Ep. 44: Racial Justice IS a Jewish Issue

In this week's episode, we respond to a common question about racial justice work and explain that because the Jewish community is a global, multi-racial people, racial justice already is and must continue to be a core Jewish value and issue.

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

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

Read more of Tracie's thoughts at her blog, bmoreincremental.com

Read  more about Rabbi Leora Kaye and her work: https://reformjudaism.org/author/rabbi-leora-kaye

Check out what we mean by Jews of the Global Majority here: https://joyousjustice.com/global-majority-jews

Listen to April on the BBC’s Heart and Soul on Black Jewish Lives Matter to hear more about her thoughts on our global multi-racial Jewish community: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct2fnq

Review the Jews of Color Field Building’s research on population demographics: https://jewsofcolorfieldbuilding.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Counting-Inconsistencies-052119.pdf

Check out this article about the importance of cultural competence for teams: http://www.theinclusionsolution.me/cultural-competence-part-2-why-is-it-important/

Transcript

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- [Tracie] Racial justice is a Jewish issue. Full stop.- [April] This is "Jews Talk Racial Justice" with April and Tracie.- [Tracie] A weekly show hosted by April Baskin and Tracie Guy-Decker.- [April] In a complex world, change takes courage.- [Tracie] Wholehearted relationships can keep us accountable.- Someone with whom we work, Tracie, recently posed a question that you had the great idea it would be good for us to discuss. And the question is, we have some key members in our community, it might be board members, it might be key leaders on our staff team, just other VIPs and key stakeholders in our orbit who are having a hard time. They understand that racial justice is important in the world secularly, but they're not really seeing how it's relevant in the context of the Jewish community or if it's a Jewish issue.- Right. And so I thought, or I didn't think, you thought and I agree that it would be great for us to do a podcast for some of those folks, for us to articulate some of our thoughts about this, about why racial justice is a Jewish issue, why it's important for Jewish organizations to commit to racial justice through a Jewish lens and why that is profoundly and clearly Jewish.- Yeah. Yeah. I suggested it because it feels like, it just feels like it comes up a lot. And I personally have answered the question many times and I always sort of felt like we'd answered it. We, the collective, we, not you and me, but we, those of us in the Jewish community who care about racial justice. But it keeps coming up so let's answer it again. This question needs to be answered for organizations and for individuals. It's not just leaders of organizations that need to get clear about this. I had a recent experience where there was an argument in my Jewish community about whether and how long we should keep our Black Lives Matter sign up. And there are those individual Jews who are just Jews in the pews who are like,"Why is this a Jewish issue?" And to me, it seems pretty clear. I feel like the question has been answered, but obviously it hasn't been answered for enough folks because it keeps coming up. The question keeps getting asked in slightly different ways with slightly different valances. In our work together, we had someone say,"Well, how do I convince my board"that this is a Jewish issue?" And in my sort of private life, it was like I was trying to convince fellow congregants that it was a Jewish issue. So it happens in lots of different spheres with different specifics around it. But it is a question that, unfortunately, in my view, in my view it is unfortunate that we have to keep answering it. But also that's why we have this podcast so that we have a platform on which to answer so that those who are genuinely asking can get an answer and those who need to give the answer can have our ideas articulated.- But I think one thing that's coming up, it's quietly coming up in my mind, but spiritually, I'm wanting to share, that I feel like my spirit is kind of nudging me to share is I'm interested in folks asking, answering, why isn't it a Jewish issue? There's so many reasons for why it's a Jewish issue. I don't understand why it's not.- Right, right. Because the answer is that in the person who's asking, in their mind--- Black people?- Because then the person who's asking the question, in their mind, Jews are white. To me, that's the only thing--- Right and we know, so to get into some of the reasons why it is a Jewish issue is for a number of reasons and in the spirit of something Rabbi Leora Kaye once said to me, I will honor her words. I'll start in a particular order and say that racial justice is a Jewish issue because as Jews we believe in the value of B'Tselem Elohim, that we were all made in the image of the divine. And racism is inherently dehumanizing and treats people as sub-human in a systemic, interpersonal, ideological, like on every level of the scale, most notably systemically and ideologically treats people of color as less than. So that inherently is in violation of this value that we are all created by the image of the divine. Treat your neighbor as yourself. Many people of color are not being treated as many Jews are being treated in this country in terms of having access to a variety of governmental supports, access to home loans, access to bank loans, access to equitable healthcare. That is not something that most people of color have access to. Not to mention that we ourselves are a multiracial people, but I love that, as Rabbi Leora Kaye once said to me, and I was like, "I totally agree with you." That shouldn't be the primary reason why, even if in fact, which we aren't, we were all not people of color, which is very much not the case, it would still be an important issue for Jews to be thoughtful about. Here's another reason. If we as Jews are in any society, because I still can see some people thinking like,"Well, but then isn't everything an issue?" Well, in some ways, potentially. But if we are party to oppression, which as citizens of a society with a variety of systems that are built historically and in the current time depend on the exploitation of people, as Jews in the spirit of many Jewish values and a number of Jewish laws, we should work to ensure that our living and our lives live in, move us and our society in the direction of justice and are not complicit in the harming, in the systemic harming of people based upon their identity and or appearance. Not to mention there are, as I started to say, lots of people of color who are Jews. We are a global people. We started in north Africa and west Asia and have lived and do live all over the globe. As it's often cited at times in lackluster ways, but it still is true, in Israel/Palestine, more than 50% of folks there are not of solely European heritage. They are people of the global majority from west Asia and east Africa. So we are an incredibly diverse people. And in the United States, that diversity is increasing. So this is also important for Jewish communal leaders to understand. Not only is this important now, but this is only going to increase in importance as Jews continue to transracially and transnationally adopt, continue to have interracial marriages as a number of people of color, or also I like to use the phrase people of the global majority, which is a great contradiction to the word minority, which is really not, it's an outdated phrase. It's not the worst word to use, but it also often isn't the most accurate nor mindful word to use. So better words to use are people of color or people of the global majority. Because minority also just inherently in the phrasing, connotes less power and contributes to oppressive patterns that affect people of color. So because of, and also the fact that a range of different people, particularly of Latin X, but not exclusively descent are also doing DNA tests and learning that they have Jewish heritage, that they are descendants of conversos, and people who survived the Spanish inquisition and now are a part of multi-racial, any range of racially identified as we know, Latin X, and Latino, and Latina folks can have a range of different racial identities. So that is dramatically increasing with time. And we as a people are becoming more diverse. So it is incumbent on us as a community, ethically, spiritually, and pragmatically, for us to not only prioritize racial justice, but specifically within Jewish institutions, work on strengthening, here's a curve ball, but it's really important and we work with this with a number of our clients, specifically our organizational clients, working on building our intercultural competence, our ability as Jewish leaders, and as Jewish institutions, and organizations, and communities, to work effectively across lines of difference. So not only do we need to work on advancing racial justice, but also increasing our capacity to work effectively and bridge the differences that do exist because they do exist. Inherently, yes, as humans, we might even say that 80% or 70% if we wanna be bold, of our shared human experience is mostly shared. But that other 20 to 30% and arguably much higher, makes a world of difference on our lifespans, on how we live, and all those indices of difference around gender, race, class, all those things create differences. And as Jewish organizations, we need to get better at bridging those. Again, for all of the spiritual and ethical reasons and also at the end the day, because it's in your self interest, because the data consistently shows that mono cultural organizations do outperform diverse organizations or groups that lack intercultural competence, but the organizations and teams that outperform everyone are diverse teams that work effectively across lines of difference. And so if our organizations want to have a chance of surviving, and we know continuity and survival of our legacy and contemporary institutions is a concern for a number of us, it's important that developing our intercultural competence, and prioritizing liberation around racial justice, as well as other forms of liberation that are very important to our people like around LGBTQ identity and justice are important for us as well as disability, justice, are all incredibly important for us to prioritize. And it's deeply Jewish to do so. And we have to.- I just wanna point out that you started by saying, even if we were all one racial makeup, the Jewish people, then we would still need to care. We're not--- At all.- At all--- And we haven't been.- And so individuals institutions, you wouldn't question putting a sign up that said "Jewish Lives Matter" The truth is Black Lives Matter does say Jewish lives matter because there are Black Jews. And it's as simple as that, in my opinion. And yes, the other things that you said are also true, but if you need it to be closer to home, if you need an in-group to help, an in-group association to help fully embrace it, it's there. And when I think about how my white Jewish fellow congregants and just community members would respond if white Jews were being brutalized the way that Black Americans are by agents of the state, how we would respond. That's how we should respond to Black folks being brutalized. Because we don't know that that person is not Jewish--- And sometimes they are and they have been.- Exactly. And so this sense of like, it's not a Jewish issue because they're out-groups--- It's factually inaccurate.- Yeah. Yeah.- It actually is. Not subjectively, objectively. It is a Jewish issue because for one racism and specifically white supremacy, antisemitism is an outgrowth of racism of white supremacy. And it interlocks and interplays with racism. And Jews are impacted by racism as well. White Jews, specifically what I'm saying here. So all Jews actually, are in fact impacted by racism and all the more so, profoundly impacted are Jews of color or Jews of the global majority are deeply affected by that. And demographers continue to debate this. My personal stance is a number of demographers have outdated data that researchers out of Stanford and not exclusively Stanford have stated or have some key limitations that undermine the legitimacy of that data. But so we're looking at at least 11 to 20% of our community right now, and that doesn't even include young people and there's far more Jews of color. There's a far higher percentage of Jews of color among young people are people of color. So racism hurts everyone in America, including all white Jews, and obviously, it most directly harms and kills and targets for destruction people of color.- Yeah. Yeah. And we're only 2%, less than 2% of the American population and Jews are writ large. And we're saying somewhere between 10 and 20% of Jews are of color. And so the numbers argument just doesn't work. It just doesn't. When people argue and say,"It's not real." Even if the demography, if we as Jews expect to be taken seriously and have our needs met as 2%, we can't then turn around and say,"Well, there are only those black Jews."Those Jews of color are only X percent." No.- And also as I spoke about in my thesis too, when I wrote my thesis, it might be different now, but the demographics were such that the number of Asian Americans in the United States was around 7%. And it said similarly, no one would say that Asian Americans, or I would hope no one would say, that it's an anomaly or that Asian Americans don't exist.- Or don't count--- Or don't matter or don't count as has been said about Jews of color inappropriately at times.- [April] Thanks for tuning in. Our show's theme music was composed by Elliot Hammer. You can find this track and other beats on Instagram @Elliothammer. If this episode resonated with you, please share it and subscribe. To join the conversation, visit jewstalkracialjustice.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.