The left and its social justice warriors have redefined the meaning of racism away from overt acts of prejudice and discrimination to a model based on implicit systemic power hierarchies of group identity. According to education professors Özlem Sensoy, Robin DiAngelo, and James A. Banks in their 2012 book Is Everyone Really Equal?: An Introduction to Key Concepts in Social Justice Education (page 101), racism is:
Racism: White racial and cultural prejudice and discrimination, supported by institutional power and authority, used to the advantage of Whites and the disadvantage of people of Color. Racism encompasses economic, political, social, and institutional actions and beliefs that systematize and perpetuate an unequal distribution of privileges, resources, and power between Whites and people of Color.
Using the traditional and commonly understood definition of racism, there is no question Jewish people have faced centuries of racism. But now, according to leftist rhetoric, being a racist is something Whites (notice the capitalization) do to oppress people of Color (capitalized again) across the realms of economics, politics, society and its institutions. Applying the redefined definition of racism and the property of whiteness to the Jewish population as a group, they have been redefined as oppressors. After all, the majority are light-skinned, and have been largely successful in western societies.
Over a year ago, I wrote about a comment Whoopi Goldberg made on the television show “The View.” She summed up the Holocaust as “white people doing it to white people, so y'all gonna fight amongst yourselves.” In that statement, she illustrated the nuances of whiteness in race-based identity politics. Jews are considered white, because most have light skin. They embody whiteness by being highly successful in reaching the upper echelons of society. Both being white and embodying whiteness makes them the oppressors, and incapable of being victims of racism. If Jews are also considered colonizers, the hatred being thrust upon them today is easily justified in accordance with the ideological teachings of hierarchical social power groupings.
Some Americans who happen to be Jewish have fallen for the anti-racist bait and embraced the ideology. Take this statement from an article in the Washington Post by an individual who has adopted the toxic oppressor/oppressed framework and is personally struggling with Jewish-guilt. “In a flawed and racist society, we Jewish Americans are prospering, reaching the top echelons of privilege and power. With racism and injustice entrenched year after year, generation after generation, we must now ask ourselves: What role do we play in that injustice now that most of us live as white people in America? We must cease to consider ourselves to be part of the social construct of whiteness, despite all the white privilege that America affords us, privilege that eluded many of our parents and grandparents.”
In the Middle East, Jewish people are also considered the oppressors, despite being surrounded by Muslim nations that seek complete destruction of Israel. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called Israel a “cancerous tumor” that “will undoubtedly be uprooted and destroyed”. The Palestinian National Council explains in their charter that they believe the Jewish state has no right to exist. Liberation from the Zionist, colonialist, imperialist regime, “from the river to the sea” is the ultimate aim of the Nation of Palestine. The phrase “from the river to the sea” has been a rallying cry in pro-Palestine, pro-Hamas, anti-Jewish protests all around the world. To be clear, this phrase incorporates all of Israel’s borders, meaning the goal is complete Palestinian control of the territory, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, and since October 7, 2023, the Palestinian Nation via Hamas has been orchestrating attacks on Israel through Lebanon and Yemen. Despite all of that, Israel is viewed as an oppressor, an “apartheid state,” and as “colonialists” occupying “stolen land.” As such, brutal torture, violent rape of women and children, cooking of babies in ovens, taking of hostages, and murder is viewed as acceptable methods of resistance.
The mainstreaming of neo-Marxist conflict ideologies is destroying humanity. Racism has been redefined. Groups of people have been placed into roles of oppressor and oppressed based partially on their race, but more on their philosophical views of upholding American values such as capitalism, representative democracy, and meritocracy. Up is down and down is up. The definition of a woman can only be articulated by a gender studies expert, and people are confused. Meanwhile, on October 7, 2023, the world saw the closest thing to the holocaust inflicted on Jewish people since Hitler. Hamas infiltrated Israel, murdered, raped, tortured, beheaded, and burned Jewish people for no reason other than that they were Jewish, and now people are trying to reframe this horror as moral and justified under an oppressor/oppressed paradigm.