Black clergy draw parallels: Baltimore and Palestine
The struggle for social justice on the streets of Baltimore was likened to the struggle of the Palestinian people by two speakers at a recent conference exploring ways that black Christians and the African-American church can respond to the suffering and discrimination experienced by Palestinians living in Israel/ Palestine.
Reverend Hagler:
"This is what we as black people and people of color are having to deal with all the time, is white folks telling us that racism doesn’t exist, or that we should get over it, or “You got a President in the White House who is black, and so it can’t be that bad. What are you all complaining about?” But historically, always racism has been justified as being something that is non-existent and therefore people of color must be hallucinating about it.
When Indians talked about being pushed off their land, what were they talking about? Right? They were the violent folks, and the folks who settled the lands were the peaceful folks just trying to advance civilization.
And when black people say they’re having heartburn about what takes place in their community or what takes place on the job, everybody is saying “Now why are you such a malcontent?”
And what I’m getting at here is that we cannot see what’s going on in Palestine because Palestine is another racist paradigm, where folks want to deny that it exists."
-http://mondoweiss.net/2015/05/parallels-baltimore-palestine#sthash.rOetpBDa.dpuf
