With more and more people either defending Kanye West’s antisemitism or adding their own to the mix – including many from the Black community – I’ve been waiting to see much more than the usual bland “I stand against antisemitism” memes from celebrities and other influential people.
Sure, we’ve seen Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Emmanuel Acho step up to the plate, but such responses have been few and far between.
Enter actor and comedian Tyler Perry, who posted the following from the heart on Instagram.
This first photo is of my mother with these adorable children she worked with at a Jewish community center. I remember her coming home from work one day devastated because there was a bomb threat and my mother was horrified that there were people who wanted to blow up a building full of children because they were Jewish. I blurred their faces but think about that. It brought her back to that pain of having to live through the bombing of a church in Alabama where three little black girls died.
My mother made sure that I knew the commonality of what black people and Jewish people have endured – she not only taught me about slavery but she also taught me about the Holocaust. But in teaching me about all our common pains she also taught me about the allies that Jewish people have been for black people. Case in point, look at the founding members of the NAACP – it took allies to get us to a better place in this country and those allies didn’t look like us. It was Jewish allies that were murdered in Mississippi trying to help us get the right to vote. I can fill this post with so many examples including my own allies that I work with today who have helped me grow a business that has allowed me to hire more black people than most businesses in Hollywood. No one makes it alone.
Refuse hate!!
Tyler’s post is a great reminder that our communities are natural allies, not natural enemies. We cannot allow the Kanyes of the world to drive an irreparable wedge between us.
