Editor's Note: David A. Love is a Philadelphia-based writer, commentator, and professor of journalism and media studies. Collaborate at a variety of venues, including Atlanta Black Star, ecoWURD, and Al Jazeera. Follow him on Twitter: @DavidALove. The opinions expressed in this comment are yours. See more opinion articles on CNNE.com/opinion
(CNN) - Public discourse in the United States on race, racism, and anti-Semitism runs the risk of becoming an Olympiad of oppression with no winners. However, this crucial year offers a unique opportunity to delve into these pressing issues and pave the way for a more constructive public discourse. The Black Lives Matter movement calls for confronting anti-black racism and other forms of discrimination, including anti-Semitism in the fight against white supremacy, which unites them all.
In recent weeks, Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson and actor Nick Cannon, both black, have come under fire for making anti-Semitic comments. Jackson shared a quote in his Instagram story that was falsely attributed to Adolf Hitler, saying that blacks were "the true children of Israel". The passage also fueled the theory of anti-Semitism and the conspiracy of a Jewish plan to "extort America" and achieve "world domination."
Jackson later apologized and said, "I just want to extend an apology on my behalf and for what I stand for, because you know, I am fair and I never want to discourage any race or anyone. I really didn't realize what this passage was saying. ”
This week Cannon was fired from his improvisation show "Wild 'N Out" on ViacomCBS for pushing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on his podcast while making similar claims that blacks are "true Hebrews."
Cannon, who was joined by hip-hop figure Professor Griff, amplified Griff's false visions that the Jewish people controlled the media. Cannon went on to defend the conspiracy theory saying: “It is never a hate speech, you cannot be anti-Semitic when we are Semitic people. When we are the same people that they want to be. That is our right from birth. We are the true Hebrews. "
Cannon later apologized for his comments and said, "I must apologize to my Jewish brothers and sisters for putting them in such a painful position, which was never my intention, but I know that this whole situation tends to hurt many people and together we will fix it. . "
The recent comments by these high-profile black men are a distraction at a time when the nation must accept its legacy of institutional racism and racial violence. Time wasted in internal struggles that these two groups should spend working together for a just society.
While Jackson and Cannon are attuned to racism against blacks, they showed cultural insensitivity in their statements and revealed their blind spots regarding Jewish suffering, which includes centuries of pogroms, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and the Holocaust, along with the resulting intergenerational trauma, to name a few examples.
As a result, two groups of historical scapegoats, blacks and Jews, are experiencing a rift within each group and between both groups. That story is complex, both in cooperation and conflict. Judah P. Benjamin was a Jew who held various high-level positions in the Confederacy, and tensions between blacks and Jews have been recognized by everyone from James Baldwin to Martin Luther King Jr.
There is also a shared history that includes the liberation of concentration camps by black soldiers, Jewish refugees like Albert Einstein teaching at historically black colleges and universities, and the participation of Jews in the Civil Rights movement, reflecting a Jewish sense of " tzedek ”or justice in Hebrew.
It is easy to forget that the Jewish community is also diverse. According to researchers at Stanford University and the University of San Francisco, up to 15% of American Jews are Black, Latino, Sephardic, and Middle Eastern people, who generally have not been counted. Black and brown Jews face racism and invisibility in the Jewish community because they lack white privileges.
And today, when the United States needs a reckoning on racism, today's national leadership will not rise to the occasion. President Donald Trump trains his government with white nationalists while letting the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service imprison migrant children in their detention centers. The white supremacists and local terrorists who marched in Charlottesville and shouted "The Jews will not replace us" are the real threat to the lives of black and American Jews, not to mention Muslims, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, LGBTQs and allies. whites and all those who want to build a multicultural democracy. We must not lose sight of this.
The United States requires an honest account of its history of racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia in order to have a fruitful discussion and a path to healing and justice. Too often, this legacy is overlooked or rarely taught adequately in school, causing people to speak up and reproduce anti-Semitism through ignorance. This country was built on the genocide of indigenous peoples and the slavery of Africans, a legacy that continues today through institutional racism and police violence.
“It is a great surprise at the age of five, six or seven, to discover that the country to which you have pledged allegiance, along with all the others, has not pledged allegiance to you. It is a great surprise to discover that Gary Cooper killed Indians, while supporting him, and that the Indians were you, "Baldwin said of the experience of American blacks in his legendary Cambridge University debate with William F. Buckley, Jr. in 1965. Baldwin referred to actor Gary Cooper, who played a cowboy hero with a flawless image in the old westerns, reflecting an American innocence with which the country portrays and spins its legacy of racial violence. Like white Americans, blacks socialize to hate the "other," "the cuckoo," or "the coconut," or the racial scapegoat. However, the difference is that blacks, also victims of racial oppression, are indeed conditioned to hate themselves.
Meanwhile, 55 years later, blacks are still being hunted, and the policemen who killed Breonna Taylor in Louisville are still free men. As the United States fights life-threatening policies and systems of racial oppression, we must also call people for their divisive and intolerant words. We have a responsibility to do both.