Julie France reflects on the similarities between the racial tensions in the United States and Israel.
Scrolling down my Facebook newsfeed I see a seemingly endless list of calls for solidarity with Baltimore protesters. Amongst #BlackLivesMatter, #BaltimoreUprising, and similar memes with which I identify, a few things stand out… one of them being Freddie Gray’s rap sheet.
People overlook legitimate challenges and historical precedents to bring down an entire group of people. They may know and respect individuals from certain minority backgrounds, but can still dismiss the group as a whole.
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Someone decided that it was relevant to publicize every encounter the young, recently buried man had had with the cops. As if however many legal infractions could justify letting someone die in policy custody. A brief perusing of the article is enough to get the main idea: That Gray is not worthy of sympathy because he was a criminal. Another post dismissed the protesters as “thugs” that were the source of many of the city’s problems and therefore did not deserved to be heard. I could feel the anger seething up despite more posts regarding the first several days of peaceful protesting and the legitimate need for change in our legal system.
The people that posted these things certainly aren’t radical racists. They don’t openly disparage other ethnic or racial groups for their visible differences; rather, they talk about violent communities, welfare leeches, and drug dealers (because no drug dealer was ever white?). People overlook legitimate challenges and historical precedents to bring down an entire group of people. They may know and respect individuals from certain minority backgrounds, but can still dismiss the group as a whole.
Perhaps the debates and rationales on both sides resonated with me after Ferguson and Eric Garner’s case. The anger, the injustice. The claims that a community is inherently violent and was incapable of living a respectable, stable life. It touched a chord that I couldn’t quite identify.
I realized it was something I experienced in Israel, a small country thousands of miles away. Certainly not the same situation, but the parallels are there.
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An acquaintance on the Israeli center-left confided in me that Arabs cannot have their own country because they are not capable of running a functional society. There is something inherently violent and not functional in their culture, he insisted. I know this person doesn’t treat anyone poorly when he interacts with him or her, regardless of religion or national origin, but he has no problem dismissing an entire national group as a whole. My heart sank. Here was someone who agreed with me on ninety percent of what I believed, who even believed that Israel makes mistakes in the territories. Despite all of our similarities I could not get him to understand why I found what he said to be offensive.
While the details and current events are different, the problem is the same. Even ignoring the uglier, more open racism of hating someone based on their skin color or nationality (which is more present in both countries than anyone identifying with them would like to admit), there are pervasive views that permeate through mainstream society that actively work to de-legitimize groups of people and the challenges facing their communities. Individuals aren’t less valuable based on their national or ethnic identity; it’s acknowledged that that would be racist. But labeling a group as less valuable, less productive, or less acceptable because of characteristics attributed to them as a whole is either not noticed or deemed acceptable.
Individuals aren’t less valuable based on their national or ethnic identity; it’s acknowledged that that would be racist. But labeling a group as less valuable, less productive, or less acceptable because of characteristics attributed to them as a whole is either not noticed or deemed acceptable.
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From my experience the best (and possibly only) way to fight these kinds of generalizations about entire national or ethnic groups is through exposure. Only through more thorough integration is it possible to gain a deeper understanding of others. Without knowing “the other” it is impossible to empathize with the struggles they face, and impossible to fight the kind of discrimination that challenges different sectors of society. Both the United States and Israel face serious issues with integration. Both have minority cities or at least neighborhoods, with minimal mixing if any. Due to the prevalence of private and charter schools in America, and the existence of two separate public school systems according to language in Israel, children are interacting less and less with people from outside of their “in group.” In many communities within both countries one must go out of their way to build meaningful relationships with someone from a different background.
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Like the United States, Israel (within the green line) is an undisputable democracy. People have equal voting rights and equal protection under the law. That is not to say that Israel is a perfect democracy. Contrary, she is a young democracy, riddled with questions about identity. Just like most other democracies, Israel has minorities. Also like most other democracies, minorities experience unfair treatment and discrimination with some frequency. The prevalence and banality of these opinions makes them even harder to fight because they don’t seem like such a threat to society. Hopefully we can begin to learn this lesson from observing the protests in Baltimore… and by “we ” I mean both the U.S. and other countries around the world facing similar problems.
Photo: Flickr – Light Brigading/”Unlearn Racism 1″