Yes, I know 'man' in the original song stood for 'mankind' rather than the male of the species but since this is all about inclusivity, let's just say 'person'.
So I was scrolling along on Twitter minding my business when I saw this post. An obviously white woman was quite UPSET at Whoopi for going on Stephen Colbert and explaining what happened when she said Jews and Nazis were perpetrating white-on-white violence during the holocaust.
DISCLAIMER: Being melanated myself, I also do not understand the difference between Jews and Gentiles of Caucasian origin and I am not here to argue the veracity of this statement.
What I was taken aback by was her aggression towards Whoopi which seemed out of proportion to what Whoopi said. She accused Whoopi of joking about the whole thing, yadda yadda. So I asked her, where is the joke? She was simply telling Steve what happened and where the trouble came in.
So the woman said that Whitney didn't apologize, which is not true, she did.
And it reminded me of that time Jennifer Gunter, who is a vagina doctor, went after Oprah for having a vagina douche named after her and opening the gift on Instagram. She tried to claim it was some sort of Joe Rogan level misleading the public type thing. That vagina and vulva are different things and that the douche goes in the vulva.
Talk about overkill.
Anyway, I found myself in the position of defending these two powerful black women just because I don't like the out of proportion blame they get for what is essentially nothing to do with them. Do you feel safer attacking the black woman and don't experience guilt because she's rich and famous? It's still racism, White Woman.
So as I was pointing out that Whoopi apologized for her words and maybe she harbors no guilt about Jewish oppression because from her perspective at the bottom of the hierarchy, the Nazi-Jewish conflict is two elephants fighting while black people, the Romanis and the disabled who ALSO were exterminated in Nazi Germany but no one mentions them, are the grass.
So expecting her to sound remorseful for something she had nothing to do with is the energy she should save for other Nazis. Well, miss White Woman backtracked a bit and tried to say that Jews have always supported black people in America. Maybe they have, I don't know. But they are, to this day, also perpetuating apartheid against Palestinians and treating Ethiopian Jews in Israel as second-class citizens.
She called me an antisemite.
I became an antisemite when I pointed out her wrongs just as I become a 'reverse racist' when the word 'black' comes up in any conversation where there is a debate on how a person has been treated by others and that person happens to be black. see Meghan Markle, Kamala Harris, Serena Williams, etc.
People would rather turn around and call you names than face their own prejudice. Maybe Nazis didn't regard Jews as the same race as them. Nazis were supposed to be "Aryans" yes? Blue eyes, blonde hair. Other brown-haired but white-skinned people were what?
In school, I learned about three races; Caucasian, Mongoloid, and Negroid. Of course, it's white people who came up with these races so they get to be 'ian' while everyone else is 'oid'. But these are their own divisions and so, what are Jews now? Aren't they Caucasians?
Genuine question.
White woman said 'antisemitism is rampant' in society but her calling me an antisemite made me wonder if maybe they need to look at the definition and why people have concerns.
We all like to point outward - me included - with our victimization. But how about we interrogate our own prejudices instead? I think that's what the song was about - starting with the man in the mirror; - dealing with our own internal biases first, before being 'furious' at others for theirs.
Imagine if everyone did that.
What if everyone examined their own -isms? Tribalism, Racism, Homophobia, Transphobia, Colorism, Internalized Racism, all of it. Everyone just said, "Wait. Lemme deal with my own shit first."
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| Society after we've all dealt with our shit |
