An Apology

For most of my adult life, I have believed that the reports of American antisemitism were probably overstated, a natural and justifiable reaction by American Jews to memories of the Holocaust.  Of course, antisemitism still existed, but surely such warped thinking was dying out, a lingering evil that was present only in the warped minds of people so ignorant they couldn’t spell the word.

Not being Jewish, I only rarely came into contact with that form of prejudice, and when I did, it was easy to shut it down, secure in my belief that such stupidity was an isolated and rare occurrence.  Growing up in the South, I occasionally ran across a few morons that still yearned for the South to rise again, but only among either the feeble-minded or those who resided on the political fringes.

Over the years, I saw prejudice and injustice against Blacks and Hispanics, and while I took a stand against such bigotry, in hindsight, I certainly didn’t do nearly enough.  Only rarely, however, did I actually witness any overt antisemitism, and when I did, I believed it was a rare example of aberrant behavior.  

When a friend told me that he had actually met people that believed he had horns, I thought he had found the last Nazis that weren’t hiding in caves in Argentina.  Surely such ignorance was extremely limited.

A business partner of mine from a few decades’ past didn’t want to do business with a certain company because of the ethnicity of the owner.  I laughed at my partner and said his thinking was a relic from an ancient past that never really existed.  My partner acquiesced and our two companies went on to have a profitable relationship for several years.  Today, I wonder if I should have done more or said more to my partner.  Why did I treat his prejudice as a joke?  That conversation still haunts me.

When I taught American History, I tried to the very best of my ability to portray the cruelty of slavery, the injustices of the Jim Crow period, and the struggles of the Civil Rights era (much of the last of which I had lived through with far too little self-awareness).  I still have my notes from those lectures and the points that I stressed were that I was embarrassed by the past injustices I had casually ignored, that there was still injustice in our society, and that I predicted that in the decades to come, many of my students would be made equally uncomfortable by their own lack of awareness.

That my students may have ignored what I was saying is forgivable.  What is far worse is that I wasn’t even listening to myself.  There was injustice all around me and, once again, I was ignoring it.

Of course, I lectured about the Holocaust.  I even showed my classes films so horrific that, when I was not using them, I kept them locked in the back of my gun safe because I was afraid that my own children might watch them before they were old enough to understand the documented pure evil in them.  

That locked safe may be the perfect metaphor for how I reacted to the antisemitism around me:  if I locked it away, I wouldn’t have to deal with it until I wanted to.  As soon as the worrisome details were shoved to the back of the safe, I could slam the door, spin the tumblers, and then ignore it because those injustices were not aimed at me.  

And that is how prejudice and hatred survive:  they live in the darkest recesses of society because there are not enough people who are willing to directly confront them and drag them  out into the light and demand an end to the stupidity.  Racial injustice must be actively sought out and confronted, for otherwise, it will always find another dark corner of society in which to fester.

It is not enough to simply confront prejudice when you are the target—that is as senseless as trying to stop a flood by only sweeping back the water that tries to enter your property.  Racial prejudice is something that must be confronted regardless of where it is happening, and who it is happening to.  It is not nearly enough to confront prejudice when it is aimed at you—it must be confronted when it is aimed at anyone, anywhere, anytime.

For years, I did not really believe that antisemitism in America was really a problem.  The events of the last few weeks have convinced me that not only was I horribly naïve, but that my naïveté was a real danger to my friends. It really shouldn't have taken people screaming in American streets for the death of my friends for me to see the obvious.

 In many ways, I failed my friends—Jamie, Carlos, Rachel, Victor, Andrea, and the rest of my friends—who face very real dangers that I have ignored.  I apologize.  I will do better.