I was in a meeting yesterday when a statement was uttered by a
well-meaning but ignorant participant.
“Put a bunch of them in a room together and boy, do they buy”.
They, in this case, was referring to Jews. I was the only Jew in the meeting and I
immediately felt a sting, an anger, a horror that rarely gets touched.
I understand that I am privileged in the world of bias. As a Jewish descendant of Europeans, I have
few obvious outward indicators of my heritage, so perhaps my co-worker was
unaware of my background and faith. I
check the “Caucasian” box on every survey and my curly hair could be of many
descents, from Italian to African-American, Indian to Eastern-European
Jewish. So I “pass”, in this case, pass
as Christian, enough so that this person felt comfortable that he was talking
about a group of others.
Feeling the sting of ignorance made me acutely aware of what
it might be like to someone who has outward indicators – skin color, eyes,
dress, markings, size, speech – and face this sort of behavior day after day,
over and over again, to hear biased references to oneself made blatantly and
stupidly and prejudicially. This remark
was nothing at all compared to being preyed upon based on being black, was
nothing compared to being harassed for being gay, was nothing compared to
hearing debasing jokes based on your size, was nothing compared to not being
allowed to love who you want to love, was nothing compared to so many
horrifying slights and injustices. But
it was a sharp slap in the face, and a good reminder that ignorance and bias is
everywhere, and that unless we call it out, recognize it for what it is, and ultimately
not allow it, it will persist and eat away at our humanity.
