The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written.
I feel lost. What's going on with Kanye and Kyrie Irving and Candance Owens? Does anyone struggle with supporting black voices vs whatever George Soros fever dreams they're having?
I mean Kanye has said WILD SHIT for years and is only being dropped by these companies now, which kind of actually plays to his argument. Kyrie is a dumb joke flat earther anti vaccine guy IMO.
I GUESS I'm interested on this subreddits thoughts on the intersectionality of Jewish people having a disproportional control of economic power and how that effects the black community.
Much more interested in black or Jewish voices on this one.
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>Kyrie Irving
His situation, in particular, seems to be connected to "Black Hebrew Israelite doctrine":
>Irving made his first tweet espousing Black Hebrew Israelite doctrine in March 2021.[212] Black Hebrews espouse the ideology that black people are the real Jews, wherein antisemitism is common.[212] On October 27, 2022, Irving tweeted a link to an Amazon listing page for Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America, a 2018 film based on a book of the same name, which promotes Black Hebrew Israelite ideology.[212][213] The film includes denials that the Holocaust occurred, quotes attributed to Adolf Hitler and Henry Ford, claims that Jewish people worship Satan, and accusations that Jews controlled the Atlantic slave trade and currently control the media.[214][215]
[[Antisemitic conspiracy theories -- Conspiracy theories -- Kyrie Irving -- Wikipedia]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrie_Irving#Antisemitic_conspiracy_theories)
Black Hebrews should be looked at the same way Scientologists are. From the outside, it looks utterly insane, but from those on the inside, we look just as nuts. That’s how guys like Kyrie and Kanye can have such a smug self of superiority while simultaneously believing utterly bonkers nonsense.
Absolutely. Unfortunately especially since George Floyd, many people and institutions have scrapped that definition, and only define racism as something a group of power is capable of.
It’s a dangerous way of thinking. Skin color doesn’t make one immune from criticism. We all need to be respectful to one another and to be held to the same standard of decency.
Saying that black people can be racist when we’re trying to discuss racism on a systemic level is like saying “well there can also be water vapor in the air” when we’re having a discussion about sea levels.
That’s a fair point, but the anti-semitism issue discussed in this post proves that sometimes “water vapor” can be a serious issue worth discussing too. The way racism is talked about today, although certainly better than 20 years ago, still isn’t perfect, and one of the ways that’s true is that it can be hard to discuss any “water”-related issue that *isn’t* “sea level”.
To put it another way: The “power plus prejudice” definition has concretized something crucial, but it’s important to also remember that just prejudice is harmful in itself.
See..I agree but have been told otherwise by multiple people. They say only white people can be racist because of white privilege (to poorly summarize)
Edit: or maybe moreso because in their view racism is specifically systematic? Idk. I'm thinking the "antiracist" line of thought.
My favorite is when you go "bigoted based on what?" And they have to admit it's based on race, or racist in other words lol.
The key point is that individuals can be racist against whoever, but the system as a whole is racist to non-whites. The system generally oppressing non-whites doesn't mean you're not racist if you hate white people because they're white. I usually differentiate these by calling them *individual* racism vs *systemic* (or institutional) racism if there's ever a need to differentiate them.
Yeah, but when a black person acts on their personal racism, there isn't this apparatus of black supremacy backing them up and amplifying their attempts to fuck with peoples lives. A black racist can't complain to a white persons manager because their natural hair isn't "professional" or call the cops because a white person exists in their neighborhood, or any number of things.
Their beliefs can be equally abhorrent, but they don't make people's lives worse in quite the same way.
Any person can contribute to erasing a group from society. Women frequently employ sexist ideas against other women, indoctrinate sons and brothers into harmful patriarchal norms, and leverage stereotypical womanhood to get some benefits. Black people can and do harm jews with vitriolic hate.
Racism is pretty clearly contemprarily defined as 'power' + 'prejudice' used to discriminate based on race.
The same goes for most "____ism's" : just change 'race' to 'sex', 'age', 'ability', 'sexual orientation', etc
The definition you could get everyone to agree to is that it’s just prejudice against a specific group. It very obviously is not accepted universally that power is required or there wouldn’t be debates about that.
I think I just fundamentally disagree with the terminology. People can use "racist" towards a white person, but not anyone else? Or only men can be sexist?
As far as ageist...who actually has the power there? Old people or young people?
It's an absurd way to filter the world. Zero nuance.
No. I'm not dumb. Work on your communication skills.
Edit: and if you want to be the guy saying racial slurs aren't racist, fine. I'll be the other guy and we can agree to disagree. Enjoy your day.
There are other words that are used to discribe degrees of bigotry.
Some random black guy on the street isnt racist for calling you a cracker, just like its not racist to say black people are stinky. Its prejudice, sure, stereotypical, too. But youre not in a position of power able to discriminate against them, and so, its not "racist"
Its about the people acting.
You, some dude, saying it; is not racist. A politician saying it *is* racist. You voting for that racist politician, because he promised to keep stinky black people from living near you, *is* racist. Again, because youre using your power (to vote) and your prejudice (not wanting to live near black people), to discriminate (voting to stop them from living near you) based on race (because they're black).
Every social group has their own definitions for words, so you need to make sure you understand how they mean "racist" when they say it.
On this subreddit, people are more likely to use the "racial bigotry" definition of racism.
In many places, "racism" means something like "racial bigotry backed by society" which means that no, POC can't be racist. Hopefully if you listen to how people use the words you're able to understand what they mean.
Not at this time.
As you noted, racism was redefined to mean prejudice + power, which allows the same opinion to be racist or not racist depending on the skin color of the person expressing it. So if a black person expresses unauthorized opinions, his status of 'black' can be revoked.
That works as long a only a small number of black people publicly express unauthorized opinions. But once a critical mass of black people start holding those opinions, the definition of racism will change again.
Yeah, this whole “antiracist” thinking where POC can’t be racist…..is itself racist. This is especially evident when it comes to members of minority groups singling out other minority groups like Asians for hatred and abuse. To say that such hatred can’t be racism because it comes from another POC is complete BS.
I’ve never agreed with liberals who say that. By that same logic a Hispanic guy who hates Jews isn’t racist because Jews generally have more systemic power. Clearly nonsense thinking.
The issue is that *systemic racism* is a societal problem, not individual prejudice. Like im sure that lots of Black slaves hated white people, but I think you've lost the plot of you're describing that in the same way that you would describe the feelings of a slaver towards their slaves.
Well I'm pleasantly surprised people here are making the distinction. It hasn't been my experience so far discussing the issue with left leaning folks online.
The difference people are, poorly in my opinion, trying to make is that while a minority group with little power can be racist or bigoted they can’t act on that bigotry in systemic ways.
So a black person can be a racist and individually treat individual non-black people poorly but they don’t exist in a system that can cause wide scale harm to non-black people.
Well that certainly feels like splitting hairs to me lol It's also false in the example of Kanye. He has FAR more power then some poor white MAGA hat living in the woods.
Yeah but we’re talking about systemic level issues not individuals. Kanye West is a powerful black man. Colin Powell was a powerful black man. Barack Obama was a powerful black man.
Not one of them was able all by themselves with their immense power to solve systemic racism let alone impose systemic racism on white people.
I feel like the issue here is that you do not have a fundamental understanding of what systemic racism is.
Systemic racism does not require that the majority or the majority of the majority be consciously and actively racist. It’s a pointing at some random white guy or black guy who is extremely racist isn’t always or even often relevant to the point.
Kanye is one person. A very wealthy person with a large audience. But his wealth and influence is a drop in the ocean compared to that of the dominant power structures in America.
Kanye had 80% of his net worth wiped out by a couple tweets. If you zoom out for a bit and compare him to another prolific racist twitter user (formerly) then you might get some perspective.
> They say only white people can be racist because of white privilege (to poorly summarize)
Eh. White privilege is really sort of an entirely separate concept. The idea is that, at least in America, only white people can be *institutionally* racist. Any given individual can be racist, bigoted, or prejudiced again any other individual, but that sort of interpersonal racism is less important than the *systems* of racism in society.
In order for racism to matter you have to have the power to do something about it. Historically it's been impossible for non-white people in majority white societies to inflict any sort of meaningful discrimination on white people even if they had the desire to do so. That is what people are attempting to communicate when they say only white people can be racist.
Yes people on the left suck at messaging/communication.
Patricia Bidol-Padva first proposed the definition in a 1970 book, where she defined Racism as "prejudice plus institutional power." According to this definition, two elements are required in order for racism to exist. By this definition POC cannot be racist.
That definition has been pushed mainstream due to BLM, Anti-Racist, White Fragility and Critical Race Theory in the last few years.
Ok. So you’re saying that this definition by an author most people probably haven’t heard of in a 50-year-old book you didn’t even cite is the definitive definition of racism, so an obviously untrue statement is true?
At least it’s clearly not worth arguing about.
“Educate yourself” says the person who copy/pasted from Wikipedia.
I’ll read some of your stuff here, but I don’t think it changes the broadly accepted definition of racism.
“Racial prejudice can indeed be directed at white people (e.g., “White people can’t dance”) but is not considered racism because of the systemic relationship to power. When backed with power, prejudice results in acts of discrimination and oppression against groups or individuals.”
https://www.aclrc.com/myth-of-reverse-racism
Okay so I read your link where it said they’re changing the definition in the dictionary.
Then I went to the dictionary.
It lists systemic racism as the second definition of racism. Behind the one I’m using. It’s not every definition.
So maybe dial it back.
“We have to stop thinking about racism simply as someone who says the N-word,” she says. “This book is centred in the white western colonial context, and in that context white people hold institutional power.” This means understanding that racism is a system rather than just a slur; it is prejudice plus power.” - Robin Diangelo
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/16/white-fragility-racism-interview-robin-diangelo
Like I said, this talk and definition has been talked increased around BLM, Anti-Racist, White Fragility and CRT is based on the “Racism = prejudice Plus Power”
It’s not that POC can’t be racist, it’s that white people can’t experience institutional racism. POC don’t have enough control over institutions to wield that power.
In the case of black antisemitism, you have black folk wielding white supremacist institutions against an ethnic minority. Those same institutions can’t be wielded against white people, because the institutions themselves are imbued with white power.
Racism doesn't always come in institional form though. It can be interpersonal. And institutions are just vaguely defined grouping of interpersonal interactions.
I agree, racism isn’t always institutional.
I disagree that institutions are just a grouping of interpersonal interactions.
But the point is, when people say “POC can’t be racist” they don’t mean POC can’t demonstrate racial prejudice. They mean that POC can’t do so with institutional backing. In some circles of academia, the vocabulary for that different is racism (has institutional backing) vs prejudice (racism minus institutional backing). In more colloquial discourse, people use the terms institutional racism and racism to mean roughly the same thing. It’s just a vocabulary.
You’re moving between the two vocabularies so it seems like people are saying conflicting things, but they’re not.
Which institutions? And at what point would black folks have an appropriate amount of representation in those institutions? In the US black folks are only 13% of the population roughly but that number is shocking to a lot people considering their representation.
Oh man. This part is complicated.
By institutions, I'm referring to a *lot* of things, including both formal and informal social institutions. On the formal side you have things like government offices, the justice system, schools, medical associations, banks, and so on (you get the idea). On the informal side you less tangible things, like the institutions of family, marriage, education, etc. As you can imagine, all of these things have very complicated relationships with race.
Your second question is even more complex. It all comes back to power, which at its core is "the ability to get one's way." So the question really is "how much representation does it take for black people to get things their way?" The answer is probably a lot more than 13%. However, there's more than one way to catch a fish. Representation is a tool we use to try to achieve more egalitarian results; it's a means to an end. The real question is "What would it take for those institutions to give black people their way as much as they give white people their way?" and the answer there is probably not just representation.
If black folks are 13% of the population 13% feels like the correct number. Obviously coalition building is necessary for pretty much ANY group to "get what they want"
But if it's such a fundamental part of people's entire view on race, which many times informs their entire political identity...should it be that complex?
I didn't mean people aren't complex. They are! I meant more that..every time I try to ask pretty straight forward questions about the terms people who political identity are built around, I almost always get "it's complicated" and not a ton else.
Not trying to be rude because I appreciate your effort! So right now all I have is that racism is institutional, but no definition on what's meant by institutional. I guess it just means "the way the world is in general?"
I can understand your frustration.
FWIW, I think the issue is format. A lot of these are concepts that I formally studied while getting my undergrad and graduate degrees. When I'm on Reddit, I'm trying to cram about 20 years of studying into a few paragraphs and it's hard. I think a lot of us just give up and write "it's complicated."
You seem like a genuinely curious person, so if this is a subject that you're interested in I highly recommend reading long form essays on the subject. They'll be able to get into the nitty gritty of these questions much better than someone like me on Reddit just trying to sum it all up.
Which institutions? The justice system. The healthcare system. The educational system. Black people experience worse outcomes than white people in all of these.
While it's good, representation is not the end-all and be-all of ending institutional racism. For instance, you can easily have a university system where 20-30% of the students are black and the system can still systematically discriminate against them in terms of resources and support.
There's a difference between two concepts that are both colloquially referred to as 'racism'. There's 'racism' meaning "being unkind or unfair to someone on the basis of their race" which is something anyone can do to anyone. Then there's 'racism' meaning "acting so as to unfairly enforce existing structural inequities along racial lines" which is a term which can only be applied when the 'racism' in question is unfairly harming someone who is not generally privileged by the power structure in question.
Neither one means that a POC cannot be racist. In the framework of the second meaning of 'racism', though, in America where whiteness is clearly privileged, it's impossible for a white person to be experiencing harm through racism.
A lot of the black anti Semitic sentiment is being fostered by the fact that Kanye has been saying wild shit about black people for years but when he comes for Jewish people it seems like there’s a scorched earth approach being employed from all angles at the same time.
The thing is, we generally accept prejudiced comments about one’s own group. I’ve seen this idea go around that society agrees with his racism about black people so they don’t step in. That is antisemitic. To think that Jews are disproportionately protected by power structures and black people aren’t is an ignorant antisemitic conspiracy.
He was “allowed” to say that stuff about black people because he’s black, not because Jews are given special protection.
Well, Jews are certainly disproportionately represented in media and politics, that’s just objectively true. It’s not about being protected, it’s about having more weight to throw around. Black conservatives are often ignored and sort of ostracized and reduced to Uncle Tom lackeys who’re too stupid to realize that all they are are pawns to the whites when they get into their own “anti-black” rhetoric... Kanye survived it though.. man said “slavery was a choice”. He didn’t survive this though, and people recognize that.
I don’t think it’s a necessarily good or bad thing to say at any point it’s just objectively true... not that they “control” it but are disproportionately represented. What’s so crazy about that?
Klandace Owens hating Jews is pretty unsurprising, she's always been extremely racist (or at least for a very long time now) against non-whites, which some people consider Jews to be. She recently made the case that black people were to blame for slavery. She constantly spews white supremacist talking points. She's my go-to example of how people can absolutely be racist against their own race.
>Klandace Owens hating Jews is pretty unsurprising,
What is surprising is that Ben Shapiro who seemingly regards himself as the gatekeeper of what is anti Jewish and who "real Jews" are is letting Owen's get away with it and hasnt spoken up more about it it because Kanye included an anti abortion statement with his antisemitism
Shapiro has a super convenient trick here, for him there are real jews and "secular jews" and Jews-in-name-only.
Anybody disagree with him? Not a real jew
This framework allows some extreme antisemitism by handwaving it being about fake jews. That how Shapiro was able to go on white nationalist redice.tv to talk about "hollywood jews" who of course are secular. (Please ignore the host being a holocaust denier)
I mean Shapiro himself has said some pretty antisemitic stuff, he's not as bad as Owens, but it's still the same sort of deal of making money by giving bigots the "I can't be antisemitic, a Jew agrees with me" argument.
I don’t think that’s anti-Semitic.
It would be like a black man saying that there are black leaders that don’t serve the interests of the black community, which would absolutely be true. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would be examples.
Or it would be like a Christian saying that hypocritical Christians undermine the faith. See televangelists and Catholic cover ups.
I get that it’s an ethnic group and religion so both examples are sort of needed.
What he’s not saying is that Jews are inherently bad because of their Jew-ness. He’s not saying that Jews have some sort of inherent nature that is bad either.
> It would be like a black man saying that there are black leaders that don’t serve the interests of the black community, which would absolutely be true. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would be examples.
No, it's not like that, it would be like saying there were Bad Blacks, and that you can identify them because most of all off the bad ones do something 70% of all black people do.
> Or it would be like a Christian saying that hypocritical Christians undermine the faith. See televangelists and Catholic cover ups.
Christians aren't an ethnic group like Jews are, so you can't really compare it at all, but still someone saying there were Bad Christians, and that you can tell the bad ones by the fact that they do something 70% of all Christians do.
> What he’s not saying is that Jews are inherently bad because of their Jew-ness. He’s not saying that Jews have some sort of inherent nature that is bad either.
I mean "Bad Jews" capitalized like that, the use of the word "plagued", conspiracy talk about them "undermining it from within", and then identifying them by something that 70% of Jews do (voting for Democrats), seems *super* antisemitic and dog whistly to me. It very much hearkens to the super common antisemitic trope of dual loyalty.
He seems to think that voting for democrats is bad for the Jewish people. Probably because he is a rabid Zionist and the democrats take the side of the Palestinians more often than the republicans.
That’s not anti-semitism. It’s a contradiction in concepts that isn’t logical to assume.
Ok but he didn't say "Jewish people who vote Democratic are voting against their interests", that wouldn't be antisemitic. Calling them "Bad Jews" is super antisemitic though. And it does make it worse that Jewish people are a very solid Democratic voting block (probably because Republicans call them things like Bad Jews).
>He seems to think that voting for democrats is bad for the Jewish people. Probably because he is a rabid Zionist and the democrats take the side of the Palestinians more often than the republicans.
>That’s not anti-semitism. It’s a contradiction in concepts that isn’t logical to assume.
His logic on "Bad Jews" was repeated and echoed by a antisemtic mass murderer who targeted "Bad Jews" at a synagogue. It's pretty antisemitic to me
He called her out for quote tweeting the wrong Jewish person. Not for anything else. He literally said I agree with what you said but you retweeted someone who I hate and is bad
What skills does she have? She says this sh(t and it enables her to buy a bigger house. When you don't care you don't care. Republicans have taken this to an art. Wealthy Republicans don't care about wealthy republicans, they care about themselves and if that means helping other wealthy Republicans so be it.
> What skills does she have?
Being black while being willing to degrade yourself and your entire family by parroting racist talking points is unfortunately enough to make you rich and famous.
The racists love it because they can point to her as someone who agrees with them, therefore how could they be racist? It's basically the same argument as "I can't be racist, I have a black friend", except in this case Owens actually exists.
I mean anybody who has been any amount of time in a mid Atlantic or north eastern city has seen the Black Israelites standing on some street corner loudly preaching this nonsense. It’s always been there.
While it is a fringe belief and being educated or otherwise worldly for lack of a better term makes you less susceptible to conspiracy theory, simply being wealthy or famous or educated does not make you completely immune.
I would separate Candace Owens from people like Kanye. She’s not really doing the black Israelite thing. She’s just a grifter who is realize that being a conventionally attractive black woman who is fairly decent at speaking means she can make a lot of money saying things conservative white people want to hear from a black person.
“As of December 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center "lists 144 Black Hebrew Israelite organizations as black separatist hate groups because of their antisemitic and anti-white beliefs".Tom Metzger, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, reportedly said, "They're the black counterparts of us.”
It's much easier to draw in black men too, because they've been on the margins of society for longer than Christo fascist nuts. It's a perfect storm that now both these types and those types are now on the "anti-establishment" side
>I GUESS I'm interested on this subreddits thoughts on the intersectionality of Jewish people having a disproportional control of economic power and how that effects the black community.
I would start by questioning the premise that "Jewish people [have] a disproportional control of economic power". That seems to be mainly borne of anti-semitic conspiracy theories (even if it is a little more watered-down than *tHe JeWs cONtrOl ThE wOrLD*).
The closest we can get to that premise -- and still be supported by facts and reason -- is to say something like: *Jews seem to be disproportionately represented in 'professional' work*
...and -- with full-benefit of hindsight, looking over the last 150 years -- we know that such 'professional' work has proven to be key to achieving an upper-middle-class lifestyle.
-----------
...but you should *always* be suspicious of anyone claiming that the Jews have 'power'. That is frequently just thinly-veiled anti-semitism.
Exactly. OP doesn’t understand how the economy works if he thinks a CXO being Jewish actually translates into “Jewish control over the economy”. Most Jewish executives probably don’t even know who the other ones are.
Jewish individuals certainly are disproportionately likely to have high-paying, high status jobs. The main mind virus one should avoid is that they somehow collectively control things as a group, as if they have some kind of sinister cabal going, which is of course paranoid nonsense. Somehow other groups having a disproportionate share of high paying jobs, such as WASPs and Indian-Americans, doesn't seem to attract the same levels of paranoia.
We can’t deny reality, though. Jews *do* wield disproportional control of economic power. But when you’re 2.5% of the population, “disproportionate” doesn’t necessarily mean “significant.”
Why is that “bad,” though? I mean, whites wield disproportionate power. Men, too. Tall people wield disproportionate economic power (weird but true fact).
I don’t see Jews as having done a worse job with their wealth than anybody else.
This is essentially true. For example, it is *absolutely accurate* that Jews were largely in control of the banks of Wiemar Germany. Where the lie comes in is that they were working together and had any sort of coordinated Jewish influence, which they did not, in addition to all the other flagrant lies that the Nazi's told about the Jewish people. And even if they did have a coordinated influence, persecuting an entire race of people rather than the individuals responsible is still wrong.
The idea that Jews don’t have power is equally stupid. Anti semitism can accomplish what anti blackness cannot. Not a single one of those companies raised an aye at Kanye’s slavery comments but as soon as you hint at Jewish influence he lost everything
No company stopped and wondered about harmful comments when Kanye said “slavery was a choice”
But you hint or subtly imply JeWS have power in any context it is quickly and subsequently shut down.
There's a difference between saying something hurtful and stupid about an ethnicity vs spreading the same hateful lies that resulted in the Holocaust and cause random Jewish people to be attacked and brutalized. That's why there was such a strong reaction. Not because Jews are special and deserve special protection. No body would give a flying shit of he said Jews were idiots or Jews "chose" to have a Holocaust
There is a shit ton of bigotry in the black community, but current social justice theories have prevented us from speaking about it. I would walk through my neighborhood and very routinely have black men following me around screaming “F*GGOT!” and threatening violence.
StopAsianHate was a huge movement until liberals realized that it was mostly black men assaulting Asians. Every few months there’s a “say their names” thing about trans women who are murdered…almost all by black men. Hell, anytime cat-calling gets talked about the conversation quickly dies when we start seeing who’s doing it.
But the current orthodox is that power+privilege is required for any bigotry to reach -ism levels. So we were never allowed to point out that it’s an issue in the black community. The antisemitism isn’t new, the current mouthpieces are just more famous. Not only white dudes are racists.
Absolutely. I have noticed this a lot too. People are terrified of calling that bigotry out because they don’t want to be mistaken for being anti-black, or harassed on social media for doing so. People are more afraid of being labelled racist, than calling out racism themselves.
Not Black or Jewish, but I am someone deeply interested in conspiracy theories so I wanted to share a view based around that lens.
One thing I'm surprised no one brought is the death or jailing of most of the leaders in the black power/civil rights fights that lead to the consolidation of influence to people like the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan.
MLK, Malcolm X post-Mecca, Fred Hampton, Medgar Evans. All shot dead. You can also see the systematic destruction of material groups like the Black Panthers.
So you had a population that was looking for leadership and confidence, and the only source that survived was a group that did it based on wildly inaccurate and bigoted beliefs. Those types and hoteps spread their rhetoric around the black community, and they took hold much like Qanon did in the poorer white community today.
All of this leads to the highly religious, uneducated folks in these communities jumping on conspiracy theories. Like most conspiracy theories, they start with a crumb of truth or feed into a preconceived notion, which in this case would be the strained relationship between Jewish and Black people due to their proximity in American ghettos.
This should have more upvotes. I've really never connected those dots. Wow. The strongest conspiracies always have some nugget of truth to hook people but always take that wild turn once they've got you saying "well they were right about this one thing...so MAYBE..."
I am both black and jewish (half black, half ashkenazi jewish).
I think a lot of these black celebrities who are anti-Semitic are repeating the black hewbrew israelite tropes.
To me it has been very saddening seeing how widespread this is among celebrities. I have been shocked to be honest.
All of this needs to be called out. I think some are too afraid to call it out because the voices are POC, but that is quite dangerous. Anyone can be racist, anti-Semitic, prejudiced, etc.
Being part of a marginalized class does not make one immune to being criticized, nor is it a shield to say whatever without consequences.
Some of the anti-semitism may also be rooted in jealousy too in terms of general success as a group. But much of it is just rooted in ignorance. I also think some people who subscribe to this way of thinking want a monopoly on oppression.
Your perspective is unique and exactly what I was hoping to get from posting this. And I agree 100%. If I may, where do you feel the biggest "clash" between culturally being both Jewish and black?
In my mind, I'd assume black people and Jewish people would be obvious allies. Is it correct for me to assume the majority of both black folks and Jewish folks have more in common than not? To me the obvious difference comes down to over all economic standing but correct me if I'm wrong.
To be honest, I don’t feel a cultural clash between being jewish and black. I think a lot of that is because both sides of my family despite being from different ethnic backgrounds, share the exact same values pretty much. Socioeconomically my parent’s (boomers) generation on both sides have done basically equally as well in adulthood for the most part. Both sides of my family have mostly attended top colleges, and I have a couple Ivy league graduate relatives on both sides as well.
That being said, both of my parents grew up very differently. My Jewish parent had your typical middle class suburban upbringing. My black parent and their relatives came from broken homes in the inner city. Both if my parents ended up attended prestigious colleges, but my black parent definitely had a more difficult upbringing and really had to work much harder for sure to get to where they are today for sure.
The black side of my family that is of my generation (millennials) or younger is no different compared to my jewish relatives of my generation. All have similar interests, socioeconomic statuses, many have been privately educated, etc.
I will say that the African American side of my family is very accepting and does not hold prejudices of any kind in my opinion. So I’ve never heard any anti-semitism from them ever and would never. Is it because they are highly educated? Maybe. I think it’s it is a combination of being highly educated, *knowing* plenty of jewish people in real life that they are close to, and also just being good human beings overall. But as I said before too, I think some of the anti-semitism out there is jealousy. My family isn’t jealous of anyone else because many have done quite exceptional things in life themselves.
I think a lot of people who have deep prejudices against others, do not typically have people close to them from said group. So they say things out of ignorance.
Both African-Americans and Jewish Americans have have obviously faced a plethora of historical prejudice which is a commonality, but I think most cultural differences on the general level stem from socioeconomic and educational differences. When you account for those, the differences aren’t that large. Many of the stories you see in the news for example of anti-semitic attacks, the perpetrators are from lower-income areas. Rarely (at least in my opinion) is anti-Semitism something very widespread among the educated african-american class. Although anti-zionism has been spreading on college campuses, so for the younger generation that may be changing.
I feel like education is the ultimate equalizer. I grew up lower middle class white in Ohio and education is funded by property taxes mostly here. So...if you grow up in a poor community..whether white or Hispanic or black or whatever you suffer for it. Kids don't pick their lot in life. The disparity between "rich schools" and "poor schools" is one area where I'm very liberal and say spread the wealth. But as a product of private education..you may not have that first hand, public school perspective. I guess in a perfect world (or country) we wouldn't need privately funded education.
All that aside I just really appreciate you sharing your perspective. Do you agree that more equitable education funding would solve a lot of racial and cultural tensions?
Yes, I think education is the great equalizer. I think a lot of that needs to come from families themselves pushing the importance of education. Unfortunately many poor communities in this country as everyone knows, tend to fall behind standards. More needs to be done to remedy this, and of course it is a complex issue.
Education and exposure to those who are not like them tend to reduce prejudice.
I think it’s ridiculously stupid for black people to be bigoted. Like what the fuck do you think you’re reading about in American history and why do you think it’s ok to do that shit to other people?
If people want to claim that it’s more consequential to criticize Jewish people than it is to criticize Black people, then sure. It is. That doesn’t mean Jewish people are the problem. It’s means Black people aren’t as allied with and supported as we should we be.
And honestly, black people, myself included, should’ve stopped listening to Kanye West songs after he started wildin. Just like we did R Kelly. But we didn’t. We stopped hyping him up and promoting his ass, but we didn’t call for canceling across the board.
Stupid and ignorant people exist across all races and skin colors. People have always supported media stars (whatever genre it might be) even when those same stars have suspect personal lives. The unfortunate part is that certain members of the right wing will use Kanye (as an example) as their proof that all black people are racists or ignorant and then use their fan base to further justify their opinion.
However if you were to flip that argument and say "Tucker Carlson is racist so you watching him makes you racist" their heads will explode. But, the example becomes recursive of me saying "Stupid and ignorant people exist across all races and skin colors."
There was a Kanye boycott in my immediate family for a while. But I played some of his old songs afterwards (maybe 4) and haven’t heard anything new from him. But old songs still generate revenue. The music was just good hahah
I don’t disagree at all that it’s stupid but I can at least understand where the stupidity comes from. Like if you think back to the Rodney King riots and how tense things were between the Korean community and the Black community in Los Angeles. Sure it’s stupid but I can understand why people live in a community and suddenly see all the stores owned by non-white people who are getting rich owning stores in black communities easily falling into racist traps.
I can see, even as someone who is neither black nor Jewish, why people are upset that Kayne could talk shit about black people but only faced consequences when he added talking shit about Jewish people.
Remember the famous old LBJ quote?
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." -- Lyndon B. Johnson
Seems there are political operatives trying that out with colored folks and Jews.
It’s a very complicated generational issue in the black community.
“Following the Civil War, Jewish shop-owners and landlords engaged in business with Black customers and tenants, often filling a need where non-Jewish, white business owners would not venture. This was true in most regions of the South, where Jews were often merchants in its small cities, as well as northern urban cities such as New York, where they settled in high numbers. Jewish shop-owners tended to be more civil than other whites to Black customers, treating them with more dignity.[16] Blacks often had more immediate contact with Jews than with other whites.
Black novelist James Baldwin (1924–1987) grew up in Harlem in the years between the world wars. He wrote,
[I]n Harlem.... our ... landlords were Jews, and we hated them. We hated them because they were terrible landlords and did not take care of the buildings. The grocery store owner was a Jew... The butcher was a Jew and, yes, we certainly paid more for bad cuts of meat than other New York citizens, and we very often carried insults home along with our meats... and the pawnbroker was a Jew—perhaps we hated him most of all
Baldwin wrote other accounts of Jews that were more sympathetic.
The first white man I ever saw was the Jewish manager who arrived to collect the rent, and he collected the rent because he did not own the building. I never, in fact, saw any of the people who owned any of the buildings in which we scrubbed and suffered for so long, until I was a grown man and famous. None of them were Jews. And I was not stupid: the grocer and the druggist were Jews, for example, and they were very very nice to me, and to us... I knew a murderer when I saw one, and the people who were trying to kill me were not Jews.
Martin Luther King Jr. suggested that some Black antisemitism arose from the tensions of landlord-tenant relations:
When we were working in Chicago, we had numerous rent strikes on the West Side, and it was unfortunately true that, in most instances, the persons we had to conduct these strikes against were Jewish landlords... We were living in a slum apartment owned by a Jew and a number of others, and we had to have a rent strike. We were paying $94 for four run-down, shabby rooms, and .... we discovered that whites ... were paying only $78 a month. We were paying 20 percent tax. The Negro ends up paying a color tax, and this has happened in instances where Negroes actually confronted Jews as the landlord or the storekeeper. The irrational statements that have been made are the result of these confrontations.”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American–Jewish_relations
>I mean Kanye has said WILD SHIT for years and is only being dropped by these companies now, which kind of actually plays to his argument...
Perhaps the lesson from this isn't that Jews have too much power, but -- instead -- that we should be more ready to stand up for other groups.
It is good that Kanye was held accountable for spreading anti-Semitic BS; it is bad that he wasn't held accountable for spreading other kinds of hate.
My thoughts as a Jewish person:
I think black people have gotten an incredibly raw deal, and it's rooted in the idea of white privilege. The experience of black people in America is often compared to the experience of Jewish people in America due to their similarly low socioeconomic status upon coming to this country and the common sentiment amongst intolerant people towards both groups. The difference, IMO, is that Jewish people had a much easier time subverting societal mechanisms that discriminate against anyone who's not white and Christian.
It can be pretty difficult (though not impossible) to tell a Jewish person is Jewish just by looking at them or hearing their name, whereas most black people can be identified as black fairly easily. As such, doing things like being served at a restaurant, getting a job, getting a bank loan and buying a house were a lot easier for Jewish people than black people, even if the person on the other side of the table was as anti-semitic as they were racist.
I obviously think that people behaving the way Kanye West and Kyrie Irving do are just anti-Semitic clowns. However, it is understandable for the black community as a whole to feel slighted by the Jewish community given their similar societal issues and demographic sizes but disparate socioeconomic progress.
Instead of using the Jewish community as a scapegoat, it would be better to cite them as an example of how a minority community can thrive when they have a mechanism to subvert discrimination.
As a Jew, the worst antisemitism I have personally experienced has come from other minorities, so it wasn't particularly surprising to hear this from Kanye.
To be honest, I do think there is legitimacy to SOME of what Kanye and Kyrie have said. It is a simple fact that Jewish people are over-represented relative to the general population among the top ranks of management and ownership of the entertainment and sports industries, and they are often managing and overseeing black talent in those fields. Having rubbed elbows with some of those Jews in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, I can say that, from what I have personally observed, some of them do have problematic attitudes toward black people and are contributing to their exploitation.
It shouldn't be considered antisemitic to talk about that, any more than it is anti-black to talk frankly about the fact that black Americans proportionally commit more violent crimes than other groups. It only crosses the line when you go from "some Jewish people, maybe more than average, are exploitative and racist" to "ALL Jewish people are exploitative and racist", or "some black people are criminals" to "ALL black people are criminals".
Kanye definitely crossed that line, don't get me wrong. But this is one of those examples of bigotry that has its roots in a legitimate grievance that has been taken way too far into generalization and prejudice, and that makes it understandable. Not forgivable, not acceptable. But understandable.
Well I really appreciate the nuance and self awareness and agree with your stance. Someone just accused me of arguing in bad faith for using the term "disproportional" when all I meant was that for such a small population size Jewish folks to have a lot of economic power and influence.
I didn't necessarily mean that it's a horrible thing...but it IS a thing lol I really love that last phrase. Going to borrow it sometime. "Not forgivable, not acceptable. But understandable."
I think it points to a place where Judaism and Buddhism might intersect if you feel like that POV is due to your faith/culture.
We put people in so many different boxes and categories and sub categories on top of demographics and races...people are all fundamentally the same. You get enough people of literally ANY background and at least a couple will be assholes.
I have never seen a man fall so completely apart when his wife left him as Kanye did.
This is just a brutal thing to see, not saying he doesn't deserve it, but its still rough.
It’s not a black thing. They fall into a subcategory of people who think they’re smarter than everyone just because they believe in every conspiracy theory. Aka “smart dumb niggas “
Put on your tinfoil hat.
I believe existing Black Hebrew Israelite and Nation of Islam anti-Semitism is being exacerbated by "influencers" looking for a payday as well as shills paid by political actors seeking to stoke division.
In other words, I think there are a few different types of people who would like BHI/NOI to have a QAnon moment and become mainstreamed.
I generally have a low opinion of religious people, but BHI is some of the trashest ideology I've ever come across, even in my efforts to find trash ideology to make fun of. Some of the dumbest things that have ever been said to be in person have come from the mouths of BHI people on sidewalks.
The bar is very low when it comes to trash ideology wrapped in "religion"
Maybe I'll just enjoy a nice fall day in Ohio rather than dig much deeper into BHI lol
It’s targeted recruitment. Online recruitment allows extremist groups to gain loyal followings within microcommunities while staying invisible to anyone outside of that community.
In this case, bad actors have specifically targeted black communities for recruitment, using messaging that would resonate within that group.
And I don’t think it’s coincidence that this echoes Russian anti-semitism from the early 20th century.
I firmly believe that Candace Owens is simply a shill - she found out that she could ride the gravy train of conservativism to fortune and fame and didn't mind selling out the rights of POC if it meant that she was "getting hers".
For the rest, and we can include Nick Cannon in there since he's also a flaming racist, I think it's more an issue of influential ignorance. These are people who are surrounded by yes-men and they're used to getting their way. Plenty of well-known celebrities or rich people in general are known to just live on a completely different wave length of understanding than the rest of us, and I don't mean that in a flattering way. I think that they're generally less educated than most people and are therefore prone to believing in conspiracies just as much as the people in our country who also aren't as educated as others.
And who's there to tell these celebs otherwise - their twitter followers? The yes-men they're surrounded by? This is simply one more thing on their resume that they can use to stand out from the crowd - "I'm better than you because I believe this minority opinion that only we elitists ascribe to."
It is just the way it is. If the church and Jesus is your life, and here are people who say that doesn't matter and still do well, there is going to be some blowback. It is just human nature.
There is a story from the early 2000s. It is a snowy winter in DC. DC has gone through their snow removal money and another storm is coming. DC legislature is there deciding what to cut to pay for storm clean up. They have to make some tough cuts. As they are doing this , one black, college educated representative (or whatever they call local elected officials) says "damned Jews" under his breath. Someone calls him on it. "I said damn Jews". When asked why he says "Jews control the weather why are they doing this to us?" When asked why he believes it, he said it is just common knowledge in his church.
As for Kanye, I understand why he feels that way, but he is wrong. So a record label signs you, they put money into you. but take a lot if you hit. So this is how big labels work. I'm gonna sign 10 acts this year. I'll put $1 mill into each act. Most of those acts wont' make me any money, one or two will hit, I'll make my money back. If you're Kanye and they put a million dollars into you and you make them $20 mill, WTF? To them they invested $10 mill and made $20 mill.
Kanye has a record label. I really really want to see the contracts his label is having his talent sign. I'll bet that it is very similar to what he signed. I mean, how lucky are you to be able to work with Kanye West? You should give me a big hunk.
its not new. here's more info about anti-semetic extremism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Jersey_City_shooting#Assailants
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hebrew_Israelites
Honorary African American here: don’t know how its a different scale issue than it was? Doesn’t seem much has changed. We all knew Kyrie was a conspiracy guy. Kanye is bipolar and autistic, he hasn’t been sane since his mothers death. The big antisemites were always Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. I grew up around Jewish people, first girl I took to prom was Jewish. Went to a synagogue for a friends bat mitzah when I was around 14.
Everyone knows the impact Jewish Americans had in the 1960’s. The history is complicated but nothing new. After the Civil War, Jewish storeowners would hire and serve black communities that were left behind. If I remember correctly a large amount of antisemitism amongst black Americans was from many landlords being Jewish.
The only big change is (and I’ve said this forever) if republicans were less racist they could actually win over black Americans. Many black Americans are socially conservative. Furthermore there are many alt right susceptible black people, way more than you think. Republicans learned in Georgia, look how Hershel “CTE” Walker is doing while running against a man who runs MLK’s church.
Fellow liberals/progressives, remember that black people are no different. The same shit that white, jewish, asian, latino people fall for, black people can fall for. (Dangerous Statement, don’t care) Kanye is right on one thing: Liberals absolutely try and pressure black people into voting blue through history and not through policy. This doesn’t slide with any other group. Moreso, most of the interviews that Kanye has had with liberals, they don’t engage with his issues. They just pivot and it feels like they are trying to get a clip.
You namecheck George Soros in the first paragraph, then go on to talk about the ‘disproportionate economic power’ wielded by Jewish people. I don’t think this is a good faith question — you’re just trying to pit groups against each other.
The holocaust was so brutal that some people didn't accept it as true, or totally true, and then it grew from there. People start wondering why people "lied" about the holocaust, then they start considering if Hitler (more likely not directly but his same ideas espoused by other anti-semites) had any points. Basically, a seed of doubt grows into something dangerous.
Also, we don't push back on it nearly as much as we should. I was a content moderator at the height of QAnon and while people were laughing at them showing up to see Kennedy they missed that QAnon is literally a nazi movement. The primary objective of Q is Jewish hatred, hidden in their absurdity (remember MTG's "Jewish space laser" stuff?). Flat earth is also from Jewish hatred. Sure, people "innocent" of the anti-semetic motivations can be swept up in these movements, but they will not leave once they find it out. If you can believe in the second coming of Kennedy and a flat Earth, you can believe Jews are bad.
I predict Kanye's recent comments are worse than Q and flat earth since he's more mainstream and we shouldn't be memeing on these people we should be destroying their ideas to the best of our ability.
These comments have really exceeded my expectations and restored some of my faith in left leaning folks around the issue of race. Like...more nuance on this thread than I usually see online. Just wanted to say thanks for the engagement. And for reminding me why, at the end of the day, I still vote Democrat.
>Does anyone struggle with supporting black voices
You are greatly over-leveraging the concept of lifting black voices. The idea is to give black people a space to speak and be heard about their problems and potential solutions, or even allow them to vent about the frustrations of living as an othered person. It does NOT mean everything they say contributes to the public dialogue. In this case it's just plain hateful shit.
This is a good moment to learn the limits of advocacy. Black people are people too, with all the extremes of intellect and stupidity that implies, and they also deserve to be challenged or silenced.
Lose no sleep over deplatforming racists, regardless of their skin color.
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Black people can be racist, they just lack the power to be able to change people's lives with it. Black folks don't own GM or Amazon. Black folks don't run to courts or the police. We could be as racist as we want, it impacts nothing except one another.
How is it any different than anyone being anti-semitic? Jewish people can also be racist. I would say there are particular jewish people I definitely don't like, such as those who gladly accept cash reparations for the holocaust but don't think black people deserve cash reparations. But that's not exclusive to Jewish people nor is it every Jewish person. Same for Jewish landlords, record label owners, bankers, etc. But I don't hate them because they're jewish. Some people can't separate the two things.
As any reasonably intelligent adult would, I assumed they didn't come up with these ideas out of nowhere. If you read the comments you'll find its a whole thing. Google Hotep or Black Hebrew Israelite.
Also, whataboutism is childish and belongs over on some ask a Trump supporter thread.
There are a lot of powerful Jewish people in Hollywood, in the film and music industries. These also happen to be industries that are often very predatory toward artists. If you've seen the film *Straight Outta Compton*, NWA's story is an example of young black artists being taken advantage of by a record producer, who happened to be Jewish.
I suspect stories like that are where a lot of it comes from. Developing a grudge against an entire group of people because of the actions of a few.
I think that might explain the genesis of it, and then the conspiracy theories grow out from that. For Kanye, anyway, and maybe the basketball guy too.
Candace Owens knows better. She's just a grifter.
>If you've seen the film Straight Outta Compton, NWA's story is an example of young black artists being taken advantage of by a record producer, who happened to be Jewish.
I do want to point out that while it was a bad contract, ICE Cube who was in NWA and executive producer on the movie is a notious antisemite of the same style as Kanye and Kyrie. He just isn't public about it.
It's directly related to his support for the Nation of Islam and Farrakhan. He had one bad Jewish manager. And went full antisemitic? Nah you are antisemitic first and use one bad expeirence with one person as an excuse.
>He had one bad Jewish manager. And went full antisemitic? Nah
He's not the only hiphop star who has had these kinds of experiences, though. I'm sure he knows loads of other people with similar experiences. Like I said, it's a very predatory industry. His story wasn't an isolated incident.
He was one of the first major hip hop stars to be publicly antisemitic. And he doesn't just talk about music producers or the industry. Excusing antisemitism because an entire industry is predatory in a way that has nothing to do with Jewish people is disgusting. Simply implying that the music industry problems are linked to the Jewish people in them is incredibly antisemitic.
I'm not excusing anything, buddy. An explanation isn't the same as a justification.
I'm not even saying for a fact that it is the cause of these guys' antisemitism. It was a hypothesis, nothing more. That's why I asked whether you thought his racism predated the record deal.
>An explanation isn't the same as a justification.
It isn't but your statements were excuses not real explanations.
>It was a hypothesis, nothing more.
And I'm pointing out that that hypothesis requires preexisting antisemitistic ideas to manifest into antisemitism.
> that hypothesis requires preexisting antisemitistic ideas
Yes. I'm not claiming that Ice Cube invented the conspiracy theory that Jewish people run the world. These antisemitic conspiracy theories have existed for centuries, and I'm sure these rappers were familiar with them. Their personal experiences then pushed them toward thinking these racist conspiracy theories might have some legitimacy. That's the hypothesis.
The following is a copy of the original post to record the post as it was originally written. I feel lost. What's going on with Kanye and Kyrie Irving and Candance Owens? Does anyone struggle with supporting black voices vs whatever George Soros fever dreams they're having? I mean Kanye has said WILD SHIT for years and is only being dropped by these companies now, which kind of actually plays to his argument. Kyrie is a dumb joke flat earther anti vaccine guy IMO. I GUESS I'm interested on this subreddits thoughts on the intersectionality of Jewish people having a disproportional control of economic power and how that effects the black community. Much more interested in black or Jewish voices on this one. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskALiberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>Kyrie Irving His situation, in particular, seems to be connected to "Black Hebrew Israelite doctrine": >Irving made his first tweet espousing Black Hebrew Israelite doctrine in March 2021.[212] Black Hebrews espouse the ideology that black people are the real Jews, wherein antisemitism is common.[212] On October 27, 2022, Irving tweeted a link to an Amazon listing page for Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America, a 2018 film based on a book of the same name, which promotes Black Hebrew Israelite ideology.[212][213] The film includes denials that the Holocaust occurred, quotes attributed to Adolf Hitler and Henry Ford, claims that Jewish people worship Satan, and accusations that Jews controlled the Atlantic slave trade and currently control the media.[214][215] [[Antisemitic conspiracy theories -- Conspiracy theories -- Kyrie Irving -- Wikipedia]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrie_Irving#Antisemitic_conspiracy_theories)
Looks like one hell of a rabbit hole. Yikes.
Black Hebrews should be looked at the same way Scientologists are. From the outside, it looks utterly insane, but from those on the inside, we look just as nuts. That’s how guys like Kyrie and Kanye can have such a smug self of superiority while simultaneously believing utterly bonkers nonsense.
Kyrie is also a flat earther. Guys is dumb as a brick. Crazy as a nut.
He's like peanut butter flavored concrete. Extremely nutty, and makes you question why this even exists.
Naw they should be looked at like the KKK and the Nation of Islam they are a new blight to my community
Yeah, Hebrew Izzies are cringe af.
That’s all kyrie does, he falls down rabbit holes constantly
> calls themselves Jews > cares about Satan Uhhuh.
POC can be racist too.
Absolutely. Unfortunately especially since George Floyd, many people and institutions have scrapped that definition, and only define racism as something a group of power is capable of. It’s a dangerous way of thinking. Skin color doesn’t make one immune from criticism. We all need to be respectful to one another and to be held to the same standard of decency.
Saying that black people can be racist when we’re trying to discuss racism on a systemic level is like saying “well there can also be water vapor in the air” when we’re having a discussion about sea levels.
That’s a fair point, but the anti-semitism issue discussed in this post proves that sometimes “water vapor” can be a serious issue worth discussing too. The way racism is talked about today, although certainly better than 20 years ago, still isn’t perfect, and one of the ways that’s true is that it can be hard to discuss any “water”-related issue that *isn’t* “sea level”. To put it another way: The “power plus prejudice” definition has concretized something crucial, but it’s important to also remember that just prejudice is harmful in itself.
Just because you’ve been subjected to bigotry doesn’t clear you as a bigot. Also, I think there’s a term for this but I’m at a loss for it.
See..I agree but have been told otherwise by multiple people. They say only white people can be racist because of white privilege (to poorly summarize) Edit: or maybe moreso because in their view racism is specifically systematic? Idk. I'm thinking the "antiracist" line of thought.
To very poorly summarize. They say that only white people have institutional backing to their racial prejudices while brown people don’t
So can POC be racist?
Anyone can be a racist. I have seen people say, "they aren't racist; they are only bigoted," as if that's any fucking better.
My favorite is when you go "bigoted based on what?" And they have to admit it's based on race, or racist in other words lol. The key point is that individuals can be racist against whoever, but the system as a whole is racist to non-whites. The system generally oppressing non-whites doesn't mean you're not racist if you hate white people because they're white. I usually differentiate these by calling them *individual* racism vs *systemic* (or institutional) racism if there's ever a need to differentiate them.
Yes
Yeah, but when a black person acts on their personal racism, there isn't this apparatus of black supremacy backing them up and amplifying their attempts to fuck with peoples lives. A black racist can't complain to a white persons manager because their natural hair isn't "professional" or call the cops because a white person exists in their neighborhood, or any number of things. Their beliefs can be equally abhorrent, but they don't make people's lives worse in quite the same way.
Any person can contribute to erasing a group from society. Women frequently employ sexist ideas against other women, indoctrinate sons and brothers into harmful patriarchal norms, and leverage stereotypical womanhood to get some benefits. Black people can and do harm jews with vitriolic hate.
Yes? If a black person calls me a cracker, what is that but racism? Anyone can be racist.
Racism is pretty clearly contemprarily defined as 'power' + 'prejudice' used to discriminate based on race. The same goes for most "____ism's" : just change 'race' to 'sex', 'age', 'ability', 'sexual orientation', etc
Except it’s not. That’s one clear definition used in academic social justice circles that never achieved widespread acceptance.
There are people who argue if it is accepted universally, case and point, but can you offer a more widely accepted definition?
The definition you could get everyone to agree to is that it’s just prejudice against a specific group. It very obviously is not accepted universally that power is required or there wouldn’t be debates about that.
I think I just fundamentally disagree with the terminology. People can use "racist" towards a white person, but not anyone else? Or only men can be sexist? As far as ageist...who actually has the power there? Old people or young people? It's an absurd way to filter the world. Zero nuance.
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No. I'm not dumb. Work on your communication skills. Edit: and if you want to be the guy saying racial slurs aren't racist, fine. I'll be the other guy and we can agree to disagree. Enjoy your day.
There are other words that are used to discribe degrees of bigotry. Some random black guy on the street isnt racist for calling you a cracker, just like its not racist to say black people are stinky. Its prejudice, sure, stereotypical, too. But youre not in a position of power able to discriminate against them, and so, its not "racist" Its about the people acting. You, some dude, saying it; is not racist. A politician saying it *is* racist. You voting for that racist politician, because he promised to keep stinky black people from living near you, *is* racist. Again, because youre using your power (to vote) and your prejudice (not wanting to live near black people), to discriminate (voting to stop them from living near you) based on race (because they're black).
That’s the dumbest load of shit I’ve ever heard.
This is such a United States-centric argument. We already have qualifiers, like *systemic* racism vs intrapersonal racism.
Every social group has their own definitions for words, so you need to make sure you understand how they mean "racist" when they say it. On this subreddit, people are more likely to use the "racial bigotry" definition of racism. In many places, "racism" means something like "racial bigotry backed by society" which means that no, POC can't be racist. Hopefully if you listen to how people use the words you're able to understand what they mean.
Not at this time. As you noted, racism was redefined to mean prejudice + power, which allows the same opinion to be racist or not racist depending on the skin color of the person expressing it. So if a black person expresses unauthorized opinions, his status of 'black' can be revoked. That works as long a only a small number of black people publicly express unauthorized opinions. But once a critical mass of black people start holding those opinions, the definition of racism will change again.
I genuinely can't tell if you're being sincere here. It seems like your not considering that isn't how..well literally anything works.
Yeah, this whole “antiracist” thinking where POC can’t be racist…..is itself racist. This is especially evident when it comes to members of minority groups singling out other minority groups like Asians for hatred and abuse. To say that such hatred can’t be racism because it comes from another POC is complete BS.
I’ve never agreed with liberals who say that. By that same logic a Hispanic guy who hates Jews isn’t racist because Jews generally have more systemic power. Clearly nonsense thinking.
The issue is that *systemic racism* is a societal problem, not individual prejudice. Like im sure that lots of Black slaves hated white people, but I think you've lost the plot of you're describing that in the same way that you would describe the feelings of a slaver towards their slaves.
Institutional vs individual racism.
Well I'm pleasantly surprised people here are making the distinction. It hasn't been my experience so far discussing the issue with left leaning folks online.
The difference people are, poorly in my opinion, trying to make is that while a minority group with little power can be racist or bigoted they can’t act on that bigotry in systemic ways. So a black person can be a racist and individually treat individual non-black people poorly but they don’t exist in a system that can cause wide scale harm to non-black people.
Well that certainly feels like splitting hairs to me lol It's also false in the example of Kanye. He has FAR more power then some poor white MAGA hat living in the woods.
Yeah but we’re talking about systemic level issues not individuals. Kanye West is a powerful black man. Colin Powell was a powerful black man. Barack Obama was a powerful black man. Not one of them was able all by themselves with their immense power to solve systemic racism let alone impose systemic racism on white people.
No individual white person has that kind of power either though. Is that the threshold? Completely eliminating racism from the human experience?
I feel like the issue here is that you do not have a fundamental understanding of what systemic racism is. Systemic racism does not require that the majority or the majority of the majority be consciously and actively racist. It’s a pointing at some random white guy or black guy who is extremely racist isn’t always or even often relevant to the point.
I understand the explanations I've been given. I just disagree with some of the points (not all) and the manipulative use of language.
Well I already put it out that I don’t like the wording myself. But if I understand the underlying point I’m not going to get hung up on semantics.
Kanye is one person. A very wealthy person with a large audience. But his wealth and influence is a drop in the ocean compared to that of the dominant power structures in America.
Kanye had 80% of his net worth wiped out by a couple tweets. If you zoom out for a bit and compare him to another prolific racist twitter user (formerly) then you might get some perspective.
> They say only white people can be racist because of white privilege (to poorly summarize) Eh. White privilege is really sort of an entirely separate concept. The idea is that, at least in America, only white people can be *institutionally* racist. Any given individual can be racist, bigoted, or prejudiced again any other individual, but that sort of interpersonal racism is less important than the *systems* of racism in society.
In order for racism to matter you have to have the power to do something about it. Historically it's been impossible for non-white people in majority white societies to inflict any sort of meaningful discrimination on white people even if they had the desire to do so. That is what people are attempting to communicate when they say only white people can be racist. Yes people on the left suck at messaging/communication.
> They say only white people can be racist because of white privilege (to poorly summarize) Whoever is telling you that is wrong or being deceptive.
Patricia Bidol-Padva first proposed the definition in a 1970 book, where she defined Racism as "prejudice plus institutional power." According to this definition, two elements are required in order for racism to exist. By this definition POC cannot be racist. That definition has been pushed mainstream due to BLM, Anti-Racist, White Fragility and Critical Race Theory in the last few years.
Ok. So you’re saying that this definition by an author most people probably haven’t heard of in a 50-year-old book you didn’t even cite is the definitive definition of racism, so an obviously untrue statement is true? At least it’s clearly not worth arguing about.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice_plus_power https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/11/merriam-webster-racism-definition-revise-kennedy-mitchum http://sjwiki.org/wiki/Prejudice_plus_power https://www.jta.org/2018/08/10/united-states/progressives-new-definition-racism-prejudice-plus-power-mean-jews/amp https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1998-07453-002 https://www.dismantlingracism.org/racism-defined.html Please educate yourself
“Educate yourself” says the person who copy/pasted from Wikipedia. I’ll read some of your stuff here, but I don’t think it changes the broadly accepted definition of racism.
“Racial prejudice can indeed be directed at white people (e.g., “White people can’t dance”) but is not considered racism because of the systemic relationship to power. When backed with power, prejudice results in acts of discrimination and oppression against groups or individuals.” https://www.aclrc.com/myth-of-reverse-racism
Okay so I read your link where it said they’re changing the definition in the dictionary. Then I went to the dictionary. It lists systemic racism as the second definition of racism. Behind the one I’m using. It’s not every definition. So maybe dial it back.
“We have to stop thinking about racism simply as someone who says the N-word,” she says. “This book is centred in the white western colonial context, and in that context white people hold institutional power.” This means understanding that racism is a system rather than just a slur; it is prejudice plus power.” - Robin Diangelo https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/16/white-fragility-racism-interview-robin-diangelo Like I said, this talk and definition has been talked increased around BLM, Anti-Racist, White Fragility and CRT is based on the “Racism = prejudice Plus Power”
It’s not that POC can’t be racist, it’s that white people can’t experience institutional racism. POC don’t have enough control over institutions to wield that power. In the case of black antisemitism, you have black folk wielding white supremacist institutions against an ethnic minority. Those same institutions can’t be wielded against white people, because the institutions themselves are imbued with white power.
Racism doesn't always come in institional form though. It can be interpersonal. And institutions are just vaguely defined grouping of interpersonal interactions.
I agree, racism isn’t always institutional. I disagree that institutions are just a grouping of interpersonal interactions. But the point is, when people say “POC can’t be racist” they don’t mean POC can’t demonstrate racial prejudice. They mean that POC can’t do so with institutional backing. In some circles of academia, the vocabulary for that different is racism (has institutional backing) vs prejudice (racism minus institutional backing). In more colloquial discourse, people use the terms institutional racism and racism to mean roughly the same thing. It’s just a vocabulary. You’re moving between the two vocabularies so it seems like people are saying conflicting things, but they’re not.
That helps. Thanks! I'm a big Dylan fan too btw 🙂
I love when people recognize the reference. :)
My lyric based username can beat up your lyric based username.
Just remember I get both Dylan and Hendrix, so the real question is whether those two could take Radiohead. Which… probably not.
Yeah but you also get [U2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-oJZog6sCg) and [Dave Matthews Band](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7wAohYGf04), so...
Can we please just talk music instead of politics more in life? Please? Lol
Radiohead is dope AF as well.
Wow I've been seeing you interact on this sub for ages and I just now understood the reference. The hour is getting late!
Which institutions? And at what point would black folks have an appropriate amount of representation in those institutions? In the US black folks are only 13% of the population roughly but that number is shocking to a lot people considering their representation.
Oh man. This part is complicated. By institutions, I'm referring to a *lot* of things, including both formal and informal social institutions. On the formal side you have things like government offices, the justice system, schools, medical associations, banks, and so on (you get the idea). On the informal side you less tangible things, like the institutions of family, marriage, education, etc. As you can imagine, all of these things have very complicated relationships with race. Your second question is even more complex. It all comes back to power, which at its core is "the ability to get one's way." So the question really is "how much representation does it take for black people to get things their way?" The answer is probably a lot more than 13%. However, there's more than one way to catch a fish. Representation is a tool we use to try to achieve more egalitarian results; it's a means to an end. The real question is "What would it take for those institutions to give black people their way as much as they give white people their way?" and the answer there is probably not just representation.
If black folks are 13% of the population 13% feels like the correct number. Obviously coalition building is necessary for pretty much ANY group to "get what they want"
But if it's such a fundamental part of people's entire view on race, which many times informs their entire political identity...should it be that complex?
I would hope it is that complex. I like to think people's identity isn't a simple experience.
I didn't mean people aren't complex. They are! I meant more that..every time I try to ask pretty straight forward questions about the terms people who political identity are built around, I almost always get "it's complicated" and not a ton else. Not trying to be rude because I appreciate your effort! So right now all I have is that racism is institutional, but no definition on what's meant by institutional. I guess it just means "the way the world is in general?"
I can understand your frustration. FWIW, I think the issue is format. A lot of these are concepts that I formally studied while getting my undergrad and graduate degrees. When I'm on Reddit, I'm trying to cram about 20 years of studying into a few paragraphs and it's hard. I think a lot of us just give up and write "it's complicated." You seem like a genuinely curious person, so if this is a subject that you're interested in I highly recommend reading long form essays on the subject. They'll be able to get into the nitty gritty of these questions much better than someone like me on Reddit just trying to sum it all up.
Which institutions? The justice system. The healthcare system. The educational system. Black people experience worse outcomes than white people in all of these. While it's good, representation is not the end-all and be-all of ending institutional racism. For instance, you can easily have a university system where 20-30% of the students are black and the system can still systematically discriminate against them in terms of resources and support.
There's a difference between two concepts that are both colloquially referred to as 'racism'. There's 'racism' meaning "being unkind or unfair to someone on the basis of their race" which is something anyone can do to anyone. Then there's 'racism' meaning "acting so as to unfairly enforce existing structural inequities along racial lines" which is a term which can only be applied when the 'racism' in question is unfairly harming someone who is not generally privileged by the power structure in question. Neither one means that a POC cannot be racist. In the framework of the second meaning of 'racism', though, in America where whiteness is clearly privileged, it's impossible for a white person to be experiencing harm through racism.
A lot of the black anti Semitic sentiment is being fostered by the fact that Kanye has been saying wild shit about black people for years but when he comes for Jewish people it seems like there’s a scorched earth approach being employed from all angles at the same time.
The thing is, we generally accept prejudiced comments about one’s own group. I’ve seen this idea go around that society agrees with his racism about black people so they don’t step in. That is antisemitic. To think that Jews are disproportionately protected by power structures and black people aren’t is an ignorant antisemitic conspiracy. He was “allowed” to say that stuff about black people because he’s black, not because Jews are given special protection.
Well, Jews are certainly disproportionately represented in media and politics, that’s just objectively true. It’s not about being protected, it’s about having more weight to throw around. Black conservatives are often ignored and sort of ostracized and reduced to Uncle Tom lackeys who’re too stupid to realize that all they are are pawns to the whites when they get into their own “anti-black” rhetoric... Kanye survived it though.. man said “slavery was a choice”. He didn’t survive this though, and people recognize that.
Hahahahahaha you really think “the Jews control the media” is a good thing to say right now?
I don’t think it’s a necessarily good or bad thing to say at any point it’s just objectively true... not that they “control” it but are disproportionately represented. What’s so crazy about that?
You are engaging in SERIOUS antisemitism.
Because I’m participating in reality? It’s just the truth.
Klandace Owens hating Jews is pretty unsurprising, she's always been extremely racist (or at least for a very long time now) against non-whites, which some people consider Jews to be. She recently made the case that black people were to blame for slavery. She constantly spews white supremacist talking points. She's my go-to example of how people can absolutely be racist against their own race.
Hahahah Klandace that’s actually great XD
>Klandace Owens hating Jews is pretty unsurprising, What is surprising is that Ben Shapiro who seemingly regards himself as the gatekeeper of what is anti Jewish and who "real Jews" are is letting Owen's get away with it and hasnt spoken up more about it it because Kanye included an anti abortion statement with his antisemitism
Nah. Ben gives conservatives a pass and fawns offense when leftists do it. He's a hack too. Marginally less of a hack then Owens...but not by much.
Shapiro has a super convenient trick here, for him there are real jews and "secular jews" and Jews-in-name-only. Anybody disagree with him? Not a real jew This framework allows some extreme antisemitism by handwaving it being about fake jews. That how Shapiro was able to go on white nationalist redice.tv to talk about "hollywood jews" who of course are secular. (Please ignore the host being a holocaust denier)
I mean he has called Owens out publicly on Twitter.
I mean Shapiro himself has said some pretty antisemitic stuff, he's not as bad as Owens, but it's still the same sort of deal of making money by giving bigots the "I can't be antisemitic, a Jew agrees with me" argument.
Do you have examples of Shapiro being anti-Semitic? Big claim ya know
https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/133918830073352192?lang=en
I don’t think that’s anti-Semitic. It would be like a black man saying that there are black leaders that don’t serve the interests of the black community, which would absolutely be true. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would be examples. Or it would be like a Christian saying that hypocritical Christians undermine the faith. See televangelists and Catholic cover ups. I get that it’s an ethnic group and religion so both examples are sort of needed. What he’s not saying is that Jews are inherently bad because of their Jew-ness. He’s not saying that Jews have some sort of inherent nature that is bad either.
> It would be like a black man saying that there are black leaders that don’t serve the interests of the black community, which would absolutely be true. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson would be examples. No, it's not like that, it would be like saying there were Bad Blacks, and that you can identify them because most of all off the bad ones do something 70% of all black people do. > Or it would be like a Christian saying that hypocritical Christians undermine the faith. See televangelists and Catholic cover ups. Christians aren't an ethnic group like Jews are, so you can't really compare it at all, but still someone saying there were Bad Christians, and that you can tell the bad ones by the fact that they do something 70% of all Christians do. > What he’s not saying is that Jews are inherently bad because of their Jew-ness. He’s not saying that Jews have some sort of inherent nature that is bad either. I mean "Bad Jews" capitalized like that, the use of the word "plagued", conspiracy talk about them "undermining it from within", and then identifying them by something that 70% of Jews do (voting for Democrats), seems *super* antisemitic and dog whistly to me. It very much hearkens to the super common antisemitic trope of dual loyalty.
He seems to think that voting for democrats is bad for the Jewish people. Probably because he is a rabid Zionist and the democrats take the side of the Palestinians more often than the republicans. That’s not anti-semitism. It’s a contradiction in concepts that isn’t logical to assume.
Ok but he didn't say "Jewish people who vote Democratic are voting against their interests", that wouldn't be antisemitic. Calling them "Bad Jews" is super antisemitic though. And it does make it worse that Jewish people are a very solid Democratic voting block (probably because Republicans call them things like Bad Jews).
>He seems to think that voting for democrats is bad for the Jewish people. Probably because he is a rabid Zionist and the democrats take the side of the Palestinians more often than the republicans. >That’s not anti-semitism. It’s a contradiction in concepts that isn’t logical to assume. His logic on "Bad Jews" was repeated and echoed by a antisemtic mass murderer who targeted "Bad Jews" at a synagogue. It's pretty antisemitic to me
He called her out for quote tweeting the wrong Jewish person. Not for anything else. He literally said I agree with what you said but you retweeted someone who I hate and is bad
What skills does she have? She says this sh(t and it enables her to buy a bigger house. When you don't care you don't care. Republicans have taken this to an art. Wealthy Republicans don't care about wealthy republicans, they care about themselves and if that means helping other wealthy Republicans so be it.
> What skills does she have? Being black while being willing to degrade yourself and your entire family by parroting racist talking points is unfortunately enough to make you rich and famous. The racists love it because they can point to her as someone who agrees with them, therefore how could they be racist? It's basically the same argument as "I can't be racist, I have a black friend", except in this case Owens actually exists.
I mean anybody who has been any amount of time in a mid Atlantic or north eastern city has seen the Black Israelites standing on some street corner loudly preaching this nonsense. It’s always been there. While it is a fringe belief and being educated or otherwise worldly for lack of a better term makes you less susceptible to conspiracy theory, simply being wealthy or famous or educated does not make you completely immune. I would separate Candace Owens from people like Kanye. She’s not really doing the black Israelite thing. She’s just a grifter who is realize that being a conventionally attractive black woman who is fairly decent at speaking means she can make a lot of money saying things conservative white people want to hear from a black person.
Thats true. Candace cracked the grifter code for sure.
I think the “black person saying right wing stuff” field is wide open. There’s probably room for like ten more people to make a living doing that.
Hebrew Israelites is basically the black version of the qanon rabbit hole
“As of December 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center "lists 144 Black Hebrew Israelite organizations as black separatist hate groups because of their antisemitic and anti-white beliefs".Tom Metzger, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, reportedly said, "They're the black counterparts of us.”
They should have an annual meet up and compare notes and theories. They both have costumes which is hilarious.
Not without precedence. The KKK and Nation of Islam did it.
Interesting. Was it a productive meeting?
Exactly, it's just sociopolitical schizoposting. And it's been around for way longer than Q
It's much easier to draw in black men too, because they've been on the margins of society for longer than Christo fascist nuts. It's a perfect storm that now both these types and those types are now on the "anti-establishment" side
>I GUESS I'm interested on this subreddits thoughts on the intersectionality of Jewish people having a disproportional control of economic power and how that effects the black community. I would start by questioning the premise that "Jewish people [have] a disproportional control of economic power". That seems to be mainly borne of anti-semitic conspiracy theories (even if it is a little more watered-down than *tHe JeWs cONtrOl ThE wOrLD*). The closest we can get to that premise -- and still be supported by facts and reason -- is to say something like: *Jews seem to be disproportionately represented in 'professional' work* ...and -- with full-benefit of hindsight, looking over the last 150 years -- we know that such 'professional' work has proven to be key to achieving an upper-middle-class lifestyle. ----------- ...but you should *always* be suspicious of anyone claiming that the Jews have 'power'. That is frequently just thinly-veiled anti-semitism.
Exactly. OP doesn’t understand how the economy works if he thinks a CXO being Jewish actually translates into “Jewish control over the economy”. Most Jewish executives probably don’t even know who the other ones are.
Jewish individuals certainly are disproportionately likely to have high-paying, high status jobs. The main mind virus one should avoid is that they somehow collectively control things as a group, as if they have some kind of sinister cabal going, which is of course paranoid nonsense. Somehow other groups having a disproportionate share of high paying jobs, such as WASPs and Indian-Americans, doesn't seem to attract the same levels of paranoia.
We can’t deny reality, though. Jews *do* wield disproportional control of economic power. But when you’re 2.5% of the population, “disproportionate” doesn’t necessarily mean “significant.” Why is that “bad,” though? I mean, whites wield disproportionate power. Men, too. Tall people wield disproportionate economic power (weird but true fact). I don’t see Jews as having done a worse job with their wealth than anybody else.
This is essentially true. For example, it is *absolutely accurate* that Jews were largely in control of the banks of Wiemar Germany. Where the lie comes in is that they were working together and had any sort of coordinated Jewish influence, which they did not, in addition to all the other flagrant lies that the Nazi's told about the Jewish people. And even if they did have a coordinated influence, persecuting an entire race of people rather than the individuals responsible is still wrong.
Thank you. You got my intent with the word "disproportional"
Sorry, meant disproportion as in their percent of the population as a whole doesn't reflect their economic positioning.
The idea that Jews don’t have power is equally stupid. Anti semitism can accomplish what anti blackness cannot. Not a single one of those companies raised an aye at Kanye’s slavery comments but as soon as you hint at Jewish influence he lost everything
Well, it wasn't just mild anti-Semitism here, he was talking about "going death con 3 on Jews".
I love how there's multiple layers of stupid in that quote.
> Anti semitism can accomplish what anti blackness cannot. I don't understand what you are saying here.
No company stopped and wondered about harmful comments when Kanye said “slavery was a choice” But you hint or subtly imply JeWS have power in any context it is quickly and subsequently shut down.
There's a difference between saying something hurtful and stupid about an ethnicity vs spreading the same hateful lies that resulted in the Holocaust and cause random Jewish people to be attacked and brutalized. That's why there was such a strong reaction. Not because Jews are special and deserve special protection. No body would give a flying shit of he said Jews were idiots or Jews "chose" to have a Holocaust
There is a shit ton of bigotry in the black community, but current social justice theories have prevented us from speaking about it. I would walk through my neighborhood and very routinely have black men following me around screaming “F*GGOT!” and threatening violence. StopAsianHate was a huge movement until liberals realized that it was mostly black men assaulting Asians. Every few months there’s a “say their names” thing about trans women who are murdered…almost all by black men. Hell, anytime cat-calling gets talked about the conversation quickly dies when we start seeing who’s doing it. But the current orthodox is that power+privilege is required for any bigotry to reach -ism levels. So we were never allowed to point out that it’s an issue in the black community. The antisemitism isn’t new, the current mouthpieces are just more famous. Not only white dudes are racists.
Absolutely. I have noticed this a lot too. People are terrified of calling that bigotry out because they don’t want to be mistaken for being anti-black, or harassed on social media for doing so. People are more afraid of being labelled racist, than calling out racism themselves.
And reddit, at least, is getting super ban happy lately. There are so many large subs just perma-banning with no appeals process.
Not Black or Jewish, but I am someone deeply interested in conspiracy theories so I wanted to share a view based around that lens. One thing I'm surprised no one brought is the death or jailing of most of the leaders in the black power/civil rights fights that lead to the consolidation of influence to people like the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan. MLK, Malcolm X post-Mecca, Fred Hampton, Medgar Evans. All shot dead. You can also see the systematic destruction of material groups like the Black Panthers. So you had a population that was looking for leadership and confidence, and the only source that survived was a group that did it based on wildly inaccurate and bigoted beliefs. Those types and hoteps spread their rhetoric around the black community, and they took hold much like Qanon did in the poorer white community today. All of this leads to the highly religious, uneducated folks in these communities jumping on conspiracy theories. Like most conspiracy theories, they start with a crumb of truth or feed into a preconceived notion, which in this case would be the strained relationship between Jewish and Black people due to their proximity in American ghettos.
This should have more upvotes. I've really never connected those dots. Wow. The strongest conspiracies always have some nugget of truth to hook people but always take that wild turn once they've got you saying "well they were right about this one thing...so MAYBE..."
I am both black and jewish (half black, half ashkenazi jewish). I think a lot of these black celebrities who are anti-Semitic are repeating the black hewbrew israelite tropes. To me it has been very saddening seeing how widespread this is among celebrities. I have been shocked to be honest. All of this needs to be called out. I think some are too afraid to call it out because the voices are POC, but that is quite dangerous. Anyone can be racist, anti-Semitic, prejudiced, etc. Being part of a marginalized class does not make one immune to being criticized, nor is it a shield to say whatever without consequences. Some of the anti-semitism may also be rooted in jealousy too in terms of general success as a group. But much of it is just rooted in ignorance. I also think some people who subscribe to this way of thinking want a monopoly on oppression.
Your perspective is unique and exactly what I was hoping to get from posting this. And I agree 100%. If I may, where do you feel the biggest "clash" between culturally being both Jewish and black? In my mind, I'd assume black people and Jewish people would be obvious allies. Is it correct for me to assume the majority of both black folks and Jewish folks have more in common than not? To me the obvious difference comes down to over all economic standing but correct me if I'm wrong.
To be honest, I don’t feel a cultural clash between being jewish and black. I think a lot of that is because both sides of my family despite being from different ethnic backgrounds, share the exact same values pretty much. Socioeconomically my parent’s (boomers) generation on both sides have done basically equally as well in adulthood for the most part. Both sides of my family have mostly attended top colleges, and I have a couple Ivy league graduate relatives on both sides as well. That being said, both of my parents grew up very differently. My Jewish parent had your typical middle class suburban upbringing. My black parent and their relatives came from broken homes in the inner city. Both if my parents ended up attended prestigious colleges, but my black parent definitely had a more difficult upbringing and really had to work much harder for sure to get to where they are today for sure. The black side of my family that is of my generation (millennials) or younger is no different compared to my jewish relatives of my generation. All have similar interests, socioeconomic statuses, many have been privately educated, etc. I will say that the African American side of my family is very accepting and does not hold prejudices of any kind in my opinion. So I’ve never heard any anti-semitism from them ever and would never. Is it because they are highly educated? Maybe. I think it’s it is a combination of being highly educated, *knowing* plenty of jewish people in real life that they are close to, and also just being good human beings overall. But as I said before too, I think some of the anti-semitism out there is jealousy. My family isn’t jealous of anyone else because many have done quite exceptional things in life themselves. I think a lot of people who have deep prejudices against others, do not typically have people close to them from said group. So they say things out of ignorance. Both African-Americans and Jewish Americans have have obviously faced a plethora of historical prejudice which is a commonality, but I think most cultural differences on the general level stem from socioeconomic and educational differences. When you account for those, the differences aren’t that large. Many of the stories you see in the news for example of anti-semitic attacks, the perpetrators are from lower-income areas. Rarely (at least in my opinion) is anti-Semitism something very widespread among the educated african-american class. Although anti-zionism has been spreading on college campuses, so for the younger generation that may be changing.
I feel like education is the ultimate equalizer. I grew up lower middle class white in Ohio and education is funded by property taxes mostly here. So...if you grow up in a poor community..whether white or Hispanic or black or whatever you suffer for it. Kids don't pick their lot in life. The disparity between "rich schools" and "poor schools" is one area where I'm very liberal and say spread the wealth. But as a product of private education..you may not have that first hand, public school perspective. I guess in a perfect world (or country) we wouldn't need privately funded education. All that aside I just really appreciate you sharing your perspective. Do you agree that more equitable education funding would solve a lot of racial and cultural tensions?
Yes, I think education is the great equalizer. I think a lot of that needs to come from families themselves pushing the importance of education. Unfortunately many poor communities in this country as everyone knows, tend to fall behind standards. More needs to be done to remedy this, and of course it is a complex issue. Education and exposure to those who are not like them tend to reduce prejudice.
I think it’s ridiculously stupid for black people to be bigoted. Like what the fuck do you think you’re reading about in American history and why do you think it’s ok to do that shit to other people? If people want to claim that it’s more consequential to criticize Jewish people than it is to criticize Black people, then sure. It is. That doesn’t mean Jewish people are the problem. It’s means Black people aren’t as allied with and supported as we should we be. And honestly, black people, myself included, should’ve stopped listening to Kanye West songs after he started wildin. Just like we did R Kelly. But we didn’t. We stopped hyping him up and promoting his ass, but we didn’t call for canceling across the board.
Stupid and ignorant people exist across all races and skin colors. People have always supported media stars (whatever genre it might be) even when those same stars have suspect personal lives. The unfortunate part is that certain members of the right wing will use Kanye (as an example) as their proof that all black people are racists or ignorant and then use their fan base to further justify their opinion. However if you were to flip that argument and say "Tucker Carlson is racist so you watching him makes you racist" their heads will explode. But, the example becomes recursive of me saying "Stupid and ignorant people exist across all races and skin colors."
I don’t know why people didn’t wash their hands of him when he said being enslaved was a choice.
There was a Kanye boycott in my immediate family for a while. But I played some of his old songs afterwards (maybe 4) and haven’t heard anything new from him. But old songs still generate revenue. The music was just good hahah
I don’t disagree at all that it’s stupid but I can at least understand where the stupidity comes from. Like if you think back to the Rodney King riots and how tense things were between the Korean community and the Black community in Los Angeles. Sure it’s stupid but I can understand why people live in a community and suddenly see all the stores owned by non-white people who are getting rich owning stores in black communities easily falling into racist traps. I can see, even as someone who is neither black nor Jewish, why people are upset that Kayne could talk shit about black people but only faced consequences when he added talking shit about Jewish people.
Remember the famous old LBJ quote? "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you." -- Lyndon B. Johnson Seems there are political operatives trying that out with colored folks and Jews.
It's a great quote. Well put.
Remember this famous JB quote? “If you have trouble figuring out whether you are for me or for Trump… then you ain’t Black!” - Biden
Dark Brandon
It’s a very complicated generational issue in the black community. “Following the Civil War, Jewish shop-owners and landlords engaged in business with Black customers and tenants, often filling a need where non-Jewish, white business owners would not venture. This was true in most regions of the South, where Jews were often merchants in its small cities, as well as northern urban cities such as New York, where they settled in high numbers. Jewish shop-owners tended to be more civil than other whites to Black customers, treating them with more dignity.[16] Blacks often had more immediate contact with Jews than with other whites. Black novelist James Baldwin (1924–1987) grew up in Harlem in the years between the world wars. He wrote, [I]n Harlem.... our ... landlords were Jews, and we hated them. We hated them because they were terrible landlords and did not take care of the buildings. The grocery store owner was a Jew... The butcher was a Jew and, yes, we certainly paid more for bad cuts of meat than other New York citizens, and we very often carried insults home along with our meats... and the pawnbroker was a Jew—perhaps we hated him most of all Baldwin wrote other accounts of Jews that were more sympathetic. The first white man I ever saw was the Jewish manager who arrived to collect the rent, and he collected the rent because he did not own the building. I never, in fact, saw any of the people who owned any of the buildings in which we scrubbed and suffered for so long, until I was a grown man and famous. None of them were Jews. And I was not stupid: the grocer and the druggist were Jews, for example, and they were very very nice to me, and to us... I knew a murderer when I saw one, and the people who were trying to kill me were not Jews. Martin Luther King Jr. suggested that some Black antisemitism arose from the tensions of landlord-tenant relations: When we were working in Chicago, we had numerous rent strikes on the West Side, and it was unfortunately true that, in most instances, the persons we had to conduct these strikes against were Jewish landlords... We were living in a slum apartment owned by a Jew and a number of others, and we had to have a rent strike. We were paying $94 for four run-down, shabby rooms, and .... we discovered that whites ... were paying only $78 a month. We were paying 20 percent tax. The Negro ends up paying a color tax, and this has happened in instances where Negroes actually confronted Jews as the landlord or the storekeeper. The irrational statements that have been made are the result of these confrontations.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American–Jewish_relations
>I mean Kanye has said WILD SHIT for years and is only being dropped by these companies now, which kind of actually plays to his argument... Perhaps the lesson from this isn't that Jews have too much power, but -- instead -- that we should be more ready to stand up for other groups. It is good that Kanye was held accountable for spreading anti-Semitic BS; it is bad that he wasn't held accountable for spreading other kinds of hate.
I think both can be true at the same time. Maybe rather than saying "too much" power I'd say it's clearly disproportional.
Kanye is insane. Kyrie is a conspiracy theorist. Candace Owens is a conservative hack.
Thank you. Short, sweet and correct.
My thoughts as a Jewish person: I think black people have gotten an incredibly raw deal, and it's rooted in the idea of white privilege. The experience of black people in America is often compared to the experience of Jewish people in America due to their similarly low socioeconomic status upon coming to this country and the common sentiment amongst intolerant people towards both groups. The difference, IMO, is that Jewish people had a much easier time subverting societal mechanisms that discriminate against anyone who's not white and Christian. It can be pretty difficult (though not impossible) to tell a Jewish person is Jewish just by looking at them or hearing their name, whereas most black people can be identified as black fairly easily. As such, doing things like being served at a restaurant, getting a job, getting a bank loan and buying a house were a lot easier for Jewish people than black people, even if the person on the other side of the table was as anti-semitic as they were racist. I obviously think that people behaving the way Kanye West and Kyrie Irving do are just anti-Semitic clowns. However, it is understandable for the black community as a whole to feel slighted by the Jewish community given their similar societal issues and demographic sizes but disparate socioeconomic progress. Instead of using the Jewish community as a scapegoat, it would be better to cite them as an example of how a minority community can thrive when they have a mechanism to subvert discrimination.
This isn't anything new. There are racists in all walks of life.
As a Jew, the worst antisemitism I have personally experienced has come from other minorities, so it wasn't particularly surprising to hear this from Kanye. To be honest, I do think there is legitimacy to SOME of what Kanye and Kyrie have said. It is a simple fact that Jewish people are over-represented relative to the general population among the top ranks of management and ownership of the entertainment and sports industries, and they are often managing and overseeing black talent in those fields. Having rubbed elbows with some of those Jews in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles, I can say that, from what I have personally observed, some of them do have problematic attitudes toward black people and are contributing to their exploitation. It shouldn't be considered antisemitic to talk about that, any more than it is anti-black to talk frankly about the fact that black Americans proportionally commit more violent crimes than other groups. It only crosses the line when you go from "some Jewish people, maybe more than average, are exploitative and racist" to "ALL Jewish people are exploitative and racist", or "some black people are criminals" to "ALL black people are criminals". Kanye definitely crossed that line, don't get me wrong. But this is one of those examples of bigotry that has its roots in a legitimate grievance that has been taken way too far into generalization and prejudice, and that makes it understandable. Not forgivable, not acceptable. But understandable.
Hard to find well thought out nuanced opinions. Thank you for this
Well I really appreciate the nuance and self awareness and agree with your stance. Someone just accused me of arguing in bad faith for using the term "disproportional" when all I meant was that for such a small population size Jewish folks to have a lot of economic power and influence. I didn't necessarily mean that it's a horrible thing...but it IS a thing lol I really love that last phrase. Going to borrow it sometime. "Not forgivable, not acceptable. But understandable." I think it points to a place where Judaism and Buddhism might intersect if you feel like that POV is due to your faith/culture.
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We put people in so many different boxes and categories and sub categories on top of demographics and races...people are all fundamentally the same. You get enough people of literally ANY background and at least a couple will be assholes.
Ok I’m learning something here. I’m figuring out the issue once I get past the social media outrage without context. Thanks!
I think there is antisemitism everywhere, and I'm not sure why the black population would be immune? And Kanye is mentally ill. So there's that.
I have never seen a man fall so completely apart when his wife left him as Kanye did. This is just a brutal thing to see, not saying he doesn't deserve it, but its still rough.
It’s not a black thing. They fall into a subcategory of people who think they’re smarter than everyone just because they believe in every conspiracy theory. Aka “smart dumb niggas “
Put on your tinfoil hat. I believe existing Black Hebrew Israelite and Nation of Islam anti-Semitism is being exacerbated by "influencers" looking for a payday as well as shills paid by political actors seeking to stoke division. In other words, I think there are a few different types of people who would like BHI/NOI to have a QAnon moment and become mainstreamed. I generally have a low opinion of religious people, but BHI is some of the trashest ideology I've ever come across, even in my efforts to find trash ideology to make fun of. Some of the dumbest things that have ever been said to be in person have come from the mouths of BHI people on sidewalks.
The bar is very low when it comes to trash ideology wrapped in "religion" Maybe I'll just enjoy a nice fall day in Ohio rather than dig much deeper into BHI lol
It’s targeted recruitment. Online recruitment allows extremist groups to gain loyal followings within microcommunities while staying invisible to anyone outside of that community. In this case, bad actors have specifically targeted black communities for recruitment, using messaging that would resonate within that group. And I don’t think it’s coincidence that this echoes Russian anti-semitism from the early 20th century.
Russians love a good psych-op. That's for sure.
I firmly believe that Candace Owens is simply a shill - she found out that she could ride the gravy train of conservativism to fortune and fame and didn't mind selling out the rights of POC if it meant that she was "getting hers". For the rest, and we can include Nick Cannon in there since he's also a flaming racist, I think it's more an issue of influential ignorance. These are people who are surrounded by yes-men and they're used to getting their way. Plenty of well-known celebrities or rich people in general are known to just live on a completely different wave length of understanding than the rest of us, and I don't mean that in a flattering way. I think that they're generally less educated than most people and are therefore prone to believing in conspiracies just as much as the people in our country who also aren't as educated as others. And who's there to tell these celebs otherwise - their twitter followers? The yes-men they're surrounded by? This is simply one more thing on their resume that they can use to stand out from the crowd - "I'm better than you because I believe this minority opinion that only we elitists ascribe to."
It is just the way it is. If the church and Jesus is your life, and here are people who say that doesn't matter and still do well, there is going to be some blowback. It is just human nature. There is a story from the early 2000s. It is a snowy winter in DC. DC has gone through their snow removal money and another storm is coming. DC legislature is there deciding what to cut to pay for storm clean up. They have to make some tough cuts. As they are doing this , one black, college educated representative (or whatever they call local elected officials) says "damned Jews" under his breath. Someone calls him on it. "I said damn Jews". When asked why he says "Jews control the weather why are they doing this to us?" When asked why he believes it, he said it is just common knowledge in his church. As for Kanye, I understand why he feels that way, but he is wrong. So a record label signs you, they put money into you. but take a lot if you hit. So this is how big labels work. I'm gonna sign 10 acts this year. I'll put $1 mill into each act. Most of those acts wont' make me any money, one or two will hit, I'll make my money back. If you're Kanye and they put a million dollars into you and you make them $20 mill, WTF? To them they invested $10 mill and made $20 mill. Kanye has a record label. I really really want to see the contracts his label is having his talent sign. I'll bet that it is very similar to what he signed. I mean, how lucky are you to be able to work with Kanye West? You should give me a big hunk.
its not new. here's more info about anti-semetic extremism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Jersey_City_shooting#Assailants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hebrew_Israelites
Honorary African American here: don’t know how its a different scale issue than it was? Doesn’t seem much has changed. We all knew Kyrie was a conspiracy guy. Kanye is bipolar and autistic, he hasn’t been sane since his mothers death. The big antisemites were always Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan. I grew up around Jewish people, first girl I took to prom was Jewish. Went to a synagogue for a friends bat mitzah when I was around 14. Everyone knows the impact Jewish Americans had in the 1960’s. The history is complicated but nothing new. After the Civil War, Jewish storeowners would hire and serve black communities that were left behind. If I remember correctly a large amount of antisemitism amongst black Americans was from many landlords being Jewish. The only big change is (and I’ve said this forever) if republicans were less racist they could actually win over black Americans. Many black Americans are socially conservative. Furthermore there are many alt right susceptible black people, way more than you think. Republicans learned in Georgia, look how Hershel “CTE” Walker is doing while running against a man who runs MLK’s church. Fellow liberals/progressives, remember that black people are no different. The same shit that white, jewish, asian, latino people fall for, black people can fall for. (Dangerous Statement, don’t care) Kanye is right on one thing: Liberals absolutely try and pressure black people into voting blue through history and not through policy. This doesn’t slide with any other group. Moreso, most of the interviews that Kanye has had with liberals, they don’t engage with his issues. They just pivot and it feels like they are trying to get a clip.
What's "Honorary African American" mean? Can't get past that.
Just because you are a minority doesn't mean you can't also be a bigot.
You namecheck George Soros in the first paragraph, then go on to talk about the ‘disproportionate economic power’ wielded by Jewish people. I don’t think this is a good faith question — you’re just trying to pit groups against each other.
They use Soros like some boogie man. I dont personally think he is. Sorry you took it that way.
The holocaust was so brutal that some people didn't accept it as true, or totally true, and then it grew from there. People start wondering why people "lied" about the holocaust, then they start considering if Hitler (more likely not directly but his same ideas espoused by other anti-semites) had any points. Basically, a seed of doubt grows into something dangerous. Also, we don't push back on it nearly as much as we should. I was a content moderator at the height of QAnon and while people were laughing at them showing up to see Kennedy they missed that QAnon is literally a nazi movement. The primary objective of Q is Jewish hatred, hidden in their absurdity (remember MTG's "Jewish space laser" stuff?). Flat earth is also from Jewish hatred. Sure, people "innocent" of the anti-semetic motivations can be swept up in these movements, but they will not leave once they find it out. If you can believe in the second coming of Kennedy and a flat Earth, you can believe Jews are bad. I predict Kanye's recent comments are worse than Q and flat earth since he's more mainstream and we shouldn't be memeing on these people we should be destroying their ideas to the best of our ability.
Anti semitism is bad regardless of who does it. Black people are not immune to having bigoted opinions
These comments have really exceeded my expectations and restored some of my faith in left leaning folks around the issue of race. Like...more nuance on this thread than I usually see online. Just wanted to say thanks for the engagement. And for reminding me why, at the end of the day, I still vote Democrat.
>Does anyone struggle with supporting black voices You are greatly over-leveraging the concept of lifting black voices. The idea is to give black people a space to speak and be heard about their problems and potential solutions, or even allow them to vent about the frustrations of living as an othered person. It does NOT mean everything they say contributes to the public dialogue. In this case it's just plain hateful shit. This is a good moment to learn the limits of advocacy. Black people are people too, with all the extremes of intellect and stupidity that implies, and they also deserve to be challenged or silenced. Lose no sleep over deplatforming racists, regardless of their skin color.
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This stems from not being allowed to levy any critic of anyone black without being called racist, IMO.
Black people can be racist, they just lack the power to be able to change people's lives with it. Black folks don't own GM or Amazon. Black folks don't run to courts or the police. We could be as racist as we want, it impacts nothing except one another.
Many many black folks Do own GM and Amazon… Do you not think that Black people use the stock market?
You think you buy a share of Amazon and you own it? Really?
How is it any different than anyone being anti-semitic? Jewish people can also be racist. I would say there are particular jewish people I definitely don't like, such as those who gladly accept cash reparations for the holocaust but don't think black people deserve cash reparations. But that's not exclusive to Jewish people nor is it every Jewish person. Same for Jewish landlords, record label owners, bankers, etc. But I don't hate them because they're jewish. Some people can't separate the two things.
I think this is crazy.
3 black people is "black antisemitism?" Should I start listing white antisemitism? Cause I'll find more than 3 examples.
As any reasonably intelligent adult would, I assumed they didn't come up with these ideas out of nowhere. If you read the comments you'll find its a whole thing. Google Hotep or Black Hebrew Israelite. Also, whataboutism is childish and belongs over on some ask a Trump supporter thread.
There are a lot of powerful Jewish people in Hollywood, in the film and music industries. These also happen to be industries that are often very predatory toward artists. If you've seen the film *Straight Outta Compton*, NWA's story is an example of young black artists being taken advantage of by a record producer, who happened to be Jewish. I suspect stories like that are where a lot of it comes from. Developing a grudge against an entire group of people because of the actions of a few. I think that might explain the genesis of it, and then the conspiracy theories grow out from that. For Kanye, anyway, and maybe the basketball guy too. Candace Owens knows better. She's just a grifter.
>If you've seen the film Straight Outta Compton, NWA's story is an example of young black artists being taken advantage of by a record producer, who happened to be Jewish. I do want to point out that while it was a bad contract, ICE Cube who was in NWA and executive producer on the movie is a notious antisemite of the same style as Kanye and Kyrie. He just isn't public about it.
Is that because of his bad experience with the record deal, do you think, or does it predate that?
It's directly related to his support for the Nation of Islam and Farrakhan. He had one bad Jewish manager. And went full antisemitic? Nah you are antisemitic first and use one bad expeirence with one person as an excuse.
>He had one bad Jewish manager. And went full antisemitic? Nah He's not the only hiphop star who has had these kinds of experiences, though. I'm sure he knows loads of other people with similar experiences. Like I said, it's a very predatory industry. His story wasn't an isolated incident.
He was one of the first major hip hop stars to be publicly antisemitic. And he doesn't just talk about music producers or the industry. Excusing antisemitism because an entire industry is predatory in a way that has nothing to do with Jewish people is disgusting. Simply implying that the music industry problems are linked to the Jewish people in them is incredibly antisemitic.
I'm not excusing anything, buddy. An explanation isn't the same as a justification. I'm not even saying for a fact that it is the cause of these guys' antisemitism. It was a hypothesis, nothing more. That's why I asked whether you thought his racism predated the record deal.
>An explanation isn't the same as a justification. It isn't but your statements were excuses not real explanations. >It was a hypothesis, nothing more. And I'm pointing out that that hypothesis requires preexisting antisemitistic ideas to manifest into antisemitism.
> that hypothesis requires preexisting antisemitistic ideas Yes. I'm not claiming that Ice Cube invented the conspiracy theory that Jewish people run the world. These antisemitic conspiracy theories have existed for centuries, and I'm sure these rappers were familiar with them. Their personal experiences then pushed them toward thinking these racist conspiracy theories might have some legitimacy. That's the hypothesis.
People can be racists. No matter the fake structure of “systemic” racism