Africans and Jews: Intersectionality Enables Terrorism
Progressive dogma refuses to acknowledge the reality of violent jihad
This post by Dr. Charles Jacobs was originally posted by the Jewish News Syndicate under the title “A better, non-racist intersectionality.”
Intersectionality has become a driving force, spreading beyond academia and social justice circles into the broader American society. There are good reasons why this idea has become taken up by so many: The notion of organizing victims and their non-victim friends against tyranny is a laudable goal for decent, virtuous people. There are, however, two serious flaws in intersectionality that should be thoughtfully considered:
First, it assigns the labels “oppressors” and “victims” to groups, not individuals. This misses fundamental truths about human nature: that every individual has agency, can be moral or immoral, and does not automatically share the guilt of actions taken by his or her ancestors; second -- evil can flow through each person’s heart and human progress is made by each person’s struggles to build character, to do good and resist the temptations of evil.
To condemn whole groups of people as evil – especially when based on race, as intersectionality does, is clearly, simply, and inevitably racist.
Similarly, to exonerate every person in a victim class as innocent of every and any act because his group has been historically and even presently victimized is to see that person as a cipher with no free will who has no possibility of being morally good or bad.
Over and above these problems is perhaps an even graver concern, given the realities of global oppression: intersectionality’s binary definitions of “oppressed/oppressor” is Western-centric. This is particularly evident in the case of Arabs and Muslims who, as minorities in the West may well become victims of prejudice and mistreatment. Yet they are anything but minorities in their countries of origin where they are not infrequently the oppressors of non-Muslim peoples. Yet Western intersectionality makes it impossible for the victims of Islamic and/or Arab oppression in broad swaths of the Middle East and Africa to have their voices heard and their plights addressed by exactly those people and organizations who have the most power to help them: Westerners of good will.
For example, there are nine countries in Africa where blacks today are victims of Islamist and Arab terror. Jihadist groups raid African villages, murder, rape and kidnap innocent villagers. Those captured become actual slaves. It has been difficult for these black victims to get the attention and help they need from the people most naturally their allies, but for the virtual tabu that intersectionality imposes on the topic of any oppression done by any Muslim or Arab group, today or in the past.
We propose to break this imposed, immoral, racist silence and to build a movement that addresses the oppression of African blacks by groups whose Western cousins may indeed need the support of human rights groups, but whose identity as minorities here should not in any way block the most natural human rights feelings and actions of decent people on behalf of those who are suffering in Africa. This is, we believe, a call to fight tyranny which should be formed by an alliance of its victims and their friends. It is a truer, and anti-racist intersectionality.
A fine piece overall. However, you bend over backward--too far backward--in trying to be even-handed. You write: "This is particularly evident in the case of Arabs and Muslims who, as minorities in the West may well become victims of prejudice and mistreatment." Keep in mind that said Arabs and Muslims come to the West voluntarily, because they see it as a sweet deal. They come, go on welfare, form criminal gangs, commit rape and other violent crimes, and preach violent jihad. If a Muslim immigrant is arrested for a violent crime the mainstream media will never, never, never mention their ethnicity. If someone dares to point out any of the above they will be called a "racist". Unlike most people, I don't cringe from bullying words. In short, far from being mistreated in the West, Arab and Muslim immigrants mistreat, and are a menace to, their host countries. Does this apply to 100% of such immigrants? Of course not. But it applies to far too many.