Where is Waldo?

Readers familiar with children’s picture books in the last fifteen years will be well acquainted with a series of books about a character named Waldo. The books themselves accomplish their mission without any text. Each turn of the page reveals a double-spread filled with hundreds of tiny characters. The child’s challenge is to search among the assortment of infinitesimal characters to find the one with the red-and-white-striped t-shirt, eyeglasses, and silly hat: Waldo.

Sometimes when I, as a white ally of Jews of color, look for stories about U.S. Jews of color in mainstream media and Jewish media, I am transported to the world of Waldo. I am so busy sorting through the stories about Jews of color around the world—from Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, China, Cuba, Jamaica, India, Yemen, Iran, Mexico, and Argentina—that I cannot find that highly recognizable, familiar character: the U.S. Jew of color.

It is natural for U.S. Jews of color to look outside the U.S. for confirmation of the long histories, cultures, and accomplishments of Jews of color. Like all people of color in the United States, Jews of color have had to deal with the suppression of their history, including culture, families, traditions, music, cuisine, significant holidays, and dates of remembrance. When what is directly in front of you is rendered invisible, you naturally seek farther afield to find what you are looking for.

But Jews with white privilege are starting from a completely different place. With financial, cultural, familial, and institutional resources at our fingertips, we need to direct our resources toward uncovering that which has been buried or rendered invisible: the long history and current presence of Jews of color in the United States.

The focus of white Jews on “helping” or writing about Jews of color in foreign countries with no concurrent equal or greater focus on the lives of Jews of color in the United States plays into our country’s long history of institutional racism. Am I calling individual white Jews racist for having a particular interest in, say, the Abudaya of Uganda or the Falasha of Ethiopia? No. But as a country, as clal Israel of the United States, we are responsible for the appreciation of and welfare of those within our own borders. When white allies such as myself don’t address the needs, we are guilty of participating in institutional racism.

When one exoticizes another person, one separates oneself from joining in the same humanity as those with different physical characteristics or nationalities. One objectifies another person in an ethnocentric manner. Xenophobia is the fear of foreign people. When white Jews focus on Jews of color outside the U.S., we may congratulate ourselves that we are not xenophobic. But this self-adulation can be used to shield ourselves from seeing that we are exoticizing our fellow Jews from other countries and that in doing so, we are creating a distraction to avoid dealing with the heritage of individual racism or mantle of institutional racism that is our legacy as white Americans.

I call on white Jews to join the movement toward embracing inclusive, integrated, and pluralistic Judaism and Jewish life in the United States. This is not simply a pipe dream or an unlikely vision. In fact, the community already exists; perhaps you know of it already, perhaps you are learning about it for the first time. In the online magazine JewV’Nation™ (SM), which debuts in 2009, readers will discover stories from the insider’s point of a view. JewV’Nation is a Jew-of-color-centric magazine, as opposed to Euro-centric. This magazine is not just for Jews of color. I invite white Jews as well to read this magazine, talk with your fellow Jews of all colors, listen to Jews of color, and learn. Our work is not to “help,” but to heal ourselves; our work is to get out of the way. Please join JewV’Nation and journey with us.
Copyright © 2008 Corinne Lightweaver.