| Fear of the Other Conference papers |  |
| Fear of the Other Conference papers | |
1 Why this racism is exacerbated.
2 What in principle we can do about it
3 What can we do in practice (two projects)
· I am giving a Jewish perspective rather than the Jewish perspective.
· We are not a monolithic community any more than Muslims, Arabs are.
· My comments are about getting it right in the UK - it may then make it easier to get it right in the Middle East.
Stereotypes/Prejudices/Racism are exacerbated because:
• Too often one organisation purports to be the authentic voice who speaks on behalf of an entire group.
• Other voices are marginalized, written off as “extreme”, “left-wing” “unrepresentative”.
• Therefore debate, mature thinking is stifled.
• Too often other institutions within our communities e.g., press, religious leaders reinforce the monolithic views as they provide limited opportunity for us to analyse, challenge, critically evaluate.
• Consequently we view the outside world through a distorted lens.
• Also reinforcing this monolithic view is the fact that behaviour of one person becomes synonymous with the behaviour of everyone in the group. Two examples are Michael Howard and Lord Jackobovits. When Michael Howard was Home Secretary people would sometimes ask me, “What are you going to do about your “Jewish” Home Secretary?” Now I ask you, “Why? Because I am Jewish was I responsible for his behaviour towards asylum seekers?” I do not remember people being asked to take responsibility for the way other Cabinet ministers who were Christian behaved. With regard to the former Chief Rabbi, when he published his response to the Church of England’s report on “Faith in the City”, he gave what was interpreted as a Thatcherite response. Many other Jews (less well known) gave very different responses to this report, yet Lord Jakobovits’s response became synonymous with the entire Jewish community. So much so that the Guardian journalist, Hugo Young, wrote an article equating Jewish tradition (all four thousand years of it) with Thatcherism. Can you imagine waking up every morning to that burden?!
So what can we do? In principle we can:
• work together to combat all forms of racism without competing for victimhood.
• Equality in victimhood is not something we should strive for, yet too often we do precisely that.
· ensure that human rights are not sacrificed for group solidarity, conformity.
· Create dialogue that goes beyond traditional inter-faith dialogue.
· go beyond “reactive agendas” such as faith schools, ritual slaughter
· become more overtly committed to secular dialogue on domestic issues such as:
§ Britain becoming a fairer society for everyone.
§ promoting more positive attitudes about asylum seekers and refugees within our own communities and within wider society. This also includes standing up for the Geneva Convention.
§ supporting human rights legislation.
How can we put this into practice – two projects
Project One – Race Equality Education in all schools
• which goes beyond celebrating diversity to incorporate issues of equality, fairness and justice.
• JCORE developed material – starting with pre-school age children to helping all children relate their experiences to the experience of other group.
• Making connections not judgmental comparison between different communities.
• Aim is to help children under their responsibility, both individually and collectively to combat racism and develop a just multicultural society.
Project Two - Connections Exhibition & outreach project
• Examines the hidden history of Asian, Black and Jewish communities in Britain as part of British history.
• stresses positive connections not comparisons, stresses our ordinariness as well as what makes each group unique.
• Too often we are defined by negative things - indentured labour, slavery, the Holocaust.
• unlike other projects this project is about connections between minority groups rather than between us and the host community
THREE QUESTIONS WE NEED TO CONSIDER:
1. Does our race equality education work actually reduce prejudice?
2. Do we have the maturity/courage within our respective communities to create materials to deal with racism against Arabs and Israelis?
3. How do we get meetings like today’s into more mainstream organisations within the Muslim and Jewish communities.
IN CONCLUSION, WE NEED TO:
1. Be bolder in creating and sustaining alternative voices.
2. Work together (and be seen) to work together on all forms of racism and move away from single issue agendas.
3. Collaborate in producing and implementing race equality education for all schools (faith and secular).
4. Make sure schools and community groups are reinforcing the same message. For a start we can we work together to establish a common set of principles which Muslim and Jewish schools can adopt and implement.
23/09/05