*Lea el discurso completo que, inspirado en sus vivencias en la Alemania Nazi, dio el Rabino Prinz hace 50 años en la manifestación en Washington
Obama y el sueño de Luther King
Por León Krauze
La presidencia de Barack Obama no se explica sin la distancia que el propio Presidente ha puesto, desde sus épocas de candidato y hasta la fecha, con la figura de Luther King o al menos con el tipo de identidad política que la lucha de King engendró en la comunidad afroamericana.
Se cumple medio siglo del histórico “I Have a Dream”, discurso memorable de Martin Luther King. Las celebraciones en Washington serán una ocasión inmejorable para que Barack Obama se refiera a la lucha que, para algunos, alcanzó su culminación con el triunfo del primer presidente afroamericano en el 2008.
Lo curioso es que la presidencia de Barack Obama no se explica sin la distancia que el propio Presidente ha puesto, desde sus épocas de candidato y hasta la fecha, con la figura de Luther King o al menos con el tipo de identidad política que la lucha de King engendró en la comunidad afroamericana. Buena parte del éxito de Obama radica en que, desde muy temprano, decidió que su personalidad pública y privada se alejaría de la indignación que, con todo y su elocuencia poética, encarnaba Luther King y, mucho más, figuras como Malcolm X. Obama construyó su carrera trazando una línea clara: no sería el “angry Black man”, ni siquiera el hombre negro medianamente indignado. Sería, desde el comienzo, “no drama Obama”: el ejemplo mismo de la moderación.
Los políticos afroamericanos previos a Obama, especialmente gente como Jesse Jackson, hicieron de la bandera y la figura de Luther King el corazón de sus respectivos proyectos políticos. Jackson es el ejemplo perfecto. Obsesionado con defender la agenda afro-americana desde la interpretación de Luther King, Jackson se convirtió en un político de nicho, de limitado alcance en el gran escenario nacional. Obama, en cambio, optó por otra identidad, lo que en Estados Unidos se llama “post-racial” pero que en realidad no es otra cosa sino una identidad política “post-Luther King”.
Claro está que Obama se ha referido a la tensión racial en Estados Unidos en al menos un par de momentos durante su campaña y su presidencia. Pero jamás se ha comportado como un “presidente negro” con “A” mayúscula: lejos está de respaldar una agenda abiertamente activista de reconciliación racial, como seguramente habrían querido muchos de sus seguidores en la comunidad afroamericana. En este sentido, pareciera que Obama ha asumido que su sola presencia en la Casa Blanca es, por sí misma, una victoria suficiente, un paso adelante cuyo carácter histórico debe bastar. Es por ello que algunos notables intelectuales afroamericanos le han reclamado lo que interpretan como el temor injustificable a asumir plenamente su identidad racial: esperaban que la llegada de Obama abriera la puerta al debate definitivo sobre el papel del racismo en la historia y la sociedad de Estados Unidos. En cambio han recibido a un hombre cuya cautela a veces les exaspera.
Y quizá tengan razón.
Tres preguntas permanecen en el aire a 50 años de aquel discurso histórico en Washington. ¿Que habría pensado Luther King de Barak Obama y su conducta frente a la agenda afroamericana y la deuda histórica de este país con sus minorías? Y más interesante y dramático aún: ¿Fue el triunfo de Obama realmente un parteaguas -la encarnación del sueño de Luther King- o apenas un virtuoso accidente de la historia? ¿Después de Barak Obama, cuando llegará a la casa blanca el siguiente presidente proveniente de una minoría? Mucho me temo que la respuesta habría entristecido al propio Luther King y a los cientos de miles que soñaron junto a él hace ya medio siglo.
animalpolitico.com
*La comunidad judía fue parte integral del movimiento pro derechos de los negros y en el camino rescato sus propios derechos
Jews, MLK and his ‘March on Washington’ fifty years later
by Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman
With Syria’s poison gas outrage and the images of scores of churches in Egypt burned to the ground, it’s understandable if many people in our community didn’t pause for the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington.
That would be a mistake on many levels.
First. That March and that Speech changed American history forever.
On Aug. 28, 1963, a century after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, MLK delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Unlike in today’s PC climate, Rev. King engaged Americans of all races and religions without any “happy talk.” Instead, he spoke as a latter-day Hebrew Prophet declaring “the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. . . . So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.”
What King did that day was to challenge every American to join in a journey demanding great sacrifices — that would end in a shared triumph over prejudice and discrimination. Of course, MLK gave his own last full measure of devotion when he was assassinated in 1968. We should remember Rev. King like the Israelites remembered Moses: as a prophet who died without ever entering the Promised Land.
Secondly, King — heroically leading a non-violent movement for change against all odds — helped inspire and shape post-Holocaust American Jewish activism.
Para el Rabino Joachim Prinz el mayor problema en Estados Unidos no era la discriminación sino el silencio de los demás
Lea el discurso completo que, inspirado en sus vivencias en la Alemania Nazi, dio el Rabino Prinz hace 50 años en la manifestación en Washington
To many young American Jews of the time, Rev. King was also their hero. Before many establishment Jewish leaders spoke out on behalf of Soviet Jewry, Rev. King did. When black extremists disparaged Israel, Rev. King drew a line in the sand. Just 10 days before his assassination in Memphis, Rev. King declared: “I see Israel, and never mind saying it, as one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can almost be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security, and that security must be a reality.”
In 1963, many Jewish groups were galvanized to action. In the weeks leading up to the March, the American Jewish Committee affirmed that “Jews have always been part of the eternal struggle for human dignity and social justice,” challenging its members in the South as well as North to participate in nonviolent civil rights demonstrations, along with the fact that Rev. King shared that historic platform with leaders of major Jewish organizations including the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the United Synagogue Council of America, and the Synagogue Council of America.
Rabbi Joachim Prinz, a leader of the World Jewish Congress and World Zionist Organization, challenged all Jews and the silent majority of Americans when he declared: “When I was a rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important that I learned . . . is that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.”
We should remember the Jewish leaders who supported the cause of the 1963. Yet we should not forget the many Jewish young people whose names were not publicized, and who carried signs in 1963 reading in Hebrew and English the biblical quote inscribed on the base of the Liberty Bell: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land.” They marched less than a year before Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were lynched beside James Earl Chaney during 1964’s “Mississippi Freedom Summer.”
The 1963 March put the political spotlight on achieving color-blind public accommodations, job opportunities, and voting rights. Speakers at the 2013 Commemoration emphasized that gains that have been made need to be protected and advanced, while new issues like racial profiling, gender equality and immigration reform are engaged.
Unfortunately, 2013 speakers generally failed to articulate anything like Rev. King’s unifying moral vision: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” In the ongoing struggle for justice for today’s disadvantaged, we must not lose sight of shared values transcending racial and other grievances that unified the 1963 marchers.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., was indeed a latter-day Hebrew Prophet. Like the Prophets of old, he preached a universal, timeless message of biblically-rooted justice and tikkun olam. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel — with his own prophetic credentials who marched with King at Selma in 1965 — delivered a remarkable address at a Conference on Religion and Race six months before the 1963 Washington March. He compared Moses’ first meeting with Pharaoh to “a summit meeting,” and then said: “The outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate. The Exodus began, but is far from having been completed.”
Today, we await the appearance of a new generation of leaders — black and white, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim — who can resume King’s journey toward justice and lead us all closer to a land and world of promise.
jewishjournal.com
*Para el Rabino Joachim Prinz el mayor problema en Estados Unidos no era la discriminación sino el silencio de los demás
Rabbi Joachim Prinz: ‘The most shameful problem is silence’
by Rabbi Joachim Prinz
I speak to you as an American Jew.
As Americans we share the profound concern of millions of people about the shame and disgrace of inequality and injustice which make a mockery of the great American idea.
As Jews we bring to this great demonstration, in which thousands of us proudly participate, a two-fold experience — one of the spirit and one of our history.
In the realm of the spirit, our fathers taught us thousands of years ago that when God created man, he created him as everybody’s neighbor. Neighbor is not a geographic term. It is a moral concept. It means our collective responsibility for the preservation of man’s dignity and integrity.
From our Jewish historic experience of three and a half thousand years we say:
Our ancient history began with slavery and the yearning for freedom. During the Middle Ages my people lived for a thousand years in the ghettos of Europe . Our modern history begins with a proclamation of emancipation.
[Listen to this speech here]
It is for these reasons that it is not merely sympathy and compassion for the black people of America that motivates us. It is above all and beyond all such sympathies and emotions a sense of complete identification and solidarity born of our own painful historic experience.
When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime, I learned many things. The most important thing that I learned under those tragic circumstances was that bigotry and hatred are not ‘.the most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful and the most tragic problem is silence.
A great people which had created a great civilization had become a nation of silent onlookers. They remained silent in the face of hate, in the face of brutality and in the face of mass murder.
America must not become a nation of onlookers. America must not remain silent. Not merely black America , but all of America . It must speak up and act,. from the President down to the humblest of us, and not for the sake of the Negro, not for the sake of the black community but for the sake of the image, the idea and the aspiration of America itself.
Our children, yours and mine in every school across the land, each morning pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and to the republic for which it stands. They, the children, speak fervently and innocently of this land as the land of “liberty and justice for all.”
The time, I believe, has come to work together – for it is not enough to hope together, and it is not enough to pray together, to work together that this children’s oath, pronounced every morning from Maine to California, from North to South, may become. a glorious, unshakeable reality in a morally renewed and united America.
jewishjournal.com
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