Reverse Racism

It seems to me since I moved to NYC, the racial tension is a lot higher than it was back in DC/Balitmore. I have a harder time understanding why other than the fact that NYC has racial tensions not only between the Hadisic Jews and the Black community but all of the minorities have beef with one another.

I've decided to google this topic and see what turned up. So far I agree with the following;

Blacks and Jews:
A Revolutionary View
Revolutionary Worker #971, August 30, 1998

"Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution."

Mao Tsetung

Some people argue that Jewish people have played a special role throughout history--oppressing Black people and keeping them from achieving prosperity within the capitalist system.

It is argued that Jewish merchants and slaveowners played a special role in the brutal slave trade that brought kidnapped Africans to the New World.

It is said that Jewish merchants and landlords are a special cause of the poverty of Black communities.

It is said that "Jewish control" of the media and educational institutions has led to a conscious "Jewish conspiracy" to produce "negative images" and "self-hatred" among Black people.

These views are not true--they are based on myth, distortion and a promotion of mistaken prejudices. And all those who really want to end the oppression of Black people--and all oppressive systems--need to take a scientific approach on who is the enemy:

The main oppressor and main enemy of the masses of Black people is the capitalist-imperialist system and its ruling class. It is this system that has lived off the labor of generations of Black people and millions of other working people. It is this system that has created the urban ghettos, today's massive unemployment, the armed occupation by police, the systematic oppression Black people face as a people --and it is the ruling class of this system that profits from and defends those conditions.

Jewish people are by no means the main oppressors of Black people, nor have they been historically. In fact, Jews as Jews have never in history been major oppressors of any people or classes.

Today, the majority of Jewish people in the U.S. are middle class, playing many different social and political roles in society. Some merchants and slumlords in Black ghettos, especially in New York City, have been Jewish. But even then, those merchants and property owners were not the main oppressor of Black people or the main cause of poverty in those communities. Overall, the vast majority of Jewish people are not oppressors, and have a potential to be allies and supporters of the revolution.

Anti-Semitism, which claims that Jews as Jews are an enemy, plays into the hands of the real enemy. If a Jewish person did a thing, it does not mean that Jews as a group were behind it. Or that it benefited Jews as a group. There are some Jewish people within the ruling class and others who play an oppressive role in society. But this is a matter of their class position and their role in the overall structure of capitalist society and economy--not of their "Jewishness."

There is no "international Jewish conspiracy" and there never has been. Writings like "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" that claim to document such conspiracies are complete fabrications written by reactionaries and police agents--and circulated to poison the minds of the people.

Jews as Jews are not oppressors--but the state of Israel is an enemy of the international proletariat. Israel is the direct oppressor of the Palestinian people, in the service of imperialism, and is a major outpost of imperialism in the whole region of the Middle East. Zionism is a reactionary nationalist movement that supports Israel and its oppression of Arab people. But Zionism is not the same thing as the Jewish religion, Judaism. Zionists claim to speak for all Jews--but they do not, in fact, speak for all Jews or represent their interests.

You can read more at http://www.rwor.org/a/v20/970-79/971/blajew.htm which goes on to talk about how involved the Jews were in the slave trades back in the 1600s, 1700s (btw not much at all). I am starting to see where some people who are NYC residents might believe this bullshit. That the Jews are the "Black man" oppressor.

Here's another citation I would like to post;

From Cooperation to Conflict
During the 1950s and 1960s, Jews and African Americans were closely allied in the civil rights movement, and, indeed, Jews played a prominent role in the leadership of most, if not all, of the major civil rights organizations. As noted earlier, Stanley Levinson, a Jewish attorney, was Dr. Martin Luther King's chief advisor. Kivie Kaplan, a retired Jewish businessman from Boston, served as president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and was, as well, one of Dr. King's major fund-raisers and financial contributors. Marvin Rich, another Jewish attorney, was the chief fund-raiser and key speech writer for James Farmer, head

[p. 146] ... More than half the white lawyers who made their services available to civil rights demonstrators in the South were Jews. Between half and three-quarters of the contributors to civil rights organizations - including the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), CORE, and Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Con- ference (SCLC) - were Jews. More than half the white freedom riders were Jews. Almost two-thirds of the whites who went into the South during the Freedom Summer of 1964 were Jews including, of course, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman who, along with their black colleague James Chaney, were murdered by racist thugs in Mississippi.

More can be found at http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/j-over-b.html

I think its crazy to blame the Jews for everything. Havent they been persecuted enough throughout history (both BC/AD!). I think both groups, the Blacks and the Jews need to be supporting one another, not tearing each other down. I have dealt with a lot of anti-sematics in my life. And it shocking to see it in such a wonderful place like NYC where every walk of life exist there and know there is still so much prejudice a person could choke on it. Don't get me wrong, NYC is an EOE where you can hate everyone equally, but why?