Why Civil Rights Destroy

by Rabbi David Eidensohn

Every once in a while you read a column by a savant and just say "Ahh." What a pleasure to read in the New York Times August 1, 2004, "Breaking the Silence" by Henry Louis Gates Jr., a black scholar and intellectual. He discusses the  speech of Barack Obama at the Democratic Convention telling it like it is: The black culture is destroying itself, and blacks should stop blaming others.

To quote the article, "In too many black neighborhoods today, academic achievement has actually come to be stigmatized. "We are just not the same people anymore," says the mayor of Memphis, Dr. Willie W. Herenton. "We are worse off than we were before Bron v. Board," says Dr. James Comer, a child psychiatrist at Yale. "And a large part of the reason is that we have abandoned our own black traditional core values, values that sustained us through slavery and Jim Crow segregation."

Mr. Gates asks, "Are white racists forcing black teenagers to drop out of school [50% do] or to have babies [64% of black girls do]"?

Blacks were enslaved. What does that mean? It means a person is exactly the same as a dog or a basball bat. Blacks endured exile from their homes in Africa, incredibly brutish slavery for generations, and yet, emerged far better than they are today, rotting in the drugs and sex of the inner ghetto. Why?

Did you ever see an old or non-American black? Sweet as honey, calm as a cucumber,  strong in spirit. I prefer taking a taxi with them, and I almost never regret it. Whenever I am down and depressed, I recall the time I was in the hospital, and my family was talking to an old black lady. Her son was in jail, and she was very sick, but such spirituality! I invoke her words and belief when I feel down. That was the old black.

The young black is a caricature of a human being, dangerous, hating, into any destructive style prevalent in that putrid place called the "inner city." Obviously, it has nothing to do with slavery, because there was very little crime in New York City in the thirties. In fact, in those days, when the boat came in at Ellis Island, even in the middle of the night, young Orthodox Jewish girls went racing through the darkened streets, pounding on doors, awaking people to make preparations for the immigrants. Can you imagine walking around New  York City at night today? Slavery has nothing to do with it. Those who were there, such as the blacks and the Jews, know that our ancestors saw in that pain a "light from darkness" from the Other Side, and we were not destroyed. So what destroyed today's young blacks?

I might add, "Who destroyed Michael and Janette Jackson"? Somebody just sent me a list of lost Jews, the top gay leaders. That is not because of slavery, or the Kishenev pograms, or Hitler. This is the result of the opposite. People raised in public schools that teach them not to behave but to be arrogant are what we see today. Jews raised to wash the floor went to college and succeeded. Jews taught by indulgent parents to have all they want ended up differently.

My little daughters were once babysitting their cute nephew and a lady walked by. "What are you doing?" she demanded, as if it was any of her business. My daughters replied, "We are babysitting for our nephew," and awaited a compliment for him, at least a smile. Instead, the lady frowned and said, "My daughters are not slaves." I must commend my daughters. They refused to burst out laughing until they were safely in the house. You are a slave for babysitting a nephew? Family is "slavery"? Is that what the daughters of this lady believe? Probably. What can result from such an upbringing? Only a caricature of a person can emerge from such a home.

Life is about being a slave. If you want to succeed, you have limited freedom. You work your back off, or you don't succeed. You must chase life, run after it, and when you fall, you have to get up and start running again. There is no time to mumble, there is no energy to blame the pavement for hitting your knee. You have to keep going. When you do, you get into the rhythm of life. You tap into energies of love, and you relate to others. When you do, you are proud and rewarded for your struggles.

The black psychiatrist quoted above was into something when he mentioned a factor in black destruction being the Supreme Court decision to integrate public schools. This is not true of itself. The Supreme Court decision did not at all create a collapse of the black family. Rather, the atmosphere surrounding the Civil Rights movement did in Blacks. When blacks suddenly discovered how to whine and wail, they turned to hate and not love, and were no longer Blacks. The atmosphere of post-Holocaust Jewry, where emphasis was on remembering the haters and searching for them and their evil deeds in every nook and cranny, deprived a generation of Jews of what their parents and ancestors had, a zest for life, the ability to ignore pain and to seek good. Suddenly, everyone was a Nazi. Nobody was into love and thriving, only hate and blaming. The soul was plugged into the sewer, and finally, the children grew up in it.

All of my life, I have grown up among Holocaust survivors. My wife is one. And yet, I have very rarely indeed every heard them talk about it. I used to ask them to tell me about their experiences, which was a very stupid thing to do, as I finally found out, but they were not so interested in talking. The secular Jew bathes in the subject, until people just can't take it anymore.

A man once went to a crooked doctor who sliced out part of his stomach, just to make money. The victim was told, "Your stomach will not give out. But the hate you have for the doctor can destroy you."

Let G-d deal with the punishment for evil. Let us raise our children to smile. As a Kabbalist said, "The greatest impurity is sadness."

And while we are talking about lost Blacks and Jews, let us not forget the tragedy of American women, once they learned to seek "power" and "freedom." It is all part and parcel of the same problem. If you live to be a slave, you will find freedom. If you live to be free of any yoke, you will choke.

I just turned 62. We've never had a vacation, at least, not the kind where you spend a fortune to get away. We go to our children, to celebrate a wedding, or some joyous occasion. Our vacations are when everyone is a slave. If you ever made a wedding you know what I am talking about. The Jewish custom is to make "seven days of rejoicing" for the couple, until the family and friends are ready to collapse, but the couple are going strong!

Let them be happy. The time will come when they will be doing what we are doing. Lichaim! For life!