I have grown up reading and
hearing stories about European Jews who were taken on trains to concentration
camps during World War II. Although these stories are extremely
heartbreaking, I have been able to process them because I know that there will
ultimately be a resolution: the survivors will be freed at the end of the war.
However, I have found it beyond difficult to swallow the stories that I have
read about Africans who were kidnapped and brought to the New World. This can
be attributed to the fact that there is no resolution or peace, even today. The descendants of these poor souls are still
leading challenging and unfair lives. This fact makes learning about these
stories even more disturbing; it has been over 200 years and this huge group
of people is still forced to endure many hardships and inequalities. It
is so difficult to wrap around one’s head around these African narratives about
early enslavement because not only are these people treated with such terrible cruelty,
but our society has yet to compensate for these cruelties that still persist today in a
different, yet unfair form to their descendants.
Both the stories of the Jews and
the Africans contain many parallel themes. In both of these situations, the victims
had zero to little idea about where they were going and what was going to be done with
them. This lack of knowledge created high levels of fear, confusion, and
anxiety for these people. Both of these circumstances elicit feelings of
sadness and empathy for people who learn about these stories. The
major difference, however, is that the stories about the Jews contain somewhat of
a conclusion. Of course Jews still face many injustices, but since World War
II, they have a lot more freedom. A major reason for this is because they are
now considered as “white” people in the U.S, making them more equal to the
American norm. Unfortunately, African Americans have yet to reach this societal
label, forcing them to continue to face many injustices today.
Having this
knowledge that our society has still not fully compensated for the brutality
against Africans during early enslavement, makes reading these stories all the
more difficult. Of course there are superficial ways in which African Americans
have been granted freedom, such as the Emancipation and gaining civil rights.
However, these small steps are not equivalent to being considered as part of
the nation's norm, resulting in African Americans continuing to be oppressed. Although it may be logical that the lives of African Americans have only improved so much, considering the way they were treated at the beginning of enslavement, this logic does not make this concept any easier to comprehend or accept. One would expect our society to have atoned for what they did to the Africans 200 years ago, making it unbelievable that after many generations, African Americans are still being oppressed.
I found this post to be extremely intriguing and was smart to connect with treatment of Jews in the past and present. The mistreatment and inequality of African-Americans is an extremely big issue currently and I am curious as to what may have been your idea of how to integrate them into society similar to how the Jews have become more integrated and equal over time. We all hope that it will change if we give it time, but as you mentioned it's been a while and not much has changed even though generations of slaves and slave owners have passed away (which many people assumed would correct these issues).
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ReplyDeleteI think your point on the assimilation and acceptance of Jews versus the still non-acceptance of African Americans in modern American society was very thought provoking. I never really considered comparing and contrasting the relationship between the two oppressed groups, but it spurred me to answer your question as to why Jews are now accepted while blacks in our country are not. I think what makes the current status and treatment of African Americans different is that America was founded on the belief that African Americans were second class citizens, unworthy of full representation and say in government, only cut out for the work that their bodies could produce. While Jews were an oppressed group, America was not founded and built upon their commodification. America's ability to thrive was not contingent upon the Jews' lack of freedom, but the lack of freedom and acknowledgement of black humanity and ability. I also think it is easier to assimilate into the European ideals and standards of American society when you can look similar enough to fit in. We even saw that in Soul by Soul when lighter-skinned slaves found freedom by using their lighter pigment to pass as white. There is still such an ingrained stigma behind blackness today that our society sees blackness as lesser and unequal because those were the same principles that our country was founded on.
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