I love your truth-telling to both the Black and Jewish communities. Sadly, we live in an age when appearances seem to carry much more weight than the truth. This reality-check you’ve written is much needed and appreciated. Thanks.
Thank you for this well-reasoned and measured response to a politically motivated cause célèbre masquerading as “righteous indignation” for a just cause. Kyrie Irving appears to be in a modern equivalent of a witch hunt/trial while BLM & others continue to practice their Marxist sorcery to bilk billions from beguiled victims. Such a shanda!!
Kyrie Irving could use this information to leverage the NBA pressure he’s facing. He can take responsibility for this actions once he understands how complexed the rhetoric goes.
Question: How do you feel about the 1619 project as a historical work? I did not see the project itself as a problem. The separate agenda is clearly not focused on broadening or improving the lives of African Americans. But the history was useful to me as a naturalized citizen who never gets to speak to African Americans about their histories.
"'We’ve been very deliberate in saying that the violence and pain and hurt that’s experienced on a daily basis by black folks at the hands of a repressive system should also be visited upon, to a degree, to those who think that they can just retreat to white [read: Jewish] affluence,' the BLM-LA co-founder ranted."
Don't do that Mr. Washington. There are a lot of people who are anti-white; you can't just declare that they are thereby also anti-semitic. Same thing with conflating anti-Zionism with anti-semitism. There are ultra-orthodox Jewish anti-Zionists, obviously, it's possible to be anti-Zionist.
That said, you are correct that the film is anti-Semitic, and that a form of anti-semitism far worse, or at least more directly threatening, was unleashed on the Jewish community in L.A. and a few other places, which was at least tacitly-condoned if not outright encouraged by BLM.
But the aspect of the response to Kyrie Irving that I don't really agree with is not so much the severity of the punishment or the hypocrisy vis-a-vis BLM, but the lack of willingness to just sit down and talk with him and explain why the film is anti-Semitic. We seem to focus so much more on cancellation versus education in these situations, and I don't think that really moves the ball forward in creating more understanding between the races in America.
I also don't know that your summation of the film did a very good job of addressing its core claim: that the Black people who were brought to America were descended from the Biblical Israelites. The unfortunate thing about the film is that the filmmaker did not have to deny the ancestry of Askenazi, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews in order to argue this point. The mainstream story of the lost tribes of Israel posits that there were ten lost tribes, but Judah, Benjamin and at least some of the Levites are the ancestors of most of today's Jews. It's not hard to imagine that at least some other Israelites did head south into Africa after the Assyrian invasion, as we have universally-acknowledged Jewish groups in Ethiopia and also further south.
Just to take the Igbo people of Nigeria as an example, the film is correct that they have until this day been circumcising their infants (I know because my wife is Igbo and her mother demanded such when my son was born). Where could that really come from as a cultural versus medical practice predating European colonialism?
I'm not trying to say it's proven fact, and you're right Hebrew to Negroes is "unacademic", and so useless as a source of proven facts. But I also don't think that the core claim that there are descendants of Biblical Israel to be found in Africa and even among black Americans is to me something that should be seriously considered, and I don't think it's anti-semitic to do so.
This was a breath of fresh air. Thank you.
You are a courageous man of conviction! A true mensch!
I love your truth-telling to both the Black and Jewish communities. Sadly, we live in an age when appearances seem to carry much more weight than the truth. This reality-check you’ve written is much needed and appreciated. Thanks.
Thank you for this well-reasoned and measured response to a politically motivated cause célèbre masquerading as “righteous indignation” for a just cause. Kyrie Irving appears to be in a modern equivalent of a witch hunt/trial while BLM & others continue to practice their Marxist sorcery to bilk billions from beguiled victims. Such a shanda!!
Kyrie Irving could use this information to leverage the NBA pressure he’s facing. He can take responsibility for this actions once he understands how complexed the rhetoric goes.
I am unequivally with you sir!Thank you
Question: How do you feel about the 1619 project as a historical work? I did not see the project itself as a problem. The separate agenda is clearly not focused on broadening or improving the lives of African Americans. But the history was useful to me as a naturalized citizen who never gets to speak to African Americans about their histories.
"'We’ve been very deliberate in saying that the violence and pain and hurt that’s experienced on a daily basis by black folks at the hands of a repressive system should also be visited upon, to a degree, to those who think that they can just retreat to white [read: Jewish] affluence,' the BLM-LA co-founder ranted."
Don't do that Mr. Washington. There are a lot of people who are anti-white; you can't just declare that they are thereby also anti-semitic. Same thing with conflating anti-Zionism with anti-semitism. There are ultra-orthodox Jewish anti-Zionists, obviously, it's possible to be anti-Zionist.
That said, you are correct that the film is anti-Semitic, and that a form of anti-semitism far worse, or at least more directly threatening, was unleashed on the Jewish community in L.A. and a few other places, which was at least tacitly-condoned if not outright encouraged by BLM.
But the aspect of the response to Kyrie Irving that I don't really agree with is not so much the severity of the punishment or the hypocrisy vis-a-vis BLM, but the lack of willingness to just sit down and talk with him and explain why the film is anti-Semitic. We seem to focus so much more on cancellation versus education in these situations, and I don't think that really moves the ball forward in creating more understanding between the races in America.
I also don't know that your summation of the film did a very good job of addressing its core claim: that the Black people who were brought to America were descended from the Biblical Israelites. The unfortunate thing about the film is that the filmmaker did not have to deny the ancestry of Askenazi, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews in order to argue this point. The mainstream story of the lost tribes of Israel posits that there were ten lost tribes, but Judah, Benjamin and at least some of the Levites are the ancestors of most of today's Jews. It's not hard to imagine that at least some other Israelites did head south into Africa after the Assyrian invasion, as we have universally-acknowledged Jewish groups in Ethiopia and also further south.
Just to take the Igbo people of Nigeria as an example, the film is correct that they have until this day been circumcising their infants (I know because my wife is Igbo and her mother demanded such when my son was born). Where could that really come from as a cultural versus medical practice predating European colonialism?
I'm not trying to say it's proven fact, and you're right Hebrew to Negroes is "unacademic", and so useless as a source of proven facts. But I also don't think that the core claim that there are descendants of Biblical Israel to be found in Africa and even among black Americans is to me something that should be seriously considered, and I don't think it's anti-semitic to do so.