay. So, as someone who is a black and Cherokee, Ashkenazi Jew, I, myself have a lot of sensitivity around how the Holocaust, how the Shoah is discussed and in what ways and by whom. And also as a black and Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, to Ashkenazi Jew, I, who has done a lot of healing work, which I'm going to talk a little bit more about later. I've also been on the lookout for different opportunities for ally ship and how we reframe how we move through and heal the trauma that happened a couple of weeks ago in Texas, and are able to unhealthy, understandable way start to move in the direction of courage, and deep into purpose, and solidarity. Okay. Here's my read and I'm gonna explain this more. So something you're like, ooh, stay within when to go through my analysis and talk about several things and unpack them and some of it will be new and some of them won't be okay. And I'm also endeavoring to say things that I noticed lots of people in the Jewish community across identity, but also specifically my white Ashkenazi Jews, it seems to be outside of their purview at this moment. As someone with my oppression analysis, and protection of Jews and protection of black people and protection of people who are targeted by oppression as I watched the initially watched, will be his interview with Kobe, and then I watched the original clip, here is my overall take, and I think what is important here is less about the specifics. Right now and more about broader trends and how and how the experience and how those specifics hurt us. And and reminded us of many times we've been alone. Okay. Is as I watched, we'll be talking about this. I heard her fully backing the distribution of mouse and To Kill a Mockingbird. And speaking as a an ally, unequivocably to white Ashkenazi Jews. Hashtag Ask normativity because so far Diem is Rafi Jews are also targeted by racism and racism and discrimination. So actually, like I thought her comment was actually incredibly Ashkan normative in the numbers she cited that she didn't include the broader numbers of everyone who was killed in the Holocaust. And I saw her from a different cultural vantage point than most white Ashkenazi Jews entirely, unequivocally, endeavouring, and mostly leveraging her power to amplify solidarity for Jews. And I think that was really primarily one thing, there was like one or two points that were not accurate, that weren't accurate. And my thought about that was like, Oh, that needs to be corrected. But this is fantastic. That will be is using her incredible platform, with the access, she has to literally 10s of millions of people to stand in solidarity and talk about this, and not only talk about this, and this is starting to get into some academic and diversity training, nuance and greater depths here. And, and and then she used language that has been used with their books published in this the What's it the inhumanity of man, and to me that was sort of a dated or an elder way of talking about dehumanization, which is something that lots of Jews also discuss. And I did not see her I saw her speak explicitly name far more so than lots of white people do. She named the Holocaust. She named the harm and damage in some way. I mean, to me, I felt like that was alluded to I don't want to get into the specifics here, right. But I saw her speaking to that. And then also saying, to me, what I heard in what she said, from a place of less racial bias. And a place of having spent years doing intentional healing work around my internalized terror and trauma around anti Jewish oppression and racialized terror that I've experienced in my lifetime. And that has shifted the trajectories of people in my immediate and extended family of their lives. Not just from a place of fear, but from actual concrete. Right. So I saw her endeavoring to say, this is a collected issue. This is something that is not just of interest to Jews, which he already named, directly targeted Jews. This is something that is a concern about dehumanization of people. And this is something that we all need to care about. And we might not all like how she did it. To me, a lot of it had different cultural elements that I'm familiar with in the context of a lot of extensive time and love and sharing expense in the black community, just as I have in the Jewish community. And then there was a specific point about race, that there's more I could get into as someone who has a degree in sociology, where I see lots of people tossing around different sociological terms, and mostly using them and accurately. And, and people saying, you know, she said, Jews aren't a race, I'm like, well, Jews are not a race, we are a people. We are a multiracial, multicultural people with many races. And I'm kind of going there a little bit. So and, to me, there's something here that ties back to the bigger core theme I want to talk about around healing, which is one of the core pieces that's going to start to shift to this. And for everyone from different vantage points, is I see everywhere, all over points of inter cross cultural, inter communal conflict. Often, if you look at it, I invite you to look at the anatomy of many conversations. And often the subtext is people are saying at times, my people suffering is not being heard. And so I am advocating for that to be heard. And I'm often not intentionally sometimes intentionally, using an either or framework, I'm going to undercut you, rather than honoring your pain and noticing that by honoring your pain in this moment in the future that will allow space for you to also be able to honor mine, and also, hopefully stop this crabs in a barrel sort of thing and look up and say, Why are our institution? Why is it so that we live in a country where all of these forms of collective trauma have not been adequately addressed? And how do we think together to shift that? Okay, so, so that is my take of around what occurred is that, I think, will be Goldberg was and like, as a Jew, like there was a part of it that I winced a little where I was like, Ooh, that's not accurate. But now might be a natural time for me to talk about one of the core points that I want to drive home here, which is that and I'm going to start to shift into my conversation with the Jewish community, specifically with members of the Jewish community, and this is not the full conversation. There's a lot more to say And to share that I have discussed in trainings and groups and listening sessions behind closed doors and private, where we are safe. When we are safe to fully share what we think and feel as much as we are comfortable, and to know that we are supported, and it won't come back to hurt us, because that is vital for any deep internal work around both releasing internalized oppression, the ways that we have been ways we've internalized our oppression and also the ways we've internalized oppressor patterns, which is something that every group of people, particularly especially has been targeted by oppression needs to do. This is work that I've seen done beautifully in different liberatory communities around black liberation, as well as Jewish liberation. But it's not something that is more pervasive and as more as widespread as I think it needs to be given the magnitude of millennia of being targeted for destruction and murder that Jews have faced. And so that's the piece that I think often at times, and so that's what so I think that was part of what was among a number of things triggered for what Ashkenazi Jews and what will be said is that I don't think this is at the level of consciousness, I think it was just happening is that she didn't know to acknowledge just how deep the lingering wounds are, from especially for Ashkenazi for white Ashkenazi Jews around having millennia and hundreds of years and recently an attempted genocide that killed millions of us. And as to quote professor, joi de grew, it wasn't like after that happened, a group of social workers and psychiatrists, and healers and Jewish earth based healers and healers of all kinds to all kinds came in and said, Wow, that was really horrific. You have sustained a tremendous amount of trauma that you will carry on to your kids and your communities, understandably, unless you get healing. And, as was true, and in under different circumstances, for black people, that did not happen, it was like, Yay, we saved you. Like kind of like, Yay, slavery is over. Except not really. Yay, we see you except not really, we haven't actually dealt with the root cause of this. You're welcome. Yay, look at us. We're so gray and like, you're fine. Right? You're You're fine. Right? Right. Like they almost like killed off. You know, I don't want to speak lightly here cuz I don't want to, you know, but like, we just you were just targeted for destruction. But it's all good, right? So all of that doesn't just disappear. When Rupes of people experience trauma. There are debates about epigenetically, whether it's in our genes, but certainly at least in alignment with social learning theory that is carried from generation to generation until there is healing. I also think in certain cases, that there's a specific phenomenon that I am sure, even though I haven't seen it that some psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatrist, some social scientist has written about that I've seen this play out around survivors around the children and grandchildren of Shoah of Holocaust survivors. And I also see this in myself with my father. Where I've noticed, and I won't say a lot about this, but I think this is like a thing too, for us to look into. And I trust some social scientist has already thought about this is that I noticed for me, that there are some horrible things my black and native father has endured. And one of them involves police brutality, and I remember once I'll just share a scene to depict it. My dad invited me to go on a motorcycle ride, longer story, my dad's a safety nut. So maybe watch two videos twice and quiz me on it before we went. And so they were riding on his Harley and he took me on the scenic route was really beautiful. We're having a great time. We crossed the American River Bridge in Folsom, my hometown, and we've stopped at a light and there was a good emotional just thinking about it still, oh, I still have more work to do some more healing to do. And it's not my fault. I just, there's still more space I can free up at myself. And there was a police car of the department. Whose officers put my dad in the ER When I was 12, around 12. And I stopped breathing, I was petrified. But then I had this real moment and then eventually started to relax when I noticed that my dad, who was the person who was actually targeted, it's totally fine. I think like, it was like he didn't even notice them. And so I also want to point out for us, in addition to intergenerational trauma that is unhealed and that we are carrying. And I'm talking about different peoples who are parts of groups that have been targeted, and also families that have dysfunction, that is trauma really, you know, that has induced trauma intergenerationally. But specifically for members of groups that have been targeted for oppression and or destruction in various ways, whether through enslavement or genocide, internment camps, Cetera, right, violence, is that. And I see this in my own life, as opposed to some of my friends who I, to my knowledge around certain things have an experience, experienced the level of trauma I have, and their fear about that trauma, or when they are certain people who know me, they're suffering in certain ways, is greater than my own. And so that's another way that this gets even bigger, even bigger. Right. And this trauma informed approach is a source and a reason, in my book, for immense compassion. For a lot of us, certainly for Jews, and white Ashkenazi Jews. And to be very clear, this is not either or it doesn't explain away certain bad behaviors or ways that we are hurt. But what I will say is that as I've continued on my own healing journey, and engage in a different rigorous, consistent practices for nearly 10 years, that is a core reason why I continue to remain loyal and dedicated to helping my white Ashkenazi Jewish people, along with all amazing Jews of color, and black people and Native people, all the peoples I'm a part of, through all of their brilliance, and all of their challenges, and all of their pain, and all of their non ideal actions that not all the time, but much of the time in some way, are tied to unhealed pain, that they haven't gotten enough resource around and need it. And when they take that time, some of those other challenges start to resolve themselves when they have a chance to heal in different interpersonal and communal forms. So now finally, I want to share some top level reflections here, okay. And I'm might be missing something. There's a lot here. As someone who is sitting at the intersection of these issues, it is quite intense for me. In these situations, I see two things getting completed emotional pain, and oppression analysis and assessment of danger. And these two things get conflated. And I notice that for our community, I didn't think it was always this way. I don't think it was this way in earlier generations, like around the time of my favorite of Abraham Joshua Heschel among others, that it's getting more to it because I think they were raised in a time when really Jews were explicitly not white and were targeted by violence. But I want to stay focused on the noun. So for the deeper masterclasses, okay, so and the first part is to say that there is an emotional scale, let's make it one to 10 or 100, or any number you want, and anything that's happening in the realm of oppression or things that are hurtful or concerning, based upon your family's experience of trauma, your own life, what you haven't haven't been through just in general, what you've gotten support around what you haven't what stressors you have in your life, it can legitimately set you off and take you and this is people, all people, right anything, anything which I see on the oppression and there's the oppression scale. So emotional times emotional thermometer versus oppression scale. So on the oppression scale, which I think of as like one to 10 one being, which is where I place Whoopi Goldberg's comment is in the one to three category and likely The one where I think overall what she was saying was actually really helpful. And I think as our Jewish community continues to do more work, as we are ready with everything, we're juggling, and also as soon as possible, but you know, balance here, I really strive to live from a place of compassion. As we work on increasing our intercultural competence, which is helpful for us, for our own people, as a multicultural, multiracial, multi ethnic, amazing, badass Jewish people. That that the better we can get it working across lines of difference and being able to perspective take and appreciate at times that someone may say something differently. And that that isn't always necessarily a bad thing. And maybe what they're doing is saying something in a way that they can say to the people with whom they're looking to move, and doing work that we can't do, but that they can do as an ally. Anything on the oppression scale can trigger anything on the emotional thermometer, it's been a while since I've talked about this and shout out to catch that you want me to lead a training with their staff around this? We have a lot going on addresses right now. And to me 10. So 10 Plus is like genocide, 10 is deaths of multiple people, I would place at different and I'd like I want to build out a whole rubric around this. Right. And, and the thing about the oppression scale is that anyone for any number of reasons is entitled, and can is is worthy of loving support around the emotion that it elicits. But what isn't necessarily justified is how they are able to control and manage their emotion and move to the next step, which is assessing based upon where something falls on the oppression scale in terms of impact, harm, risk of livelihood, risk of physical safety, risk of different things. And based upon the circumstances of that incident, assess what is the best appropriate course of action, and especially we're working across lines of difference. How are we? How are we ensuring that we are most effectively contradicting or positively pushing back on anti Jewish oppression and also being effective allies, to people of color. And when it's black people, as a friendly reminder, you have me and you have other brilliant black Jewish people who have taken time to get degrees, like Professor Louis Gordon, and many other black Jewish academics are people with advanced degrees, who have taken years to think about this. And since it's a part of our daily lives in the world, and in the Jewish community, we have lots of thoughts about it back on track. So anything, so are you hearing me that it's important to begin to properly assess and I think because of white Ashkenazi Jews, proximity to whiteness, and relative safety that has started to shift and dramatically decline in ways that are not okay, that we need to address in the last recent few years. But for the past few decades, there's an entire generation or two of folks who are aware of the overall threat of anti semitism but haven't experienced it. In violent and life, potentially life threatening ways. Lots of those folks have nearly all of them, if not all of them, whether they were aware of it or not have experienced different forms of institutionalized anti Jewish oppression, but not in the ways that are similar to the ways that different people of color in America experienced racial terror, or the ways that Jews pre 1960s 1960s and before experience like my beloved childhood synagogue friend, Bernie Lieberman, like you know, talked about how he learned how to read put his nose in place after white anti Semites would beat him up on a regular basis, and I happened so much it wasn't even worth going to the hospital anymore. Right? So it's a different kind of encounter. Right? I'm I'm reminded of a quote twice, I really like to quote yessing Bay, the artist, formerly known as most death, and from this video clip, I won't get into the specific specifics of it, but he was like, we know danger. We know danger. So people who have been exposed to the threat of physical violence, which as a Jew growing up in Sacramento and as a black person who's lived also in South Dakota, and Virginia, and California has, since I was just thinking about it this morning. I remember when I was for walking into a restaurant like I was a toddler. And I remember walking into a restaurant and seeing all the white people look at me and being very clear that they did not want me there at all. I remember a few years ago, when I was on a job a trip for the EUR, J, I visited a it wasn't even rural, I think it was like a suburban area, I don't even know where it was in the country. And I remember two white guys staring me down and looking like they might be Neo Nazis. And me as a person who's lived this was like, Okay, so on the oppression, I didn't think this in my head. But essentially, if I were to apply what I just went up on the oppression scale, right now it's not, it's right now it's a like a four, maybe like I'm getting menacing looks, but it's not actually changing the physical. And it's and it's causing me terror, but it's not changing. Like I'm not touching my bank account, they're not firing me wrongfully, they're not hurting my family. And this is a potential six to 10 a potential assault or something, but I got to take these different steps, because I've been around it. And I can, and I have a sense of my body, at times about when I'm literally my life is in danger versus not. And so I think because, in some ways, for good reasons, and we should all be moving in this direction. For a few decades, Jews were not targeted why Ashkenazi Jews were not targeted in that way, in the US, there's a couple generation of folks who I would assess that they don't, they're just their experience of the broad range, the wide buffet of the different forms of oppression can take is much more condensed. And for them, they experience it as a scale of one to four. And at times, they can always miss like, they're clear that like, so that things that are actually a four and also things that are multiple people dying, set off the set off deal. And also this is it's not just that it's condensed. But this is on top of all of the generations and in our in your and people's lifetimes. And in the parents and grandparents. If someone is a survivor, who's who lost a lot of their family from the Shoah. They are survivor of other forms of anti Jewish or racist internal or external racism directed at Jews of various ethnicities and races, then it's piled on top of that, too. And all of that unaddressed stuff leads to things boiling over, and they're not in our community. I'm not entirely but mostly lacking a nuanced 10 point scale of what something is doing even to hate like even to undesirable speech. Right. So I classify what be said, as most of I actually thought was amazing ally ship. And I want to circle back to that a little bit in a moment around part of why I'm so cut, or maybe I'll just say right now, and part of why I'm so concerned about this is not just about the way that we'll be was targeted, but because I think the Jewish community, that parts of the Jewish community are not seeing right now. How this incident is being received by black people across America. The fear that it's instilling in them the confusion, it's instilling in people around, I thought, actually like either I learned something from Whoopi, when she said that, or I thought that was great like, and I just think I think the way this incident played out, I'm concerned for both of my peoples in different ways. I'm concerned for Whoopi Goldberg and her reputation. And as an artist and actor and leader in this world who I deeply respect. And I'm very concerned about the ways that our unhealed pain, and specifically are communities and specifically for certain white Ashkenazi Jews, their unhealed trauma, which is worthy of profound healing and I think as a community and as a broader society. That is worth taking time to figure out as it is for every other group that has been targeted for destruction and in some way or not that the US was directly involved or complicit in letting that happen. There needs to be healing and repair and Truth and Reconciliation and space and resources to go. Not necessarily financial, sometimes financial sometimes not toward healing and support and certainly within our own community. that we start to begin. And I don't think it's going to happen overnight. And I think in some places it might be happening, but and I think it can look like a number of different things, and has some core traits always involve that we need to take time to talk through these things and to have deep loving, on question, unquestionably safe spaces to begin in ways that feel safe for us and ways that we feel deeply supported, to begin the practice of facing the unfaithful, to quote Jerry Brown, and begin working through this, because I think part of why I continue to see racial bias persist. And on the reverse, why I continue to see elements of anti semitism. And I don't think there's as much anti semitism in the black community is, as is framed, I think, I think it's everywhere. And I think there is some but I think part of what black folks are also feeling and navigating. It's some of the dynamics related to what happened with Whoopi Goldberg. So, oh, this is getting long, and there's still more so again, so as a reminder of that point, we need to work on refining and getting skills around practicing in the for the purposes of healing, when our emotional thermometer gets. And it could be what like, what will be said can trigger a 10. For someone. For me, it was like a two on the emotional scale like a that comment wasn't ideal. We should correct that. But I don't think it's urgent. I don't think it's going to explicitly hurt any Jews. I think there's some truth in it. Jews of color have been saying for years, that white Ashkenazi Jews have whiteness, I like to say it and I'm glad to hear that other people say it to either because they learned from me or because the collective consciousness aligns. And so not everything was under nothing new. There's nothing new under the sun. As much as we'd like to think there is and have conditional whiteness, but whiteness still, even if it is conditional. Okay, so there's that. And so one of the things we can do is as that stuff gets spiked, this is the next tip I have is that if you get spiked around this, and you're also, if you can remember to think and like to assess, like, where is this on the scale right now. And if you're not fully clear, you feel confused. That's a sign that unhealed pain is surfacing that needs support. And so whether you have a talk therapist, support group, other just practices that can help you move through emotion, but this is heavy stuff. So if you can do it with qualified folks who are able to hold space for you do that. So I wrote down a little process I made up here, where is it? Where are ya? I even tried to make this spacious. Yeah, cultivate your capacity to pause, process and check in. So especially if it's a convergence moment, where it involves anti semitism and black people, and maybe or maybe not, and in this case, actually, I think, I think actually does like, I think actually, if, like these traumas are stacked, because in certain ways they're stacked. I think there's issues around Israel and Israel, Palestine and Zionism, anti Zionism, and I think below that, pre that is the unhealed trauma about the Shoah, and the Holocaust, so it really was a convergence moment normally deal with something that's a little farther up in the trauma and then underneath that is 1000s of years of Jews getting targeted and terrorized and murdered. And here's another pro tip for people of color and or allies who are Jewish, who are listening in. This has caused me hurt in a number of ways, but the reason why I continue to practice and cultivate a lot of compassion for my white Jewish community members if and when they lash out at me when they're afraid. That is a specific survival habit, right? So at times when black folks are afraid at different times, speaking again, in universal strokes here, the black part of me anyway. I times if there's actually an emergency, I will move very fast. And there are lots of different black people who have jokes about that my dad often says, like, in a movie where white characters like, Oh, what do I do? My dad always would be like, I'm in the brace, right? Like, oh, you're I'm in the brace, right? Like, I'm out of here. And at the same time and other situations where things aren't fully clear. We're like, we don't know what's happening. So we're just going to sit still and track this and see what's going on. But one of the ways over millennia, that there's a pattern not universally but very commonly that anti semitism operates is that it goes like it's real quiet, and then it spikes and Jews die or are attacked in mass. And, and that memory is in our collective consciousness, it played out in a different variation around the Holocaust. So at times, even me as an Ashkenazi Jew who has a number of these traumas as well, at times when I'm like, I'm like, as a person of color. I'm like, Whoa, when I see a response from a white Ashkenazi Jew, and it's because part of that was a really smart, built in survival technique, to be able to respond immediately, if you needed to drop everything and run for your life. Now that isn't so common anymore, and God willing, I think we are moving in the direction of that will not happen again. And this is also where healing can be helpful to help us get clear on that, and get clear on that not to just get away with the bad stuff, but to help us settle more into our bodies, and have space for beginning to be and being able to more fully trust allies who are here for us who have been here for us, what times are hurt by us and still show up for us. I am us. And I also feel that applies to me to be able to engage in relationship. And part of why I'm so into healing is not to make everything pretty because that's annoying, but is so that we can access our widest choice of options and opportunities to strategically and powerfully move toward justice and so that we increase our band, our emotional bandwidth and space. So instead of being like here, when we hear something that will be said, it's like, oh, right, like we just had this trauma two weeks ago, and to me, it was like really high, like some people are still feeling underwater. And then this happened. And it was just like, Can't deal. But if we take time to start to empty the pool over time, to tears and shaking and screaming and movements, it occurred to me as I was thinking about this, even more so than I ever had before. But I think because blackness isn't, is litter has been positioned in our racial hierarchy as the opposite of whiteness. Black people are on both their culture and because there was no opportunity to gain access to whiteness, retained movement, and retained different spiritual expressions that for the I feel like for the first time, it recently occurred to me, like when people are speaking in tongues, it occurred to me that I actually think one that that's both just like literally what it seems to be. And also that that's a really smart outlet, that different that surface for different black communities around being able to scream and speak gibberish, and shake, and then be held by community and release terror and fear that is in our bones and in our bodies and needs to get out in safe ways, instead of ways where our terror that is legitimate, and deserves lots of healing and compassion. Instead of that terror being weaponized in service of racism. And white supremacy, which targets both black people specifically and is fueled by anti semitism and also affects other people of color. Right? I want us to get the help, we need to start to be able to stop that and have space and get enough relief enough emptying of the pool through any number of means. I can look like exercise, it can look like writing it can look like a lot of different things, to start to speak our truth and no longer accept the chronic silencing that many white Jews experience as tacitly or explicitly in exchange for access to conditional what lightness when we feel like giving it to you, which is a lot of the time but then not all the time. Which is also leads to this whole instability and and erratic fear that we see playing out that when when terror is picked up among any group, and I see this play out in the community within which I work a lot. A lot of the training that I've done with specific individuals and that a number of people have done more broadly. I see it temporarily goes out the window, and racism is running rampant mixed with fear and terror, and it's a really lethal combination for everyone involved. Okay, and so I want to provide a reframe, moving forward Word that, especially and you can do either one, especially if there's a lot of big emotion, that's likely a cue that there needs to be some breaths, and pausing. And unless there are lives in danger eminently or something along those lines, something that's happening, urgency that needs to be stopped. If that is not the case, allow yourselves, we all deserve I, I allow myself and I invite you to allow yourself to have room to say actually, racial justice is more important in this moment. And you might not be thinking about that in the moment. But if you're talking with a person of color, and if you are not, and if you are, if you have white, or conditional white status, then it would be good to take a beat, take a few beats, because you likely deserve it too. Because you're hurting and we're all hurting, then we want to position ourselves for long term relationships that enable us to leverage our power and move forward powerful change. I think I would like to end with start to draw to a close with some appreciation, and some spiritual, spiritually inspired thoughts. So the good news here is that as I learned, and I've since modified it from a wonderful Jew of color, Jackie in Chicago. All ish. And so the original quote that I heard it was all ish, is fertilizer. And I've since updated the quote, to make it more to endeavor to make it even more and counter oppressive and more choice informed, which is that if we so choose, all ish, all oppression, all trauma, can be fertiliser, if we choose it to be, and when we're ready for it to be. And that's how I am framing this. I am not, even though it felt like it's for a few hours, this is not an indictment on any one person. This is me seeing that multiple communities, in different ways are continuing to hurt each other despite their best efforts. Which means it requires more attention. And what I just said, somebody, I'm ready to hear that and that's fine. Maybe like no, this is really messed up. And I will probably go through a few more cycles of that too. And process that and have that be witnessed by people who are equipped to support me through liberatory, counter oppressive trauma informed lens. And I will get to feel how real it is. And then I will get to figure out what is this actually more deeply about? And how does this tie to what I want, right? Because I believe very deeply. And I'm very, as some of you know, if you've worked with me, stricter and stricter adherence to what we focus on growth. And so throughout this talk, I've endeavored to both both share some insight around what I see playing out. And also what's become a talk I didn't necessarily think was going to be this long but and also give some concrete directions, some concrete bits around things that you can start to chew on and think about an integrator be reminded of, would it be helpful to do a quick replay. So that was there's a lot of pain swirling around and all of us need to invest in different practices that help us release that. Emotion important for all of us. This is universal to work on our internalized oppression and oppressor material. And by doing that, that will deepen and make more intimate our continually evolving oppression analysis. And we want to cultivate a capacity and a practice around when something really hits us. So making a distinction. So that's another point making a distinction between emotional thermometer, status and anything, anything can be legitimately caused something on your emotional thermometer, that's fine, versus the oppression scale that needs to be done with some level of precision, and especially coming from coming from a Jewish perspective. Like everybody might quibble about specifically where certain things fall, that's fine. But as long as we're in a general ballpark of this level of thing, the hate speech from one individual in one room, or three people heard it requires one sort of response, something where actual threats are made in front of a group of people that are prepared to Mobileye, that is all totally higher level, like how do we start to get more precise in our assessments, and to make space first and foremost, it don't even worry about that. But just to pause and start to assess if something is a certain level or under or is a bit that can be if it's something that can be managed with a phone call, and not threatening someone's livelihood, which at times that might be the the appropriate course of action, but also often is not. And it's certainly good to check. Before we do that, especially for either any group that's targeted for destruction, because folks are looking at for any excuse, which doesn't, which also never justifies it, but are looking for any excuse to demonize us. Which is why I'm so upset about this, because I feel protective of all of my peoples. So, I think what am I missing y'all process? Oh, yeah. And that we need to integrate. We need to integrate racial justice analysis, not except when, but especially when there's a convergence moment happening, where we have anti Jewish oppression, racism, and something tied in some way to fundamental Jewish safety and trauma and different perspectives, within our own community in the broader world about what are the best ways to do that? When all those things in some way, are interrelated, that's a sign of Ooh, this is real complex, and there are multiple parties, and all of the people who are going to get potentially attacked in this aren't the actual source of oppression. You might have hurt feelings, because we're proximate. And we want higher standards from those who are close to us. But we need to get clear on that. So we can start directing our focus in the correct direction and aligning with courage and for those of us who needed to divorce ourselves from white supremacy, culture and from whiteness, and start to embrace a more meaningful and substantive and courageous identity outside of that oppressive framework, and doing so in solidarity for another time. So, with that, I want to close with a song from a beloved colleague and friend, Ali Halpert. Loose and loose and baby. You don't have to carry the weight of the world in your muscles and bones like go that go like loose and loose and vagy you don't have to carry heavy weight in your muscles and bones. Go that go. Thanks for tuning in our shows theme music was composed by Elliot hammer. You can find this track and other beats on Instagram at Elliot hammer. If this episode resonated with you, please share it and subscribe. To join the conversation visit Jews talk racial justice.com where you can send us a question or suggestion, access our show notes and learn more about our team. Take care until next time and stay humble and keep going