White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son (26 page)
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Authors: Tim Wise
Tags: #History, #Politics, #Sociology, #Memoir, #Race
BOOK: White Like Me: Reflections on Race From a Privileged Son
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Nicol would move in with me at the house on Robert Street, despite how its hippie vibe and unhygienic condition no doubt offended her fashionista sensibilities. While there, she would put her own mark on the place, lining up a house party performance by an old friend of hers, Jeff Roberson, whose drag alter ego, Varla Merman—though now famous—was just beginning her career. Varla would perform at a party we all threw for Dayna Leaumont’s eighteenth birthday, she being one of the two high school seniors who had moved in earlier that year. I feel certain that Varla, who came festooned in a Pucci cat suit and performed for an hour, has never since played in such a truly dreary environment as that provided for her at 1805 Robert. Given her now regular appearances in Provincetown, not to mention a stint on Broadway, let it suffice to say, she’s come a long way.
For the next several months, after the Morial campaign flamed out, I worked off-and-on for Lance at the Coalition offices. Money was still trickling in from contributors, and so occasionally he would have enough cash on hand to hire me back as a research assistant or handle some leftover media interviews about Duke and what we thought he might be up to next. It wouldn’t take long to be able to answer that question, as Duke announced that he intended to run for Governor of Louisiana in the fall of 1991, the very next year. Round two was about to begin.
BUT FOR ME,
it may have well been over before it even started, had it not been for Lance’s willingness to stand up to at least one Coalition board member who sought to have me fired.
it may have well been over before it even started, had it not been for Lance’s willingness to stand up to at least one Coalition board member who sought to have me fired.
In November 1990, I penned an article for what would prove to be the next-to-last edition of the
AVANT
. Therein, I discussed my personal outrage at the way in which the state of Israel had consistently supported the racist South African regime, all throughout the decades-long struggle against apartheid. As an American, I was offended by U.S. support of the white minority regime there, and as a Jew, I was horrified that this government to which we Jews were expected to have some fond regard—if not outright religious loyalty—would support the oppression of black South Africans by way of technology transfers, economic investment, and even military involvement with the government there.
AVANT
. Therein, I discussed my personal outrage at the way in which the state of Israel had consistently supported the racist South African regime, all throughout the decades-long struggle against apartheid. As an American, I was offended by U.S. support of the white minority regime there, and as a Jew, I was horrified that this government to which we Jews were expected to have some fond regard—if not outright religious loyalty—would support the oppression of black South Africans by way of technology transfers, economic investment, and even military involvement with the government there.
The essay was scripted in response to an article I had read the previous summer in the Nashville Jewish Federation newsletter, written by Bertram Korn Jr., a spokesperson for a militantly anti-Arab organization called CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting), the primary purpose of which was to insulate Israel from even the mildest of criticism. To Korn and the hyper-Zionists who think like him, nothing Israel does in defense of the Jewish state is ever objectionable. Jews are always innocent, always victims, never victimizers—and to suggest otherwise is to make one an anti-Semite. In Korn’s view, Israel shouldn’t be criticized for trade and investment with South Africa, since several Arab states also engaged in such activity—a geopolitical equivalent of the old, “Billy threw the rocks too, Mom” defense, and about as unconvincing.
In the piece, I detailed the various entanglements between the Jewish state and the white racist government in South Africa, and noted the special irony of such linkages given the way in which the first four apartheid governments had been led by men who were Nazi collaborators during World War Two. What self-respecting Jew would tacitly support connections of this sort, by way of their silence, just so their precious Israel could avoid well-deserved rebuke?
Apparently, the answer was Jane Buchsbaum, the treasurer of the Louisiana Coalition (and head of the local Jewish Federation), who decided that my apostasy with regard to Israel was grounds for termination. Upon learning of the article—thanks to the frenetic call of Harley Karz-Wagman, the Rabbi at the Tulane Hillel House, who fashioned himself quite the liberal, and who had seen it within hours of its release—Buchsbaum called Lance and said that in her opinion, I should have no further role in the Coalition. Blurring the lines between actual anti-Jewish bigots like Duke, and anti-Zionist Jews like myself (or merely Jews who didn’t think it right to support anti-black racism in South Africa), Buchsbaum and Karz-Wagman suggested that I was hardly better than the man whom I’d been working to defeat the past several months.
I learned of Rabbi Harley’s outrage while having dinner at Nicol’s mom’s house. I was there when Shiloh Dewease, one of the roommates at Robert Street and a longtime
AVANT
collective member, called to inform me of his present temper-tantrum. Harley had called the house, incensed by the essay and demanding a retraction. Shiloh had asked him what, if anything, about the piece was factually inaccurate, to which he had replied,
nothing
. There was nothing inaccurate about the claims I had made—Israel indeed had supported South African apartheid—but according to the Rabbi, Jews shouldn’t write such truths, no matter how accurate. We should not, in Harley’s words, “air other Jews’ dirty laundry.” That such lunacy confirmed my decision nine years before to leave the Temple seemed apparent. If this was the orthodoxy required to remain a Jew in good standing, by all means, I thought, let me be a Jew in exile.
AVANT
collective member, called to inform me of his present temper-tantrum. Harley had called the house, incensed by the essay and demanding a retraction. Shiloh had asked him what, if anything, about the piece was factually inaccurate, to which he had replied,
nothing
. There was nothing inaccurate about the claims I had made—Israel indeed had supported South African apartheid—but according to the Rabbi, Jews shouldn’t write such truths, no matter how accurate. We should not, in Harley’s words, “air other Jews’ dirty laundry.” That such lunacy confirmed my decision nine years before to leave the Temple seemed apparent. If this was the orthodoxy required to remain a Jew in good standing, by all means, I thought, let me be a Jew in exile.
Lance would have none of it of course. My views on Israel (which he largely shared, unbeknownst to Jane and Rabbi Harley), were irrelevant to my work at the Coalition, he explained. Not to mention, all of three hundred people (if we were lucky) might have read the article, and I hadn’t identified myself in the byline as working for the Coalition, so what difference did it make? Though I received several hostile calls at the
AVANT
house from right-wing Jews who lectured me on my insufficient devotion to our supposed spiritual homeland, the controversy blew over rather quickly. That said, it had demonstrated to me the tendentious nature of antiracist allyship.
AVANT
house from right-wing Jews who lectured me on my insufficient devotion to our supposed spiritual homeland, the controversy blew over rather quickly. That said, it had demonstrated to me the tendentious nature of antiracist allyship.
All of my life I had heard that we as Jews were almost inherently predisposed to oppose injustice—the result of our religious teachings and our experiences as targets for oppression and even extermination. But as it turned out, we were just as motivated by naked power and self-interest as anyone. Liberal and left Jews could turn into apologists for murder and discrimination just as soon as Israel was in the picture, whether regarding South Africa or the Palestinians. Jane and Harley had taught me a lesson alright, but it hadn’t been the one they’d set out to impart. What I’d learned was that, politically speaking, we Jews were really just a slightly different brand of white folks.
HOWEVER, IT WASN’T
only the organized Jewish community that could prove inconsistent on the ally front. In late spring 1991, funding for the Coalition hadn’t picked up sufficiently to allow for my full-time re-hiring to work on the Gubernatorial campaign against Duke. So, worried about finances, but wanting to remain involved in progressive activism, I took a job as a statewide coordinator for Students Organizing Students (SOS): a New York-based group working to secure reproductive freedom for women, especially in states like Louisiana, where abortion access was constantly being threatened by lawmakers.
only the organized Jewish community that could prove inconsistent on the ally front. In late spring 1991, funding for the Coalition hadn’t picked up sufficiently to allow for my full-time re-hiring to work on the Gubernatorial campaign against Duke. So, worried about finances, but wanting to remain involved in progressive activism, I took a job as a statewide coordinator for Students Organizing Students (SOS): a New York-based group working to secure reproductive freedom for women, especially in states like Louisiana, where abortion access was constantly being threatened by lawmakers.
Although the job was supposed to be for one person, Anneliese Singh (who had just graduated from Tulane and with whom I’d been friends for several years) approached me about sharing the responsibilities with her. It was too much for her to do alone, she said, and since I still had occasional work at the Coalition, a part-time gig would work well for me, so I jumped at the chance. I knew Anneliese to be a first-rate organizer, and being a staunch supporter of abortion rights and the full-range of women’s reproductive choices, I saw it as an opportunity to make a difference on an important issue, while gaining critical organizing experience in the process.
The timing of my work with SOS couldn’t have been more propitious, as it dovetailed with David Duke’s authorship of a bill in the state house that would pay poor women on income support to be temporarily sterilized with NORPLANT contraceptive inserts. As if the legislature’s annual attempts to prohibit or severely curtail abortion access weren’t bad enough, now Duke was offering to limit reproductive freedom in the other direction, by all but bribing desperate mothers to undergo sterilization so as to limit childbirth. Anneliese and I both thought it would be an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the intersectionality of three oppressions: racism, classism, and sexism, since anti-welfare sentiment was obviously aimed at women, and poor women in particular, and poor women of color even more directly; so, in addition to organizing against proposed abortion restrictions, we began working against House Bill 1584 as well: the Duke sterilization plan.
During this time I co-authored, along with Lance, a report critiquing the NORPLANT bill for the Coalition, which we distributed to lawmakers and the media. Therein, we explained the connections between Duke’s plan and his longstanding support for Nazi-like eugenics programs. House Bill 1584, we explained, was a throwback to Hitlerian population control efforts. Not to mention, it was based on flawed policy premises regarding women on welfare, including any number of false assumptions about the link between income support and out-of-wedlock childbirths, which studies indicate is no real link at all. States with the most generous income support programs have lower rates of out-of-wedlock childbirth, while those with the highest rates of out-of-wedlock childbirth invariably have the weakest social safety net programs.
Seeing the sterilization bill as an obvious organizing opportunity for pro-choice forces, Anneliese and I approached Louisiana Choice, the state affiliate of the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), and the largest abortion rights group in the state, hoping to work together to defeat Duke’s assault on the reproductive freedom of poor women. Despite several attempts to gain their interest, or involve them in public events to discuss restrictions on abortion access
and
restrictions on the right to have children if so desired, the only reply from the NARAL folks was silence. They showed no interest in fighting the Duke bill. Though their lack of apparent concern may have been due to overwork at trying to beat back the restrictions on abortion that were pending in the legislature, it’s hard to avoid the thought that they were also making a decision influenced by their own race and class biases. To the white and middle-class led group, the reproductive freedom of poor women, especially of color, to
have
children in the face of a society that despises them, took a back seat to securing the rights of mostly middle class and white women who could afford abortions, to terminate their pregnancies.
and
restrictions on the right to have children if so desired, the only reply from the NARAL folks was silence. They showed no interest in fighting the Duke bill. Though their lack of apparent concern may have been due to overwork at trying to beat back the restrictions on abortion that were pending in the legislature, it’s hard to avoid the thought that they were also making a decision influenced by their own race and class biases. To the white and middle-class led group, the reproductive freedom of poor women, especially of color, to
have
children in the face of a society that despises them, took a back seat to securing the rights of mostly middle class and white women who could afford abortions, to terminate their pregnancies.
In the end, House Bill 1584 was defeated, no thanks to the mainstream women’s rights groups who ignored it. Sadly, the underlying logic of the proposal—that poor women are too fertile and need to have their reproduction restricted either by force or bribe—remains with us. Indeed, another state lawmaker in Louisiana proposed similar legislation in 2008, suggesting that while Duke may have been defeated in his attempts to shape the law, Dukism remains a force to be reckoned with, even two decades later.
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