By Ja’Loni OwensColumnist
This semester I’m enrolled in a Jewish Studies course focused on racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. One would assume the class would be occupied by students who have a working understanding of these concepts or minimally acknowledge that racism exists. Believe it or not, that is not the case. I often find myself sitting in my class feeling as though white people are incapable of empathy and feeling as though it’s somehow my responsibility to teach them empathy.
The most recent instance of these feelings resurfacing was last week. The topic of discussion was the Holocaust. The professor said, “Let’s talk about the person whose job was to get Jewish people on the trains that ultimately brought them to the concentration camps … Is this man guilty?”
For me, this was a no-brainer. For my white counterparts, it was not.
One student suggested that many of the Nazi soldiers probably weren’t anti-Semitic and their role in the Holocaust was self-preservation. Another student exclaimed, “No … if he didn’t follow orders he likely would’ve been shot and killed himself!” There were some nods.
I remember turning to my friend and whispering, “Getting shot or participating in genocide? Decisions, decisions.”
As the discussion went on I felt myself becoming more and more frustrated and more and more aware of why it has been so easy for neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups to enact terror on marginalized groups post-election. White people truly do not see how dangerous complacency is and I firmly believe it is because they are white. The centuries of violence and terror perpetrated against black and brown people has granted us the ability to demonstrate empathy and to understand that neutrality is nefarious and pugnacious.
People either cooperate with injustice or they fight against injustice. There is no sexy, non-political third option. Neutrality is fake.
The discussion became too much and I finally raised my hand. I cleared my throat and said, “Complacency is wrong.” I wish I wasn’t so overwhelmed by the conversation and said more.
I wish I explained that those who claim neutrality are as great of a threat to social justice as active participants in injustice. To quote Desmond Tutu, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Those who wear neutrality as some sort of badge are only admitting that they are as morally bankrupt as men like Hitler and are either too lazy or too afraid to make moves.
Above all else, I wish that I could have explained how terrifying it is to hear that my counterparts are so comfortable and accustomed to sitting in silence and seeing injustice as something that just happens.
I wish I could have broken down how infuriating it is to know that white people feel no sense of responsibility to destroy the very institutions that allow them to sit silently, to never have to acknowledge that genocide, enslavement and war crimes have been committed in the name of building a society in which they exclusively have endless opportunities, to never have to acknowledge the lengths societal institutions go to secure white supremacy, to opt out of ever having to look at the ugly truths I never had a choice in whether or not I wished to see.
I wish that the words of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. could have made their way from my subconscious to my mouth, “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”
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