"IF FOLKS CAN'T IMAGINE YOU AS HUMAN, ALL THE POLICY IN THE WORLD IS IRRELEVANT" TA-NEHISI COATES
TAROT: 6 of Coins / LENORMAND: Tree, Mountain, Moon / ADINKRA: Gye Nyame
No gentle juggling in this week’s post, I’m afraid. If there is, indeed, a time to every purpose and season, then today feels like both time and season for a more piercing piece, however it may land. I guess what I just wrote is the equivalent of one of those chyrons you read on the tv screen, warning that what you are about to see may jostle your sensibilities enough that you may want to turn the channel now. I certainly won’t be offended.
I want to talk about the comments last week by Julianna Margulies, explaining her theory as to why Black people are not en masse and unequivocally supporting Israel:
“The fact that the entire Black community isn’t standing with us, to me says they just don’t know or they’ve been brainwashed to hate Jews. In the civil rights movement, the Jews were the ones that walked side by side with the Blacks to fight for their rights.” Julianna Margulies
Ok. First of all… “The Blacks”? Girl, bye.
Second of all….let’s just take it to the cards, shall we?
Today’s Tarot card, from Courtney Alexander’s Dust2Onyx Tarot is the 6 of Coins. In this depiction, we find a marvelous mixing of the Sun, Moon, and Sea, and a tale about giving and receiving and the necessary limits of hospitality. Margulies is not wrong when she mentions the participation of American Jews in the Civil Rights Movement. I was a child during that time, busy desegregating a tony private girls’ school in New York City. My white father was a dedicated Civil Rights advocate. I remember the era very well. I recall the solidarity between Blacks and Jews at the time, and I also recall that a certain point, that alliance fell apart. I never asked what happened, but it was a marked enough departure from the way that things had been for me to take notice.
In retrospect, the breach seems to have begun after all the assassinations and upon the advent of the Black Power Movement. At that time, we were less about Kumbaya and more about speeding up the timetable, acknowledging MLK’s “fierce urgency of now,” and we wanted to make our own path, according to our own rules, to determine our own future in this place. Our Jewish allies, as I recall and as I consider it all in retrospect, were offended by our refusal to accept their leadership of our struggle. We did not accept what felt to many of our leaders like a 6 of Cups, noblesse oblige patronizing of our ability to determine our own destiny. We snubbed the outreached hand so often seen in traditional depictions of the 6 of Cups card. The ensuing breach, which I submit was a necessary one, has never been bridged, healed, or even discussed in any substantive way. Everyone just kind of went their own way. According to Margulies, however, Black people owe Jews a debt, stemming from that ‘60’s era. Let us look to Lenormand to see why she is wrong.
The Lenormand Tree has many meanings, but here, it represents the human family, with its one trunk and many branches and leaves. The reason Jews acted in solidarity with Black people during the Civil Rights era was that they saw in our experience an echo of their own oppression; we were siblings in that way. The Jews, however, go further, and view themselves as God’s Chosen, separate in that honor, apparently, from all the rest of humanity. And that is where, Houston, we have a problem.
We see this problem in the Lenormand Mountain, which says, “Wait a minute! Hold up! Not so fast!” It is not just the Lenormand Mountain which says this. Black people say it, too. Our understanding of ourselves as a people torn from rich roots, enslaved, disrespected, etc. etc. etc. requires that, as we make our way out of no way, we view every oppressed people as our people. We have not taken the same lesson from slavery and its aftermath that Israel seems to have taken from the Holocaust. If we had taken the same lesson, we would have lain waste to this country a long time ago. We, though, choose to be another sort, as the Lenormand Moon confirms. The Moon is about identity; who we choose to be. We cannot wholesale ally ourselves with any group that permits genocide, regardless of the provocation. I submit that Black people have earned the moral authority to take such a stance. We, too, are a largely Spirit-filled people, but never would we call ourselves Chosen to the exclusion of all others. Adinkra shows us why:
Gye Nyame is the symbol for “Except God,” which is to say that God, and not we, are the determiners of who is Chosen. In the meantime, we are enjoined to cast our lot with the oppressed, the ones who are made less than human, so as to more easily justify their destruction. We owe no debt higher than this: to side with those who suffer. And we know that to inflict suffering only compounds our own. To side with Palestinians is not to side with Hamas. That false equivalency will win no friends, any more than will exhortations to Black people which simultaneously cast aspersions on our ability and willingness to make informed decisions.
It may well be that the Middle East remains a quagmire of misery because the flames of ancient hatreds are stoked and not staunched. Perhaps all we can do is pray that this not be the case. However it goes, Black people, out of our own experience, will speak up for those who suffer and against those who inflict suffering, no matter where or who. That is who we have decided to be, unapologetically.
Amen and Ase
As long as one side in any conflict can manage to dehumanize the other, there’s no end to the atrocities that will be permitted by silent compliance.
Thank you for this piece. You have written it so clearly, with both firmness and compassion.