UNH Prof: Asking black people to speak out about anti-Semitism makes you a ‘garden variety racist’
She suggests that discussing anti-Semitism within the black community is racist and “distracting.”
A professor at the University of New Hampshire went on a New Year's Eve tweet rant expressing how people should discuss recent violent anti-Semitic attacks by black individuals.
University of New Hampshire physics professor Chanda Prescod-Weinstein took to Twitter on New Year’s Eve to explain why anti-Semitism is exclusively a “white” problem, and why it is inappropriate to discuss anti-Semitic acts committed by black people.
Prescod-Weinstein began her tweetstorm by explaining that it is “anti-Black” and “dangerous both to non-Jewish Black people and to Jews” to consider violent attacks against Jews by Black people “equivalent” to “white antisemitism.”
“Antisemitism in the United States, historically, is a white Christian problem, and if any Black people have developed antisemitic views it is under the influence of white gentiles,” the professor clarified.
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The professor goes on to explain how “white Jews adopted whiteness as a social praxis and harmed Black people in the process,” and that “Some Black people have problematically blamed Jewishness for it.”
“There is no systemic Black on Jewish violence,” the professor clarified before insisting that “Putting more police and people with guns outside of synagogues may make white Jews feel safer but it will endanger Jews of color, especially Black Jews and Middle Eastern Jews.”
Prescod-Weinstein continued her thread by proclaiming that “Reifying the Zionist project in Palestine will not lead to long term safety for Jews, especially Palestinian Jews and anyone else who isn’t a white Ashkenazi Jew.”
She goes on to blame violent attacks against Jewish people on “incarceration” in that it “is a response that begets violence” that “actively endangers” and because “prisons are a hot bed of white supremacist gang recruitment.”
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She then invokes President Donald Trump, calling him the “antisemite in chief.”
“He wants you to be distracted by efforts to throw mentally ill Black people who have breathed in antisemitism into the mass incarceration complex. You choose what you do next,” she said of the President.
“But know that if you’re demanding that Black leaders make a particular point of speaking out about antisemitism, you’re probably a garden variety racist.”
She concludes by warning that discussions around Black anti-Semitism are a “distracting” people from the fight against white supremacy.
“It might feel good in the short term, but what are the costs in the long term?” she asks.
The professor has since taken her Twitter feed private. She did not respond to request for comment in time for publication
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