Yesterday a person who sent me a “friend request “a long time ago. One that I accepted ( something I don’t do much anymore) A “brother” who I had come to respect. Who seemed to share our “mission” of trying to stop the plague of gun violence in the Black community and in the country, Posted this : “Every time a rapper is Slayed a so called Jew gets paid”…A profoundly stupid thing to say. I tried to explain to him that this position is simply an extension of a narrative that has it’s origins among white supremacists. And we don’t need to do their work for them. Simple enough right ?, and something you don’t have to explain to long time veterans of “the movement” ….we have seen this type of backwards attempt at division before. “Well who owns the companies then” was his next response. I said ” capitalists do, and it has nothing to do with anyone’s religion.” Now I am not naive enough to think that there are no racists who are Jewish. Cause I see them everyday. But I have been around long enough to know that kind racism has nothing to do with being Jewish. It mostly has to do with conditioning…getting along with other white people and class. And for the most part people who just happened to be Jewish have over time been our most dependable partners in the struggle for freedom and equality in America, but then my father was actually the Chef in a large Jewish restaurant that did not even allow Black people in the door. But you want to know something funny. I know a LOT of republicans who happen to be Jewish, almost as many as I have known Blacks and Latinos who vote GOP. People cheat and exploit other people for profit, not because of their religion. In the 1930s during a time when “jim crow” was rampant in the southern United States. And even though the “Harlem Renaissance” was in full bloom. For the most part there was no such thing as “Black History” being taught in schools anywhere. Black people had no models of historical excellence to call there own. In many ways people looked for anything to be but “black” or negro. That lack of perceived esteem gave birth to several cult like figures claiming that indeed we were not really black, but something else. Some claimed we were the children of the “Moors” who once took over western Europe although in many ways that was true it was the use of the word “Moorish” that made those cults catch on. There was the birth of the myth of “The original Asiatic Black Man”..you see, anything but Black African. There were several figures during that time who claimed we were the “Lost tribe of Israel” there were three or four who preached one version or another of the “we are the real Israelites of the bible and the people we know as Jews were pretenders”. I mean white people had been forcing Christianity on us for centuries, there were generations of us for whom the “Bible” was the only book we knew. It was sort of natural for us to identify with the people we were told for four hundred years had suffered a fate not unlike ours.. But you see ….we know better now. We know that we were founders of great empires in Africa..we know of The Oyo Empire, , The Kingdom of Dagbon, and the Benin Empire ,the Ashanti_Empire, the Wanga Kingdom, home of the Wanga (AbaWanga) tribe of the Luhya people. The largest empire in precolonial Kenya ..I can name several more the would shame the histories of much of Europe . Creating myths to feel better about ourselves is an old crutch with it’s roots in low historical self esteem WE ARE A MIGHTY PEOPLE We don’t need to do that anymore …WE KNOW WHO WE ARE and should be proud. We are in a place where we need to get closer to our allies …not help the enemy by spreading stupid conspiracies about each other. I can’t say this enough. But you see it’s part of the nature of Black people who have no experience in the “struggle” to try to seem like they have some “special knowledge” that makes them feel important. That’s also the very “stuff” that bullshit conspiracy stories come from
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