Why Does Jew Bite?
Why Does Jew Bite?
Why is JEW so loaded? Why does it bite? Sting at your skin and itch at your neck? A bullet, hungry in its barrel, charged and waiting, eager for the trigger to feed its next meal. God it hurts to hear it. Spit in my ear, static as it fizzes and devours me from the outside in. Jew. Jew. JEW.
It doesn’t help, that I fit in.
Like you, I play the part.
We’re all creatures in this world, yearning to be seen as
human.
The paradox of privilege and prejudice, of identity
discrimination, of minority marginalisation. And yet, I face neither and none
of those things, because my face tells a different tale.
I am white, like you, I am from here. Are you not
proud? Are you not proud of your heritage which became so few so fast?
Two million.
My selfhood is full of turmoil, as you tell me,
“Your grandfather climbs the banker’s ladder into riches and
power”, whilst his brothers are gassed like termites, burned to ashes in ovens.
Ink scarred into skin. Dirt rotted and matted into breaking wounds on pointed
bone. Money rains for me as bitterly as it fell over the barracks. Lending,
theft, greed and starvation.
Three million.
I am the majority. The normal. Oh and doesn’t it feel so
good to be accepted? Cocooned in a comfort blanket of conformity, my ability to
become the majority was having the power to avoid your disguised animosity.
They don’t care anymore, because we go on about it too much,
but I have been there. To the place where the snow meets the tracks, and the
tracks meet the camps. I’ve seen the world in its despicable state, and I felt
just a small as they wanted us to. Like a rat, scuttering around, an
infestation. I thought that, as I touched the scratchings of children’s
fingernails engraved into the concrete walls. Like critters waiting patiently,
silently, succumbing to extermination.
Although it wasn’t like that, the survivor said, although
that’s how its told. And I shouldn’t think like that. I shouldn’t be blaming
them when I would have been one of the
Four million.
Am I a banker or a beggar? Pleading for recognition against
every microaggression which fuels my passion to unbury my pride. I wanted to,
so desperately I wanted to. Was I ashamed or afraid, from my own internalised
intergenerational trauma transpiring as an all-encompassing toxicity which left
me invisible, but craving recognition. I passed the white test. I pass the
white test, until they tell me I don’t anymore.
Passing. The idea that a minority can be identified as the
majority. Originating from slavery and racial segregation in the 19th
century, where lighter-skinned African Americans would pass as white for
survival and escape. The draining reality of an oppressive privilege is a
duality described by author and educator Ben M Freeman, as denial.
“Denying who you are to escape racism is not a privilege.”
Five million.
Sometimes you can’t deny it.
I suppose a yellow star sewn to my collar isn’t so different
to the one on the golden chain I wear clasped around my neck.
“Never let it affect our idea of who we are,” said Rabbi
Lord Jonathan Sacks, “pride is a healthier response than shame”.
I had hidden myself, feeling momentarily protected, but the
persisting effects lingered and evolved into an internal rupturing of
loneliness and invisibility.
And just like that it was six. Six million. A number on a
page. A figure so incomprehensible its magnitude is dwarfed to grains of sand
amidst a pensive shore. But each fragment is as detrimental as the next in the formation
of a beach. Despite seen as one, every grain exists, as a human, a person, a
life, and debating their visibility debates their existence.
And I want to exist.
Not as a camouflaged categorisation, but a community, one in
unity, proud of the unconquerable challenges battled by a fiery resilience. Strike
a match and the flame becomes visible. Strike a match and you know I exist.
I want you to know we exist.
-
Breath wasted on explanations of
justifications for why I speak
falling blindly onto deaf ears
I’m not distant from the war
Because it’s worse over here
There won’t ever be peace
The history of the conflict
Thousands of years and years and years and years and years
I answer your questions
My voice lost as I hear
There aren’t two sides
There is one, I am wrong
You are right
There won’t ever be peace
How am I connected and why do I care?
The name of the place you scribble off the map
Spit on its name and burn the flag
I have been, and this war doesn’t frighten me there
That homeland feels safer than this country I was born,
Ignorance is catching
This is the West’s war
The age of Instagram allegories
And in the name of my friends who don’t defend my story
There
won’t ever be peace
Complicit is the government, bias is the news
Models with more followers than our entire population are
our spokesmen now
Kanye was right about the Jews
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