Not So Privileged Anymore

I am privileged.

 I am a white, straight, older, Jewish woman. I grew up in a liberal New England town. I went to a private school that was practically a poster for diversity.

 

I didn’t know that; it was just life. My life. A privileged one.

When I was a kid I used to get annoyed when my dad, (whose WWII Army service interrupted his college career at UVA, Charlottesville), would talk with pride about the success of this or that Jewish person. If a football player, or a Senator was Jewish it was a Very. Big. Deal.

I didn’t understand.

Who cared if someone was Jewish or not? It wasn’t important in my world. My friends were black, white, Christian, Muslim, straight and gay. All that mattered was that they were good, fun and smart. Mostly smart.

That’s all I thought anyone cared about.

I was wrong.

The first time I was called a kike, I literally did not know what it meant.  I had to ask a friend. She blushed when she told me. “It’s a dirty word,” she whispered.

By the time an athlete I worshiped and knew,  used the word, I understood. I was also devastated – she wasn’t referring to me, she didn’t even know I was Jewish. But that she had the word in her vocabulary, and used it, gutted me.

Still, I just filed the information and moved on.

I went to work in the music industry, where being Jewish was commonplace and really no one cared. Or if they did, they kept it to themselves.

At that time it was far more traumatic being female than Jewish. Decades before #metoo,  women who wanted to keep their jobs kept their mouths shut and heads down. We just grimaced at the radio promotion guys’  jokes.  Which weren’t funny at all.

But that was the way it was.

I am actively liberal. I’ve worked hard on rallies for choice. I march. And, most important, I vote. In. Every. Single. Election.

I raise a stink when black men are mowed down for existing, and LGBTQ, Muslim and others have their rights threatened. 

I never thought I was one of them.

That’s privilege.

When anti-Semitism started coming out of the shadows in Europe, I felt sick, but figured I’d vote my conscience with my wallet and never go to those places. I could live without traveling to France, Italy and Spain. I don’t shop at Chik- fil-a, Wal-Mart or Hobby Lobby. I thought that was enough.

It's not.

Shortly after a Jewish Center near me was shot up by an anti-Semite with an assault rifle was the first time I attended High Holy Day services with TSA-style metal detectors and armed guards at the door. It was disturbing but I felt safe. The horror of that attack  had to be the result of a single lunatic. That wasn’t MY America.

I was wrong.

Charlottesville woke me up.  The President of the United States proclaimed that there were “good people on both sides.” But one side were Nazis and the other peaceful protesters.

I finally got angry. How dare he try and take my country, away?  He’s the fucking President. He’s supposed to represent ALL of us.

He doesn’t. 

Between the dog whistles and not-so-very-coded language Trump repeatedly makes it clear that he and his followers believe the country belongs to them and only to them. He speaks to his base, and they are the basest: white supremacists.

I love this country, it’s been good to me and my family and we’ve been good to it. I want the US to be the best it can be. And make no mistake, it can always get better. Everything and everyone can always improve.

Apparently the United States no longer loves me. For the first time in my life, I feel unsafe here.

In supermarkets (Krogers), legal demonstrations (Huntington Beach) and yes, places of worship (Sutherland Springs, Pittsburgh) people who aren’t white Christians are under attack.

The perpetrators are not the bogeymen that our current government portrays and brays about. These 

fanatics are not militant Islamists, or some vague turban-wearing strangers.

These very real terrorists are familiar. They are angry, Fox News, Breitbart and Daily Stormer believing, white men. They carry legally obtained weapons of war, AK-45s. And they are killing people who they feel are taking something from them.

I’ve read and paid attention to history. So I am afraid the time is coming that there will be a Kristallnacht somewhere in this country. I am afraid of the day when angry white men board a bus and demand to know who is Jewish or Muslim and then kill them.

Maybe this is hyperbole. Maybe I’m being hysterical in reaction to the ever–increasing daily insanity of the current administration and its effort to dismantle the Constitution and Bill of Rights. But maybe not.

Maybe this is EXACTLY how Hitler came to power.

I don’t know.

But I do know, I don’t feel so privileged anymore.