To heal world, show solidarity with Jews of color, too |
To heal world, show solidarity with Jews of color, too
J.: the Jewish news weekly of Northern California
San Francisco, California
2015-01-08
Kim Carter Martinez
Oakland, California
My name is Kim. I am black, I am Jewish, and my life matters. For the last few months, our country has seen a movement growing from a wave of protests against the police and vigilante law enforcement killings of unarmed black men.
As a country we have struggled with talking about the issues of police brutality and racism — individual racism, and the systemic and institutionalized racism that black and brown people in our country fall victim to on a daily basis.
In America, a black person is killed by the police or by vigilante law enforcement every 28 hours. #BlackLivesMatter, the movement that arose out of the outrage over these killings, describes itself as “an ideological and political intervention in a world where black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise … [an affirmation of black folks’] contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression.”
Over and over again, I’ve heard people in the Jewish community talk about #BlackLivesMatter as if the violence and racism toward people of color is happening to an outside group we are not a part of. It’s happening to “them,” and we can only show solidarity to this group in certain ways because it is a group to which we do not belong…
Read the entire article here.
Tags: J., J.: the Jewish news weekly of Northern California, Kim C. Martinez, Kim Carter Martinez, Kim Martinez