The video of Rodney King’s beating by members of the Los Angeles Police Department emerged 30 years ago this March. It was one month before I joined the military. A year later, in April 1992, I was 22 years old and a military police person at Fort McClellan, Ala. I still remember the April morning…
You will have to forgive me for not celebrating the conviction of Derek Chauvin, the police officer who murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis last May. Of course I’m gratified by the three guilty verdicts meted out by the jury this week. But I know better than to breathe a sigh of relief until the judge…
The following op-ed first appeared in The Conversation. There is a difference between enforcing the law and being the law. The world is now witnessing another in a long history of struggles for racial justice in which this distinction may be ignored. Derek Chauvin, a 45-year-old white former Minneapolis police officer, is on trial for…
Last month, the House of Representatives passed the The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, a law designed to transform the way law enforcement interacts with Black communities nationwide. Especially as the trial of George Floyd’s killer, Derek Chauvin, gets underway this week, it’s an important step to ending police abuses of Black people, and…
Rav Tiferet Berenbaum is a busy woman these days, but she will absolutely and happily find time to slot you in for a phone call while she runs out to get coffee for herself and her fellow rabbis. The pandemic has not slowed her duties: in addition to her usual work as a clergy member…
In December 2019, Rabbi Rick Jacobs called on the Reform movement to “dig deeper into social justice activism through the Religious Action Center to address racism in our broader society,” and to “commit to our sacred equity, diversity and inclusion work.” “I cannot imagine our movement without all the voices, hearts and minds of our…
In December, the Forward published an article about my most recent book, “Black Power, Jewish Politics,” with a headline that mentioned Jews in connection with white supremacy. With those two words — “white supremacy” — the internet lit up. The article received over 100 critical comments. The Forward published an op-ed pushing back on the…
After 131 years, Quaker Oats announced this week that it will replace Aunt Jemima’s familiar name and face on all of its products with the logo for “Pearl Milling Company,” a homage to the St. Louis company which first invented the product. Aunt Jemima became one of the world’s most prominent racist stereotypes thanks, in…
