“Flowing upward through a confusion of dreams and memory, …I surface. My eyes open. I am awake.” So, begins a day in “Crossing to Safety” by Wallace Stegner. We awaken these days with anxiety that presses from multiple directions. Each day, too, we live with the hope of crossing to a safer place in our lives.
The chronic anxiety that grips society is a fear of what might be. The medical threats and economic pressures of the coronavirus keep us, our families, communities and the entire world constantly distressed. As this anxiety persists, we experience tensions among individuals and groups.
We witness, consequently, that vulnerable minorities face growing prejudice and hate; a pattern that is predicted for a society undergoing chronic anxiety and, consequently, functioning poorly. Black American writers have articulated truths about those of us who belong to at-risk groups. “Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question, how does it feel to be a problem?” wrote W.E. B. Du Bois, a sociologist who helped establish the NAACP.
Du Bois correctly recognized that others purposefully label a minority as the problem. The repeated message is blame. Black Americans are not alone; Jews among other groups, and more recently Asian-Americans, are blamed as the problem, which then emboldens hostilities against us.
Integral to being blamed are deeply felt pressures. Toni Morrison illuminated the effect of these pressures by writing, “The function, the serious function of racism is distraction.” Morrison argued that too much time was spent on explaining “your reason for being,” which distracts from living one’s life fully.
Distraction is a good word for what is happening to Jews, too. We Jews must spend too much time and energy defending ourselves, mostly through our representatives at the JCRB, ADL, and other advocacy organizations. Our advocates are kept busy conferring with school and college administrators, police and civic leaders about antagonistic language and the hostilities against us.
We have a moral imperative, too, to be advocates for ourselves. Laws that restrict the rights of American Indians, the LGBTQ and potential voters are contrary to the basic principles of Judaism. I am personally opposed, further, to such legislation because it targets vulnerable minority groups. We Jews are, like other at-risk groups, only the imagined problems, not the actual problems. We must stop this dangerous pattern which keeps everyone from getting to the bottom of today’s real crises.
First, let’s make activism a priority for ourselves. We have the power to speak up and to act. Let’s insist that leaders acknowledge catastrophic emergencies, like the coronavirus, for what they are and expect them to be solved without delay.
“Fidelity to facts and science should not be controversial,” former President Obama said last year. Facts and science remain, unfortunately, contentious. COVID-19 and extreme weather are the results of our destructive relationship with the natural world.
Second, everyone from our top leaders to ordinary people must get on board to move society to the phase of functioning well and away from performing poorly. COVID-19 is a critical national emergency. In the race between the virus and us, the virus is winning. We need to push hard for humans to do better than the virus. More lives must be saved. When we win, employees and businesses will get their finances and health insurance in better order, and schools will fully reopen. Many jobs will not come back. Congress must initiate plans to retrain workers and to create new jobs.
The federal government has the power to supply all Americans with effective masks, and it should provide instructions on how to wear them properly. Vaccines must get to people at a much faster pace than the current schedules by extending clinic hours. We must demand that EMT workers and the National Guard be trained to speed administering the vaccine shots. Effective and varied public service messages must be employed to allay the concerns of 50% of the public who are skeptics.
To arrive at a safer place, we must all act. We must sound the alarm repeatedly until we are heard. Only when urgent and concrete problems are solved, can society resume functioning well. It is in this phase that our communal and individual anxieties will diminish, and minority groups will likely be free from mistaken blame.
We must safeguard ourselves. By using our collective power, as both citizens and Jews, we can achieve social justice for us. When we do, all Americans will benefit from our actions.
Mary Greenberg, Ph.D., serves on the State of Kansas Holocaust Commission. Her speaking engagements on preventing anti-Semitism are based on her research that advances the study of the Jewish people in the Diaspora. She is dedicated, also, to writing about how a Jewish perspective, with deeply principled values, enriches our contemporary lives.