The Focus on Black Anti-Semitism
I’ve been wrestling with the fallout of Kanye West and Kyrie Irving. As a visibly Muslim Black woman, the controversy exposes me to a number of vulnerabilities because some see me as inherently anti-Semitic. I felt compelled to write because of my anti-racism work on a shared analysis to address racism, antisemitism, and Islamophobia. Kanye West and Kyrie Irving are not the first famous Black people to get canceled for anti-Semitic tweets. Nick Cannon and British rapper Wiley were also canceled. Marc Lamont Hill lost his job for a speech on Israel; Representative Ilhan Omar was censored for her remarks on the influence of the Pro-Israel lobby. There is a growing movement in Black communities to boycott the NBA because they point out that Kyrie did not say offensive remarks. Yet he is facing accusations of anti-Semitism and unprecedented punitive measures for sharing a Black nationalist video. To this date, Amazon continues to distribute and make money from its distribution. Kyrie’s case illustrates how the hyper-focus on individual acts of bias keeps us from understanding how systemic anti-Semitism operates in the West.
Anti-Semitism is not a white people’s problem, as there are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BiPOC) Jews who face anti-semitism and racism. Roughly 10–20% of American Jews are BiPOC, Sephardic, and Mizrahi. Leo Ferguson taught that antisemitism is essentially a conspiracy theory that blames and scapegoats Jews. It works to divide multiracial and multifaith movements. Anti-semitism is a tool of white supremacy. Anti-Blackness is at the core of antisemitic conspiracy theories. They holdthat Jewish people are manipulating the world through banking and entertainment and organizing Black people and People of Color migrants to dilute the white race and pollute the culture. White Christian nationalists have been adept proponents of these wild conspiracy theories. From the millions systematically in Nazi Germany, the genocide in Bosnia, to the mass shootings across the US, ethno-nationalism is a threat to us all.
I will avoid the temptation to delve into oppression Olympics about how someone can get canceled for anti-semitism, while anti-Black statements and narratives are allowed to circulate freely. However, our society is especially punitive to Black people who have internalized dominant narratives about other marginalized groups. How dare Black people have bias, when popular culture, literature, mass media, Reddit, Qanon, and elected officials, pump out racist, anti-semitic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic, and transphobic tropes nonstop? Black people are expected to be culturally sensitive and understand the nuances of systemic oppression of other marginalized communities while others remain woefully ignorant. In Kyrie’s case, Black people are expected to understand the perniciousness of anti-Semitism even though we do not have the same history with Jews as Euro-Americans. The selective outrage assuages white guilt over the Holocaust and slave trade by saying “Black people are racist too!”
Black people are just as susceptible to dominant narratives as any other group. We may even read similar texts and sources to make sense of our world. Like the Mormons, some Black nationalists claim to be the true Israelites. My encounters with Black Israelites were the brothers posted up on street corners dressed up like Afrika Bambaataa & the Soulsonic Force. They would shout at pedestrians preaching and insulting pedestrians, including me for “following the religion of the Arabs and hopping on the back of a camel.” It would make sense that an unhinged Black MAGA celebrity like Kanye would adopt dominant narratives about Soros and Black Lives Matter. Without anti-racist education and critical thought, these ideas can be appealing for their simplicity and non-solution.
This week, I’ve seen several articles on Kyrie and why antisemitic conspiracy theories appeal to Black men. Celebrities, regardless of race, should be educated and taught how to provide proper restitution for pushing false narratives and unfounded conspiracy theories. However, there are some bad-faith actors who will use this moment to silence dissent and pro-democracy movements. We are just a few days out from a mid-term election. Many of those running uphold QAnon conspiracy theories and Christian nationalist ideologies. They want to ban teaching truth about the history of racism in our schools and they want to push back the gains we have made to for justice. However, I believe in the Power of Us, when we stay true to anti-oppression values and continue to learn from one another, we can move toward collective liberation.
See: The Power of Us
