So many people in this country expressed their outrage over the murders of 11 Jews in Pittsburgh, yet when racists murder African-Americans, it barely makes the news. As a Jew, I know the importance of confronting anti-Semitism, but it’s equally important to stand against racism.
I have to confess that I don’t know how to be an ally to African-Americans. I live in a mainly white community, have no close African-American friends. I have identified my white privilege, shed tears over the murders of African-Americans and taught my social work students about anti-racist social work practice, but mostly I have skirted around the edges of anti-racist activism.
The need to do more gnawed at me during the two days I spent visiting the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Three stories below the earth, I bore witness to the horrors of the slave trade. My journey ended two floors aboveground, with the words of John Lewis, imploring us to let African-Americans begin to heal.
Every period of African-American history is stitched together with the threads of slavery and terrorism. From human beings chained together on slave ships to the early plantation slaves, who survived an average of seven years, to the pre-Jim Crow Black Codes, re-enslaving black people as sources of cheap labor, to the thousands who were lynched, beaten, raped, bombed, burned alive, drowned, segregated, denied citizenship and voting rights to those today who are enslaved as sources of cheap labor in our prisons and jails, and who are terrorized, beaten and murdered by white supremacists and police … There has never been a period in the history of the United States in which African-Americans have not been enslaved and terrorized.
The parallels between the treatment of black people under slavery and the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust are astounding. The Dred Scott Decision, banning blacks from citizenship, and colonial laws banishing whites married to blacks are grim reminders of the Nuremberg laws, which stripped citizenship for Jews of the Reich and prohibited Jews from marrying Germans.
Both blacks and Jews were subjected to laws based on racial inferiority. American and Nazi laws expressly stated that freedom from oppression did not extend to blacks and Jews who converted to Christianity. The Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 is considered the worst outbreak of racial violence in American history. White residents, enraged by the economic success of Tulsa’s black population, carried out an 18-hour rampage, destroying more than 1,000 homes, churches and businesses, leaving 9,000 people homeless. I wondered, is this where Hitler got his idea for Kristallnacht, in which Nazis destroyed Jewish homes and businesses owned by German Jews in 1938? After returning home, I learned that indeed, Hitler was highly influenced by institutionalized racism in the United States.
As I read how freed slaves searched for lost family members, I remembered how my mother searched in vain for her own mother, who was probably murdered in the gas chambers of a Polish death camp. Unlike the freed slaves, however, who were forcibly brought to this country as a commodity to be traded, like spices or furs, the ship that brought my mother to the U.S. carried her to freedom.
Thousands of free as well as enslaved African-Americans fought in the American Revolution. How ironic it is that the U.S. fought a war for independence, while enslaving millions of black people.
Despite such profound oppression, the National Museum of African American History and Culture is a testament to the resilience and courage of African-Americans, who resisted their oppressors’ attempts to dehumanize them. From slaves who led armed insurrections to those who marched against police brutality, the museum attests to the ongoing struggle for freedom that continues today. The words of Elizabeth Freeman speak volumes: “If one minute’s freedom had been offered to me, and I had been told I must die at the end of that minute, I would have taken it.”
Every period of African-American history reflects the importance of family, church and schools as institutions that gave African-Americans self-respect, community and freedom. African-Americans’ culture, rooted in slavery, has enriched the lives of all Americans.
After leaving the museum, I walked the streets of our nation’s capitol, reminded that this city was built on the backs of slaves, whose free labor made the United States a world power. So much of the history contained within the museum was absent from my own education. Sadly, my friends’ millennial children confirm that, even today, American history continues to be presented from the perspective of the privileged. We continue to live in a segregated society that keeps us isolated from the experiences of the “other.”
Later that same week, I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. On its main floor hangs a banner with the words of Elie Wiesel: “This museum is not an answer. It is a question.”
After visiting the National Museum of African American History and Culture, I am still haunted by the question: “How can I best be an ally in the struggle to end racism?”
Sara Weinberger, of Easthampton, is a professor emerita of social work and writes a monthly column. She can be reached at opinion@gazettenet.com.