Spike in hate crimes

While many were celebrating Obama's presidency on November 4th, racist opponents started responding with hate crimes on November 5th. Take a look at: "Election spurs 'hundreds' of race threats, crimes".

I went to a Taste of Limmud NY session on Thursday where racism was discussed. I was the only non-white person in a group session that discussed "racism" between Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews. My first point was that using the term racism for these type of hate crimes was a misappropriation of the word. Most Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews are NOT from a different race. The moderator quickly deflected my comments by turning to older folks in the group who had lived through the Civil Rights movement when "things were much worst in America." One person was shocked to see racism occuring in Israel because that "sort of thing doesn't happen in America."

I was shocked, but only somewhat, to be surrounded by people so sheltered by today's brand of racism. In my experience, it's easy to be sheltered from racism when you're white. When you wear your race on your sleeve, when you're not white but "other," race and racism are a constant concern. My husband's eyes were opened when he and his parents were looking at properties in Riverdale and the white Jewish real estate agent asked where he was living now. "Washington Heights," my husband said. "Oh, don't worry, there aren't too many Hispanics here in Riverdale," the real estate agent assured him with no prompting from my husband.

The worst was dealing with white guilt after the session when a number of white Jews came up to me to explain that they all had African-American friends. So what? Their confessions had absolutely nothing to add to our conversations. But they were scared that I thought they were racist and they wanted to assure me otherwise by touting token black friends.

Alas, racism is not dead in America. No, in America our racism is just less public. We like to keep our racism behind closed doors for the most part. We like to pretend that race itself doesn't exist. But pretending that we are not different will never help end racism.