My son Jonah is currently obsessed with learning everything there is to know about any animal (both living and extinct). The other day we were watching a nature documentary when a snowy egret appeared, carefully balanced on the back of an alligator, feet gripping tight to its scales as the body (and teeth) stayed mostly submerged beneath the water. Jonah looked at me and asked, “Wow! Mommy look! Is it safe?” The truth was I didn’t know, but I said the first thing that came to mind: “Well, I’m not sure, but it’s still an alligator.”
Something about that image stuck with me. This pristinely white, seemingly calm bird finding a perch on a predator made me wonder: Does that feel safe? Or does it feel like what it is: a precarious and temporary reprieve. That’s the question I keep coming back to when I think about the conflation of Jewishness and whiteness. In a country with a deep history of anti-Black racism, the whiteness of white-identified Jews has often functioned as a kind of protection — sufficiently so that assimilation can start to feel necessary (for those with the ability). But, what if, like the calm of the egret, it may also be dangerous?
When Jewishness is absorbed (or flattened) into whiteness, three things happen at once:
- Jews of Color and multiracial Jewish families like mine are erased.
- Antisemitic myths and the realities of whiteness begin to amplify each other. For example, antisemitism imagines Jewish power; whiteness operates real power.[1]
- Antisemitism is misread as “not systemic” because white people are inherently safe in the United States.
And underneath it all is the truth: In the white supremacist imagination, Jews will never be “white” and are often the ideal scapegoat for those in power.
The credibility gap I can’t un-hear
The stakes are a massive credibility gap that isn’t easily bridged, even for a Black Jewish woman leading antisemitism-education efforts. Last spring, I was riding in a Lyft to a conference where I was slated to facilitate a session on antisemitism. I got 20 minutes with my favorite kind of driver, a Black woman from New Orleans with whom I could talk forever.
Eventually, she asked the usual: “So what do you do? Where are you going?”
When I told her, she looked at me, confused. “You know they’re dismantling Black history, right?”
Funding has indeed been cut for some of the most impactful Black cultural sites in New Orleans specifically. Curriculum is being rewritten; museums are hiding artifacts. The rollback is real. And still, I tried to say what I believe: “Listen, antisemitism truly puts us all at risk. It’s why I do this work.”
She cut me off: “Right, but you can go talk about that today, right?”
Right. These days, antisemitism is a legitimate, indeed privileged, topic for conferences. Racism, by contrast, is not.
In the white supremacist imagination, Jews will never be “white” and are often the ideal scapegoat for those in power.
I heard a similar complaint from Harvard undergrads, who asked me: “Why is antisemitism the “-ism” we can talk about?”
I could feel the frustration in the room. Student leaders, some of whom would be placed in a position to comfort incoming freshmen — not just Jewish students, but first- generation and international students, and many more — wondering what tools they could receive to help them. Some assumed I would echo Trump’s agenda. Yes. Me.
What both moments named, in different ways, wasn’t oppression Olympics, a contest over who is more oppressed. It was something colder and more structural: who gets believed, whose fear becomes actionable and whose systemic pain is treated as an urgent problem. Beneath all of that was a belief that we need to choose whose pain we can pay attention to at any given time. That if we do talk about antisemitism, it’s done at the expense of talking about something else.
The larger context: Scarcity and ‘white fear’
White supremacy and domination culture work by insisting that safety and prosperity are scarce resources. The perception of scarcity creates competition and forces false choices, transforming our age-old “liberty and justice for all” into some and never all. That story is a lie when the “resource” is dignity, empathy or safety. These aren’t scarce. The myth is useful because it keeps marginalized groups competing with each other instead of dismantling what made the competition necessary. It trains us to believe that the humanity of each of our communities is in conflict, instead of in community, with each other. As we enter 2026, communal fear is very real, feeding this cycle of “me or you.”
The myth [of scarcity] is useful because it keeps marginalized groups competing with each other, instead of dismantling what made the competition necessary. It trains us to believe that the humanity of each of our communities are in conflict, instead of in community, with each other.
In Eloquent Rage, Brittney Cooper names a brutal rule of American life under white supremacy: “White fear” is treated as fact[2]. The power of fear is so great it can and has been mobilized into mass violence like the racial cleansing mobs that our histories try to bury, and the insurrections of our present. Something we are now reminded of every Jan. 6.
Here’s my point: When Jewishness is conflated with whiteness, Jewish fear, especially when voiced by white-identifying Jews, gets distorted through that same lens. What is the very real, very serious challenge of anti-Jewish bias in this country becomes interpreted by others as urgent only because “white fear” is treated as truth, credible only in the eyes of power and actionable in ways that land on people of color.
For Jews of Color, the binary is felt
We’re living inside a context where “white fear” gets treated as a public emergency. While I’d argue that the Trump administration is using concerns about antisemitism as a cover for a totally disconnected agenda, consider the enormous attention antisemitism has received under this emboldened administration and how that would be perceived by those who have often been attacked by our government. Task forces, hearings and lawsuits acknowledging that antisemitism is real can feel like proof that Jews are finally seen. For those of us on the margins of this marginalized community, however, the terms are not theoretical. They’re terrifying.
I’m left watching some in the Jewish community adopting dangerous talking points, defending harmful policies, framing dissenters as disloyal or “bad Jews,” tolerating an assault on civil rights that are the only guarantee of safety for the Jewish community. Those of us remaining, especially with intersectional identities, are left playing ineffective and tired translators. Antisemitism is real, just like every other dehumanization model is real. The challenge is translation: When pain and communal risk isn’t well understood, the implications are harsh.
That’s the reality and urgency I bring to this work. My son (too young to understand) witnessed someone yell to me, “Go back to Poland, Jew!” My daughter witnessed me being called the n-word on my front lawn. I stand in rooms right now knowing that antisemitism might be the only sounds heard. I do this work through Project Shema because our name shema, “to listen/hear” isn’t branding; it’s a practice — listening with empathy while rejecting the dehumanization that binary thinking makes inevitable. Still, this is emotional, rational and exhausting work.
Who do we become when we’re afraid?
This world too often makes us consider: Who do we become when we’re afraid? If any answer is an acceptance of the illusion of scarcity and a sacrifice of other marginalized groups, it’s not a bargain we can make. Why? This administration has turned fear into a governing strategy: Create instability, then offer someone to hold responsible. Eggs get expensive, the wealth gap becomes a chasm, the world feels on the brink, and suddenly, there’s always a family, a community, a nation to blame. Trump’s “law & order” is being used to gut institutions for higher learning, to dismantle ladders of opportunity and DEI programs, and to terrorize immigrant communities. These are all Jewish issues! Not just because of our values to never stand idly by and to protect the vulnerable, but because they directly impact Jews of Color, immigrant Jews, queer/trans Jews and beyond. Moreover, if the government can successfully target one group, it can target any group — a truth that Jews in diaspora have learned hundreds of times over.
These are all Jewish issues! Not just because of our values to never stand idly by and to protect the vulnerable, but because they directly impact Jews of Color, immigrant Jews, queer/trans Jews and beyond.
Ultimately, I stay in this work because when Jonah comes to me one day and asks, “Mommy, am I safe?” I want to be able to say “of course,” honestly and without bargaining for it. A dangerous perch can’t promise safety. It can only promise the feeling of it, and we’re losing time. What I want for my kids — and for all of us — is something sturdier. A community that refuses to trade our values for proximity, stays in solidarity and refuses to confuse whiteness with protection.
After all, it’s still … an alligator.
[1] See David Schraub, “White Jews: An Intersectional Approach.”
[2] See Brittney Cooper, Eloquent Rage: “The lie we are told is that white rage and white fear are honest emotions that preserve the integrity of American democracy. … White rage and white fear are reactions to perceptions among white people that their power might be slipping away.” See also, Eric Ward, Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism.
