Random Thoughts

black people can be racist

and I can't believe it is controversial to say this in 2022

note that being Jewish is an ethnoreligion as Jews come in different skin colours and facial features. However, I have noticed that racism is sometimes used to refer to bigotry against people on an ethnic basis so I am including antisemitism under the racism umbrella.

Now, a lot of us must have heard about Kanye West and his whole antisemitic tirade within the past few weeks. As if it wasn't enough, Kyrie Irving came under fire for sharing a post recommending "From Hebrews to Negroes".

Now, From Hebrews to Negroes takes notes from the pages of the Black Hebrew Israelite ideology which is an antisemitic ideology that claims African Americans (and sometimes Hispanics and Native Americans) are not of West/Central African ancestry but are in fact Hebrews.

Of course, Black Jews and Jews of African descent do exist. However, while Black Jews are either raised in the ethnoreligion or converts, BHI are more or less like Torah-observant Christians who appropriate Jewish practices and call those of Jewish descent "impostors".

Now, Kyrie and Kanye have used ideologies that are antisemitic and are currently facing the consequences of that with some folks in the Black community using white supremacist (read: antisemitic) talk points by either claiming to be the "real Jews" or using their blackness to dodge accountability.

We all know that African-Americans are ADOS (African descendants of slavery) so they are not the "real Jews" except if they have either converted to Judaism (which btw, conversion to Judaism is a long difficult process) or they are already of Jewish descent (Beta Israel Jews or Ethiopian Jews; Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews who are Black or of African descent; Igbo Jews). Using the Khazar theory is not reliable either as it has been debunked numerous times and Jews have existed even before the Khazars converted to Judaism.

This leaves us with the use of blackness to dodge accountability. Many black antisemites would argue that Jews are "white" and therefore have white privilege so they cannot possibly be racist or antisemitic because of that. While there are Jews who present as white, it still doesn't erase the fact that Jews are persecuted for not being European (in fact, the Nuremberg race laws which racialized Jews was employed  by the nazis using stereotypical Jewish features to pick them out) and Jews come in different races.

In addition, when did being a member of an oppressed minority make us suddenly immune to holding racist beliefs against other oppressed minorities? We live in a society and if anyone is confused by what that mean, it means no one is immune to imbibing implicit biases which includes implicit racism. Being Black doesn't make us immune to that or even becoming explicit racists at that.

If it is possible for Asians, Latins, Jews and Arabs to be racist towards Black people, then what makes it impossible for Black people to hold racist beliefs towards these people? Since when did it become controversial to say that Black people can be racist? Currently, we are seeing two prominent Black figures, whose number of followers is higher than the number of Jews on a global scale, being antisemitic and I'm seeing some Black folks try to justify antisemitism under the guise of Black people being oppressed minorities.

are you really serious?