The Yetzer of Racism
Yom Kippur, 5776
Rabbi Jason Rosenberg
[PDF to be available on www.BethAmTampa.org soon]
It was a little past midday,
and I’d guess something around mile 10, that the Georgia heat really started to
get to us. We had been up since before dawn, and walking since the morning
commute. And here we still were, a few dozen of us, mostly in matching yellow
T-shirts, emblazoned with the NAACP’s logo, marching. One of us — an almost
70-year-old veteran who had awoken at least three times the night before
screaming in terror, from what, exactly, we didn’t know — carried an American
flag. His walking partner didn’t carry anything, except for his cane, as he had
been for literally hundreds of miles. The rest of us took turns carrying a sefer Torah, a mile at a time. The flag
carrier, a wonderful man who had taken the name “Middle Passage” a few decades
ago, made it almost 900 miles. Sadly, tragically, 12 days ago, he collapsed and
died while marching. His partner, the one with the cane, one or two of the many
volunteers from the NAACP and our sacred scroll were now the only ones marching
the entire way on America’s Journey for Justice, the 40 day, thousand mile
march from Selma, Alabama to Washington DC, sites of two of Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr.’s most famous rallies. And, although none of us would be marching the
entire way, there has been at least one Reform rabbi, usually several, taking
every step. The CCAR, the national organization of Reform Rabbis, has partnered
with the NAACP for this march in the name of racial and economic justice. And, it
was one of the greatest honors of my life to be one of those rabbis, marching
for a single day in mid-August. For years I’ve been reading about my hero,
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who marched alongside King in Selma, and like
every rabbi I know, I’ve been quoting him when he explained that marching with
King felt like praying with his feet. Now, I got to do more than quote him. I
got to follow him.
Why march? What did we expect
to accomplish by walking through cities, small towns and farmland? My answer has
always been more or less the same — I marched in order to shine a light on a
problem. I marched in order to draw attention to the ongoing outrage which is
the reality of African-American life, in 21st-century America. I marched, and I
did interviews, and I posted articles, and I speak about it, and I will
continue to speak about it, because there are people who honestly believe that
there is no issue to talk about. There are people who believe that we live in a
post-racial society, and there are people who will say explicitly that any
problems encountered by any person of color have absolutely nothing to do with the
color of their skin, but only with the content of their character and the
patterns of their behavior. If there are any such people here today, and odds
are there are at least one or two, then I respectfully but directly state that
you’re wrong. Racism is alive and well in our country. Racism is alive and well
inside of me, and inside of you. Inside of each one of us.
No one is free from racism.
It’s within us all. Please listen carefully to what I’m saying; I’m not saying
that we’re all terrible people. I’m not saying that any of us are irredeemably
evil. Being racist, having racism in our hearts, isn’t always hate spewing,
cross burning, maniacal Klan membership. While still too common, for sure, that
kind of racism is relatively rare, and less tolerated than ever, thank God.
But, that’s just one, extreme form of racism. Real, everyday racism is not all
or nothing — it’s something which lives inside of each of us, to greatly
varying degrees.
For thousands of years, our
sages have spoken about two inclinations or urges which live inside of each
person. Yetzer HaTov is the
inclination towards good while Yetzer
HaRa is the inclination towards evil. People aren’t good or bad. People
have inclinations in both directions. Some of us may find one to be stronger
than the other, but no person is completely free from either. It’s not wholly
unlike the image of the little angel and devil standing on our shoulders. No
one has just that angel, and no one has just that devil. We are caught between
these two arguing forces every day our lives.
This shouldn’t be a surprise
to anyone. Silly imagery aside, we all know that we have parts of ourselves
about which we’re proud, and we also all have parts which we would be
embarrassed to share with anyone. Thoughts and desires and impulses and
instincts which we wish weren’t there. That’s Yetzer HaRa. We try not to give it a voice, and we try to keep it
buried, deep down. But, however successful we are or aren’t at that, it never
goes away, completely. It’s always there.
And, like every good devil
character in literature, Yetzer HaRa
is subtle. It doesn’t work primarily by shouting obviously unacceptable things.
It works in quiet, sneaky ways. If it didn’t, it would be easier to fight. But,
Yetzer HaRa is like an insect which
knows to avoid the light and to survive by escaping notice. Look at the subtle
ways that our Yetzer HaRa, our
racism, hides, but still leaves traces.
An experiment was done with
jobhunting sites. Identical pairs of resumes were submitted with only one
change — the names. One version would have a name like “John Brown.” The other
something more “black” sounding, like “Jawaan Brown.” It probably won’t surprise you to hear that
the “white” named resumes had significantly more inquiries than the otherwise
identical “black” ones. A recent analysis of professional baseball scouts shows
that white players are more likely to be described as “intelligent” and “hard-working,”
while black players are more often called “naturally athletic” and “instinctive”
These recruiters and scouts weren’t vicious racists. They were just ordinary,
decent people who were being tripped up by the simple bias which is Yetzer HaRa whispering in our ears.
Claiming that I am not the
least bit racist might be exactly as believable as, or it might actually be the
exact same thing as saying that I don’t have a yetzer ra. There’s no shame
in having a yetzer ra. It’s part of
being human. But, there’s a great shame in letting it run free, and most of us
do that when we pretend that it’s not even there. We have to recognize racist
feelings within us, and then recognize them as a manifestation of Yetzer HaRa. Of the worst parts of
ourselves. They’re terrible, and we wish they weren’t there. But they’re real,
and they’re there. Pretending they aren’t only lets them stay.
In the famous scene of Jacob
wrestling with the angel, towards the end Jacob asks for the angel’s name and
the angel replies, “Do not ask me my name.” Rabbi Y.L. Hasman says that the
angel actually answered honestly. The angel, which was long identified by the
rabbis as Yetzer HaRa, is named “Do
not ask me my name.” Because, its essence is to go unidentified, and
unobserved. Not identifying it, ignoring it, is how it wins. The first step in
solving any problem, especially one within our own hearts, is to admit there is
a problem to solve.
The same dynamic which lives
inside of us lives on in society, as well. Societal racism isn’t all or nothing,
either. Yes, slavery is gone, Jim Crow is thankfully no more and we have a
black president. But, that doesn’t mean that we’ve eradicated racism. Precisely
like our own, personal racism, it’s not all or nothing. Getting rid of the rats
and roaches which I can see doesn’t mean that there aren’t more living in the walls
of my house, just waiting for the lights to go out. If we look, and we don’t
have to look all that hard, we’ll still see it, hiding in plain sight.
Study after study has shown
that African Americans are more likely to be stopped by the police than whites.
And, when they’re stopped, they’re more likely to be frisked than whites are.
Banks have historically been less likely to give loans for houses located in
predominantly black areas, or to black buyers, making it harder for someone to
find economic stability, simply because of how they were born. Black poverty is
more concentrated than white poverty — on average, a poor black person is more
likely than a poor white person to live surrounded by other poor people. Along
with the hard to quantify effects that must have on someone’s psyche and
expectations, it also makes it much less likely for them to have good access to
the various social services which might help them. Landfills and other waste
sites are more likely to be located in largely black areas. That leads to lower
property values, which leaves less money for the schools, to say nothing of the
physiological, cognitive effects which are just beginning to be understood of
living so close to so much pollution. I could quite literally go on for hours.
Much of this — I hope and
suspect the vast majority of it — isn’t happening because of a few vicious
racists with the intent of destroying black lives. It happens quietly, almost
naturally. No one is to blame; it’s just “the system.” But that’s exactly the
point. It’s the system. Systematic racism is how generally good people like you
and me manage to not see the racism around us, and so we allow it to continue.
In his book Justice In The City, Rabbi Aryeh Cohen
shows how the rabbis of the Talmud demanded a very different kind of society.
The society of which they dreamed was, out of moral necessity, a force for
addressing inequality and suffering in our collective homes. And, it starts
with an obligation to ensure that we can hear the cries of the oppressed. We
are required to take concrete, deliberate steps to make sure that injustices,
which would include racism, are seen and heard by everyone, and never hidden
away in ghettoes or across the tracks. Imagine the effect it might have on us
if we were forced to walk through a poverty-stricken neighborhood, every day.
It would be harder to pretend that it’s not there, wouldn’t it? Moral responses,
Cohen teaches, begin with hearing the cries of the oppressed.
We have to learn how to
listen, and we have to learn how to hear. We have to open our ears and open our
hearts to hear things to which we’re not accustomed, and about which we don’t
want to know. I’ve been trying to remember this as I’ve been reading more and
more accounts of what it’s like to grow up as an African-American, particularly
the book Between The World And Me, by
Ta-Nehisi Coates. Written as a letter to his young son, the book is part
personal history, part political analysis, and all rage. And from the moment I
read an excerpt of it in The Atlantic,
I realized that I had to read it differently than most books and articles I’ve
read. Not critically, but openly. Not trying to judge his argument or the merit
of his case, but instead trying to hear his cry. Even if some of his arguments
are wrong, and I’m not saying they are, the pain contained in his words is
real. Even if there are some African-Americans who had a very different
experience from him, we still have to listen to him telling us of his experience, and of his pain.
Because, that pain is palpable. Listen:
Black
people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and
you come to us endangered. I think we would like to kill you ourselves before
seeing you killed by the streets America made. That is a philosophy for the
disembodied, of a people who control nothing, who can protect nothing, who are
made to fear not just the criminals among them but the police who lord over
them with all the moral authority of a protection racket. It was only after you
that I understood this love, that I understood the grip of my mother’s hand.
She knew that the galaxy itself could kill me, that all of me could be
shattered and all of her legacy spilled upon the curb like bum wine. And no one
would be brought to account for this destruction, because my death would not be
the fault of any human but the fault of some unfortunate but immutable fact of ‘race,’
imposed upon an innocent country by the inscrutable judgment of invisible gods.
The earthquake cannot be subpoenaed. The typhoon will not bend under
indictment. They sent the killer of [my friend] back to his work, because he
was not a killer at all. He was a force of nature, the helpless agent of our
world’s physical laws[1].
Forget any counter arguments
for a moment. Instead, just imagine what it’s like to grow up in a world like
that. A world in which you truly believe that the police are more likely to
attack you than to save you. Imagine what it’s like having to grow up having
what parents of black children often call “the talk,” when they tell their kids
exactly how to act, and how not to act, to avoid any possibility of police
attention. Don’t wear your hood up. Keep your hands out of your pockets, but
don’t move them too quickly. Smile, but not too much.
Don’t argue back at me that
the police are actually the good guys. Because, I believe that they are. But,
instead, think about what it’s like growing up not believing that.
Reading Coates’ book, and so
much like it, with an open heart is simply awful. It’s just brutal. It made me
feel sick to my stomach, and it made it hard to sleep at night. And, that’s a
good thing. Because that’s what hearing someone else’s cry feels like.
Hearing the cries of the oppressed,
really hearing them, is how we start. But, then we have to react. Rabbi Cohen teaches
that the Exodus story is actually all about two varying reactions to the cries
of the oppressed. When our people cry out, over and over again, God hears their
cries, and is awakened to action. Pharaoh ignores their cries. What we’re left
with is a very clear choice: do we want to respond like God, or do we want to
respond like Pharaoh? There is, of course, only one right answer. Hearing the
cries of others has to awaken us. Hearing the cries of others has to lead to
action. Not to judgment or denial. What kind of a person would hear someone
else in pain and begin by asking if
their pain is valid? The pain is valid, because the pain is felt. And, it’s the
pain which evokes a response, not the cause of the pain, and certainly not our
snap judgment of the validity of that cause.
People are always try to
justify or invalidate the pain of others, especially the African-American
community. A few hundred years ago, we were told that Africans simply weren’t
equal to us, and therefore slavery was justified. We were told, and still are
by a few disgusting individuals, that they were actually better off as slaves.
The 21st century version of this is claiming that, “They’re animals who bring
this on themselves.” That it’s not about their race, it’s about their behavior;
they’re just getting what they deserve. It’s no different, really, than what
the defenders of slavery used to say. Is that who we want to be? Is that how we
want history to remember us?
Respond
like God, or respond like Pharaoh. That’s our only choice.
And, our response must be
communal. This is our responsibility,
not mine or yours alone. That’s one of the core lessons of Judaism, and
especially of this day. As Heschel often taught, in a free society, some are
guilty; all are responsible. The fact that we didn’t participate in a crime
with our own hands does not absolve us of all responsibility for addressing
that crime. The only way to be truly moral, and the only way to make any
progress in our society, is not through the presumption of innocence, but
rather through the presumption of responsibility.
That’s why, today, we confess
in the plural — we are guilty. We have sinned. We assume that we are
each guilty of each and every possible sin in order to force ourselves to be as
aggressive as possible in both identifying our own faults, and in addressing
the problems in our society. If we wait to find the person who is truly,
directly responsible for racism, and then wait for them to fix it, we’ll be
waiting for quite a long time, indeed. Some are guilty. All are responsible.
I’m as proud as ever to stand
before you not just as a Rabbi, but as a Reform Rabbi. Because, our movement’s
history is tightly, inextricably linked to Civil Rights. I’ve lost count of the
number of times that I’ve referenced Rabbi Heschel marching with King at Selma.
But, on King’s other side during that march was a man holding a Torah scroll—Rabbi
Maurice Eisendrath, then president of the UAHC, now the URJ. Isaac Meir Wise.
Stephen S. Wise. Barnett Brickner. Gunther Plaut. The list of Reform Rabbis who
were active supporters of Racial Equality is a roll call of the greats from our
movement’s history. Sadly, shamefully, the last few decades have seen us become
less and less engaged with Civil Rights, and with our brothers and sisters in
the African American community. But, a cohort of Rabbis within the CCAR, the
Reform Rabbinical Conference, under the banner of “Rabbis Organizing Rabbis”
has pledged to revive this historic relationship, and to help us, as a
Rabbinate, as a movement, and hopefully as a people, to restore this great
partnership. Once, together, we were able to make a tangible, essential
difference by advancing the cause of justice in our world. Together, we are
committed to doing so again. It is my sincere hope, my prayer, that you’ll join
us. We don’t have to agree on every detail, and we don’t have to agree on every
strategy or policy. But, let us agree that none of us can rest until justice
prevails. Let us agree that so long as one of us is oppressed, none of us are
truly free. Let us agree that although only some may be guilty, all of us are
responsible.
A rabbi was once asked, “Why
does the Torah tell us to ‘Place these words upon your hearts?’ Why does it not
tell us to place these holy words in
our hearts?” The rabbi answered, “It is because, as we are right now, our
hearts are closed, and so we cannot place the holy words within them. So, we
place these words on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, our
hearts will break open, and the words will fall in.”
May the cries of the
oppressed and the words of those who struggle to be free rest upon our hearts.
May we feel the weight of those words, as well as the pain which brought them
forth. And may our hearts soon break open so that those words may dwell within
us, calling us to justice.
This sermon was delivered on Yom Kippur, 5776 (September 23, 2015) at Congregation Beth Am
[1]
Ta-Nehasi Coates, Between The World and
Me, p. 82-3
