Here’s why I usually hate Twitter: We will never get to the bottom of the big issues facing humanity—poverty, disease, warfare, Israel on campus—without a long dialogue held in good faith between dissenting viewpoints. In other words, getting to the bottom of the world’s ills will take more than volleying 140-character spitballs with a stranger who chooses to represent himself to the world via a picture of a burning Israeli flag. When you can only express your thoughts in ways that sound good on bumper stickers, it’s nearly impossible to disagree with someone without coming off as a troll looking to pick a fight. So I try to avoid it.
Yet recent Twitter disagreements have prompted me to reconsider this policy. First, spurred by @TheCollegeRabbi’s insistence on its necessity, came Jonathan Katz’s article on the dangerous flaws in the claim of Jewish indigeneity in Israel, and now this.
On Monday, I retweeted Seth Rogen’s tweet about Macklemore performing “Thrift Shop” while wearing a seemingly Shylock-inspired “disguise” at a concert in Seattle last Friday.
.@macklemore, first you trick people into thinking you’re a rapper, now you trick them into thinking you’re Jewish? pic.twitter.com/3rtaE4GHje
— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) May 18, 2014
That prompted Bruce H. Wolk to Tweet:
@Sethrogen @New_Voices_Mag @macklemore The PC double standard in action. The costume makes Sterling look like a choir boy.
— Bruce H. Wolk (@BruceHWolk) May 19, 2014
When I read this, I did a double-take. Did he seriously just compare this to Donald Sterling? I just had to say something.
The rest of the conversation, which ended civilly and respectfully, can be found here.
But the more I think about it, the more the comparison between Sterling and Macklemore bothers me. In the past year, the American black community has had to deal with not only Cliven Bundy, Donald Sterling, and that unrepentant racist cop in New Hampshire, but also the Trayvon Martin decision and key protections of the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action being stripped away.
Over this same period, we in the American Jewish community have had to deal with anti-Israel activity that often toes the line, Donald Sterling, NBA Commissioner Adam Sliver’s reaction “as a human being” rather than as a Jew to the question of his and Sterling’s shared Jewishness, and Tal Fortgang’s white privilege. In other words, all of our problems involve questions of how white we are, which of two first-world countries we feel more at home in, and how our children feel at college. For the black community, meanwhile, the questions are more like “Will we be able to vote at all in the only country we have?” and “How many of our children will even make it to college without being thrown into prison first?”
Yet much of the American Jewish community’s knee-jerk reaction to Macklemore’s costume nonetheless highlights our delicate position, caught in the balance between majority and minority, entrenched power and persecution. Older generations rightly feel this tension worse than we do, and we need to be extremely grateful for that. We would need to go back to Leo Frank to find anything even remotely like a Trayvon Martin situation for us.
Racism against blacks still pervades the American consciousness like a bad joke told one too many times and no Supreme Court decision can change that; culturally ingrained anti-Semitism at a similar level is, thankfully, non-existent. Even with its heavily flawed criteria, the ADL’s recent “Global 100 Poll” found only 9% of Americans hold anti-Semitic beliefs. This means that someone could wear a costume with a big nose, black hair, and beard without most people immediately thinking “Jew!”.
This incident and the reaction (or lack thereof) it initially provoked should be utilized as a valuable teaching moment for all of America. It should teach us that everyone, not just old Republicans, needs to have formal education in racism and stereotypes. It should teach us that if you’ve offended a group without meaning to, the correct response is to apologize, and that any other response will only make the situation worse. And it should teach us Jews that while we are still very much a minority in this country, we have become very white indeed.
And that’s what bothered me so much about Bruce’s tweet. Sterling’s comments were horrific for reasons far beyond what he actually said. Ten years from now, people will have forgotten about Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy, and Macklemore’s dumb disguise will only be recalled on the newest edition of E!’s 101 Greatest Celebrity Oops!. Yet African-Americans and other racial minorities will still be suffering the consequences of stand-your-ground laws and the weakening of the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action.
In other words, #ThisIsNotFuckingAwesome.
(But this is:
“My boy Macklemore taking heat for dressing up as me circa 2005. Great guy who meant no harm. Let’s learn to assume and believe in the good, not the bad.” -Matisyahu)
Derek M. Kwait graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and is editor in chief of New Voices.
