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Last week I attended the Anti-Defamation League’s 2010 No Place for Hate Luncheon as a member of the press. Cantor David Serkin-Poole — a married gay man, a father, a faith leader and advocate for people with special needs — was being honored with ADL Pacific Northwest’s 2010 Cal Anderson Civil Rights Advocacy Award. Cal Anderson was the first out gay legislator in Washington and a community leader taken too soon by AIDS (more on this later).
On my way into the event I found the three men pictured right waiting outside the door of the venue, the Seattle Sheraton. I found their presence ironic. They provided a timely confirmation of the need for anti-defamation organizations and are helping to insure the ongoing existence of ADL, which they hate. The joke was on them that day.
The irony aside, I naively hadn’t anticipated this kind of greeting, which by the end of the luncheon included an additional four small men in crisp paramilitary National Socialist Movement uniforms. I’m thoroughly accustomed to anti-gay religious-right protesters, but they aim their threats at the soul. It was jolting to be confronted by the threat of violence these men represented.
A lifetime of stories from Jewish family and friends have made me quite aware of anti-Semitic bias. However, this encounter made me realize that I’ve never before experienced the personal threat of it.
For a single lunch hour I stepped outside the LGBT sphere and into the overlapping Jewish sphere. And into the overlapping African-American sphere as well. Although the protesters were aiming their words at Jews that day, African-Americans are another of their obsessions.
I made this last photo the largest because the two men on the right are my heroes. They were just two young hometown-proud guys who happened to be walking by and stopped long enough to inform the protesters that Seattle is a city about love, not hate.
This was a brief “through their eyes” moment for me. I am grateful that my field of vision now has a tiny bit more depth. Do you have a story of insights gained through feeling the immediacy of bias aimed at other minorities? Please share it in the comments.
12 Comments
The ADL destroyed itselfBy treating Muslims building the Park 21 community center in Lower Manhattan little better than these picketers treated Jews.
The ADL destroyed its credibility the second its director endorsed anti-Muslim steroetyping and bigotry, thus re-igniting a controversy that had been dying down and giving cover to every anti-Muslim bigot everywhere.
It was disgusting and shameful, and it renders everything else ADL does and says utterly hypocritical.
Yes, they and Obama took the same misguided approach.But what does that have to do with the rare gift of learning to understand the challenges in your friends’ world a little better?
NO THEY DID NOT!
Abraham Foxman, executive director of ADL, literally said that 9/11 families were fully justified in feeling irrational bigotry and hatred toward ALL Muslims and that the rest of us were required to respect it all the way to the extent of not allowing construction of a community center. Barack Obama never said anything remotely close to that. Foxman was spewing bigotry.
The connection is that, despite that pathetic little neo-Nazi, protest, ADL can’t translate that experience to Muslims and, in fact, has subject Muslims around the country to far worse than a half-dozen losers holding signs. See, e.g., the torched mosque in Tennessee, for which Abraham Foxman bears DIRECT responsibility for knowing fomenting anti-Muslim bigotry.
thanks, LurleenI would prefer not to share mine, for the reason that I was horrified to hear it, especially as it came from a gay ethnic-minority man about another ethnic/racial minority (I’d prefer not to specify, as it really doesn’t matter). The point is that I froze, that’s how shocked I was by the rhetoric as well as by the fact that it came from a fellow gay man, and a minority one at that. What additionally freaked me out was the use of language, like “breed like vermin”.
As my bf and I were new to the group – I hope that none of them share that view, but I just don’t know since we have not met any of them since then – I was just looking around in silence. I just didn’t even know what to say. I’ve never encountered such pronounced and open bigotry before. I was also shocked that none of the permanent members of that group said anything.
I hope that if I hear something like that next time, I respond instead of looking around in disbelief. If anyone has been in a situation like that, please tell me what do you find works best to confront that kind of speech? I’m comfortable with fighting and arguing about issues like that within my own community by giving “our own” examples of the supposed attribute, but I feel like doing the same by pointing out that persons ethnic community may be counterproductive and incendiary instead of bringing the message home to that person. Has anyone dealt with things like that? I really appreciate your answers.
And thank you, Lurleen, for bringing up this issue.
Not completely on topic, but…I really hate it when people use dogs as symbol of hatred and intimidation. That poor rottie has got to be all “man, my ancestors got to herd livestock and hang out at the butcher shop, and I’m stuck here with these idiots.”
No, ADL didn’t destroy itselfThe ADL is by no means a perfect organization – I also thought that Foxman was completely wrong about Park51 – he was giving into fear and bigotry, rather than fighting it. But Foxman is not the only person who works for the ADL – the organization does a lot of good work on the grassroots level, as evidenced by this luncheon that Lurleen attended. I’m Jewish, and even though I think Foxman sometimes goes overboard or does things that I flat out disagree with – I’m glad the ADL exists. We need the ADL (among other groups) to fight antisemitism and other forms of bigotry. We just need the ADL to be a better organization – perhaps it’s time for Foxman to retire and let someone else head the group.
What an uncomfortable situation to be inon your first visit to a new group! I’m no expert on these kinds of things, and a lot of how I might handle it myself would depend on the vibes I was getting from the rest of the group, so I don’t really have a pat answer for you.
I will say that one approach I’ve sometimes found effective is to calmly ask the person to explain why they have that point of view, and keep asking follow-up questions until it is clear that the person has no rational basis for making blanket statements like that. Avoid yes/no questions, because the idea is to get the person talking and explaining. Often people just spout stuff without thinking, and if you ask them to explain something they’ve never thought through, they’ll realize what they’re doing and back off. You’ll have to decide whether to have this conversation privately or in the group.
A less direct method that a friend of mine used to ease ethnic tensions at his job (he was usually the odd guy out) was to start lunchtime conversations comparing traditional dishes from childhood that got people understanding that, for example, every culture seems to have some sort of pot pie or meatball or whatever. What he was doing was very subtly showing cultural commonality within the obvious diversity. You might be able to do something similar.
There is no one right way. I hope others will chime in and talk about what has worked for them.
No, it was time for Foxman to be FIRED!
That’s what a principled organization would have done, but somehow it didn’t happen, did it?
Please don’t soft pedal what he did. He did not “give into” anything. The controversy was beginning to subside after an initial flurry of Palin nonsense, but Foxman went out of his way to jump into the controversy, deliberately endorse irrational bigotry against all Muslims–in basically those words–gave cover to bigots everywhere, and reignited the controversy, which lead directly to the stabbing of a NYC cab driver and the torching of a mosque in Tennessee, among other lovely legacies. Please do not understate the monstrous magnitude of what Foxman almost single-handedly, reprehensibly did. The mainstream was staying away from the issue until he, single-handedly and in one deliberate statement, made it okay for anyone to be overtly bigoted. If the ADL say it’s okay to spew anti-Muslim bigotry, who the hell could have effectively put the lid back on?
No, until ADL completely repudiates him, it has sacrificed its moral authority to speak on issues of bigotry. And it better realize that.
If you want to quote him literallythen you should link to the source. Here is a link to Foxman’s statement so that people can decide for themselves.
As for Obama, it’s true that his comments were initially only about religious freedom, but after uproar from bigots like Palin he backpeddled.
If I didn’t think it would be misinterpreted by 99.99999% of the population……I would make a t-shirt to wear around losers like those that has Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, Freddie Mercury, Xerxes (the 300 version, no less), and several Bollywood actors on one side, with the caption ARYANS, and a band of White Pride nidhlings on the other with the caption FUCKHEADS.
Unfortunately, the US has become so dumbed-down that only like five people would get it.
lolit would be fun to make the shirt just to see how many people do get the joke. but i’d leave the White Pride band off of though to avoid fisticuffs.
thank youThank you, Lurleen. I’ll remember your advice and make sure to use it :0)