Antisemitism and Arrogance
Wednesday's shooting at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. was a tragedy, but to see in it only the shameful face of antisemitism is to have selective vision. Though James von Brunn targeted a Jewish institution, he likely planned for the consequence of encountering a security guard. He knew he wasn't going to get to shoot a Jew. He knew this because he had an understanding (albeit a twisted one) of the relationship between race and social status, and despite his other inaccuracies and fringe-element tendencies, he got one thing right. Unless it's Israel, Jews don't work security.
The Washington Post came close to the mark today, the second full day of von Brunn's fifteen minutes of infamy: "They're often derided as rent-a-cops, the hall monitors of law enforcement, whose uniforms suggest professionalism and proficiency even if they don't always garner respect." Special Police Officer Stephen T. Johns certainly didn't fit this description, and the justified horror at his death - along with his instant canonization by a media in desperate need of heroes - indicates that this derision is far from the minds of the public. But derision and worship are two sides of the same coin, easily flipped. How long ago were the white-collar museum employees thumbing their noses at Officer Johns, or perhaps casually giving a fist bump as they passed through the metal detectors, only to reveal their true feelings with an inappropriate utterance, a "yo" or a "bro" thrown in for good measure?
I ask because my own experience working at New York City's Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust taught me that the blatant Jim Crow racism of our parent's generation has been replaced by the soft feudalism of an economically and racially determined caste system. The division between those in the office and those in the lobby was as clear as the Museum's plate-glass doors, and contemplated just as much. Which is to say not very much at all, at least not on the office side of things. As one of the few Jews working on the museum's first floor, I like to think I reflected a better part of our heritage - we were some of the first Freedom Riders, after all, and the Jewish ideal of tikkun olam is often rightly interpreted as a call to heal the wounds of racial division.
There is another part of our heritage, though, that is at odds with the pluralistic society in which we live. It is exceptionalism, the belief that we are the chosen few, and it finds expression in the arrogance of those on the museum's top floor, their unquestioning belief that they belong there, and that those on the bottom, well, they belong there too.
D.C.'s Holocaust Museum is well-funded, and this incident is sure to guarantee the jobs of its security staff for years to come. New York's museum is not quite so lucky. Poorly managed finances and inadequate leadership (whose arrogance is just an element of their general decline from respectable academics to self-righteous egotists) means that reductions in staff are inevitable. In fact, New York's museum has cut approximately ten percent of its staff in the last year. The first cuts, of course, were made in the security and cleaning staffs. Whether from downsizing or violence, in American Jewish institutions, the first victims are sure to be minorities.
Antisemitism certainly still exists, but if that's the main lesson we've learned from von Brunn's hideous acts, then we're missing the point. The Post quotes FBI agent Todd Blodgett as saying "Von Brunn is obsessed with Jewish people... he had equal contempt for both Jews and blacks, but if he had to pick one group to wipe out, he'd always say it would be the Jews." Von Brunn based this obsession on his belief that Jews were exceptionally powerful and therefore deserving of an exceptional hatred. If we continue to set ourselves apart, we simply give fodder to men like Von Brunn. Instead we should acknowledge, as Jews before us have, that nobody is safe until we are all safe.
And we should stop thinking that Officer Johns died for us. He died because a crazy man was full of hate, and despite our dissections and categorizations, hate remains a singular force. Dividing von Brunn's into anti-semitism and white supremacy, like dividing the world into Jew and Gentile, only reinforces our own arrogance. If we insist on standing apart, we will be alone when we fall.
The Washington Post came close to the mark today, the second full day of von Brunn's fifteen minutes of infamy: "They're often derided as rent-a-cops, the hall monitors of law enforcement, whose uniforms suggest professionalism and proficiency even if they don't always garner respect." Special Police Officer Stephen T. Johns certainly didn't fit this description, and the justified horror at his death - along with his instant canonization by a media in desperate need of heroes - indicates that this derision is far from the minds of the public. But derision and worship are two sides of the same coin, easily flipped. How long ago were the white-collar museum employees thumbing their noses at Officer Johns, or perhaps casually giving a fist bump as they passed through the metal detectors, only to reveal their true feelings with an inappropriate utterance, a "yo" or a "bro" thrown in for good measure?
I ask because my own experience working at New York City's Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust taught me that the blatant Jim Crow racism of our parent's generation has been replaced by the soft feudalism of an economically and racially determined caste system. The division between those in the office and those in the lobby was as clear as the Museum's plate-glass doors, and contemplated just as much. Which is to say not very much at all, at least not on the office side of things. As one of the few Jews working on the museum's first floor, I like to think I reflected a better part of our heritage - we were some of the first Freedom Riders, after all, and the Jewish ideal of tikkun olam is often rightly interpreted as a call to heal the wounds of racial division.
There is another part of our heritage, though, that is at odds with the pluralistic society in which we live. It is exceptionalism, the belief that we are the chosen few, and it finds expression in the arrogance of those on the museum's top floor, their unquestioning belief that they belong there, and that those on the bottom, well, they belong there too.
D.C.'s Holocaust Museum is well-funded, and this incident is sure to guarantee the jobs of its security staff for years to come. New York's museum is not quite so lucky. Poorly managed finances and inadequate leadership (whose arrogance is just an element of their general decline from respectable academics to self-righteous egotists) means that reductions in staff are inevitable. In fact, New York's museum has cut approximately ten percent of its staff in the last year. The first cuts, of course, were made in the security and cleaning staffs. Whether from downsizing or violence, in American Jewish institutions, the first victims are sure to be minorities.
Antisemitism certainly still exists, but if that's the main lesson we've learned from von Brunn's hideous acts, then we're missing the point. The Post quotes FBI agent Todd Blodgett as saying "Von Brunn is obsessed with Jewish people... he had equal contempt for both Jews and blacks, but if he had to pick one group to wipe out, he'd always say it would be the Jews." Von Brunn based this obsession on his belief that Jews were exceptionally powerful and therefore deserving of an exceptional hatred. If we continue to set ourselves apart, we simply give fodder to men like Von Brunn. Instead we should acknowledge, as Jews before us have, that nobody is safe until we are all safe.
And we should stop thinking that Officer Johns died for us. He died because a crazy man was full of hate, and despite our dissections and categorizations, hate remains a singular force. Dividing von Brunn's into anti-semitism and white supremacy, like dividing the world into Jew and Gentile, only reinforces our own arrogance. If we insist on standing apart, we will be alone when we fall.
posted by base at 8:33 AM
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