Sounding the Trumpet of Justice
An Open Letter Calling on Black Students at SF State to Fight Against Anti-Semitism
I remember being surrounded by several white students in the sandbox at Lowell Elementary School in Long Beach. Fear shot through my small brown-skinned body as the kids jeered at me and called me a "nigger" over and over again. Although I was one of the few black students attending the school, I had always felt a substantial degree of acceptance from my fellow pupils. This day, however, an argument in the sandbox during recess incited the racial epithets that hurt my feelings. At that moment, humiliation became my only companion. I felt rejected by students I thought were my friends. They verbally attacked me because of my blackness.
This incident was my first encounter with racial hatred, but it certainly wasn't the last. As a young black person, I constantly endure the slings and arrows of discrimination. When I walk the streets at night, people often cross the street when they see my thin black frame approaching. Women sometimes clutch their purses when they find themselves alone with me in an elevator. Many people look upon me with skepticism and doubt when I tell them I am a student at a prestigious law school. Somehow, these overt acts of racism remind me that I am in a struggle for equality and justice.
But I have not allowed these negative experiences to turn me into a racist. Instead, I try to empathize with other people who feel the same sting of bigotry and intolerance.
It is in the spirit of empathy that I write this open letter to young people in the black community. We as a people have faced the indignity of enslavement, the horror of lynching, the abomination of segregation and the hardship of marginalization. These injustices committed against our people should cause us to rise up against all forms of racism and cruelty.
For this reason, I call upon young blacks from across the country to take a stand against the rising tide of anti-Semitism and Jew-hatred. The same bigotry that victimizes our community also victimizes our Jewish brothers and sisters.
The 1994 Anti-Defamation League Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents chronicles acts of bigotry committed against the Jewish community. In New York, a Hasidic student was assaulted by two teens yelling anti-Semitic epithets. The victim was hit in the head with a wooden club by a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old. In Los Angeles, a self-proclaimed skinhead attacked a yeshiva student with a three-foot pipe and screwdriver, while shouting, "I hate Jews! I'll kill you!" In Missouri, a woman was fired from her job after the owners found out she was Jewish. Her supervisor confirmed that her religion was the cause for her dismissal. In Michigan, a Jewish couple received a package in the mail containing a severed dog's head wrapped in a plastic bag, on which "Dirty Jew" and swastikas were written. At SF State, a mural depicting Malcolm X included two Stars of David; one with a skull and cross-bones and the other with a dollar sign in the middle.
The Anti-Defamation League report, which was released in early 1995 at the National Press Club, tabulated 2,066 incidents of anti-Semitic violence, assault, arson, threats and harassment. This is the highest number of such incidents in the audit's 16-year history. The shocking report cited 1,197 personal assault and harassment incidents; 869 acts of vandalism against Jewish institutions and Jewish-owned property; 141 arrests for anti-Semitic crimes reported in 1994; Anti-Semitic campus incidents increased 17 percent over 1993. The five states with the highest totals of anti-Jewish incidents are New York (440), New Jersey (237), California (232), Florida (158) and Massachusetts (134).
As I reflect upon these horrible acts of anti-Semitism, I am reminded of the eloquent words written by Martin Luther King Jr. in "Letter from Birmingham Jail": "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." The truth of King's concept as to the interrelationship of people is undeniable. Pursuant to King's philosophy, the bigotry I face is connected to the bigotry perpetrated against the Jewish community. In a broader sense, racism endured by blacks is connected to the intolerance inflicted upon Jewish people.
I call upon young blacks to fight against anti-Semitism and to heed the message of Dr. King who said, "He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." As black Americans, we have a duty to fight against Jew-hatred.
Mark Hardie, an African American, is a law student at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco.