As an ethnic Jew growing up in New York City, I always identified in some ways with black people. This is not to say that I ever imagined that I was black, but I did feel akin to them in some ways, as I never sensed that I had much in common with white people. White people never seemed other in the ways that I felt it, and because there were so many black people in my environment when I was growing up, I felt like I was at the least very much among them. I did also identify with other Jews that I knew, but mainly the ones that embraced their ethnicity rather than religion.
When I was perhaps nine or ten years old, my cousin Johanna and her family lived downstairs in the same apartment building that my family did, and I remember my sister telling me that Johanna thought, perhaps jokingly, that she thought hat she may have been black. I think that it may have had to do with her body type and hair, and though she probably did not really believe it, I could see where she was coming from. Being Jewish seemed to me to be determined on being religious, which I wasn't, while being black didn't appear to have those kinds of prerequisites. The way I saw it, if one was born black, they were black. It seemed simpler and more accepting, and black people struck me as proud. I certainly wasn't,
As I have aged, I have became keenly aware that although I don't always feel it, I am in fact white, replete with all of the perks that I have read and have been told come with being born that way in our society. I won't list those perks here (because this blog entry is already difficult to write without sounding either racist or insensitive), but let me just say that I imagine that I may be accepted simply because of my appearance in ways than many people of color are not.
During the past couple of years, there has been a lot of media attention given to the practices of law enforcement towards the African American community, in particular the killing of unarmed black men. With the widespread use of cell phone video, these practices have shown a wider public, including myself, what must be an ongoing issue over many, many years. Some of the videos have been quite graphic and unsettling to many, as have some of the tactics used by to protest these injustices.
I like to think of myself, perhaps ideally, as being at least somewhat progressive and open minded, but I have come to realize over time just how conditioned I have been as a white male, and perhaps closed and protected as a person of any ethnic background. This has become especially evident to me recently, when there was a fissure in my outlook over the recent sniper attack on the police in Dallas, Texas.
It wasn't the fact that police officers were targeted in this event that jarred me from my normal emotional response, but the investigation into the man that perpetrated it. As more information was released about the person that committed the attack, I began to think more about the kind of anger and frustration that he must have experienced to make him feel that doing something like this seemed like an option. More than thinking about it though, it was more of an experience on my part. His humanness came through to me, and with it, my own humanity surfaced.
Amidst the conditioning and defenses that have been erected to protect my own grief, I was able to see this man in his suffering, and perhaps achieve a bit more insight into my own.
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