Aliza Hausman, a Dominican convert to Orthodox Judaism, writes for the Jewish Journal:
My husband and I started speaking out about racism in the Jewish community when a friend asked us to speak at a synagogue in Washington Heights, in my hometown of New York City. As an interracial Jewish couple (my husband is white, I am Dominican), our friend was sure we’d have plenty to say. I wasn’t. But as I started to write about my experiences in Washington Heights (from both white Jews, who thought I was dark and foreign, to Dominicans, who thought I was too light and American), I filled four single-spaced typed pages. I knew from the stories of other Jews of color that this meant I was lucky. I learned still others had been even luckier.
When every inch of my kinky hair is hidden away under a head scarf, people assume there is no one in the room to offend with their racist comments. My husband and I have sat in stunned silence around a Shabbos table. Non-Jews, blacks, Mexicans … no one was safe, especially not me, a convert with non-Jewish family, a light-skinned Latina with a brown mother and African roots. Even our Jewish real estate broker told my husband and his parents that our new neighborhood would be better because there weren’t many Hispanics. My husband informed her there’d now be one more (me!).
Topics unsafe for the Shabbos table: skin color, class and especially affirmative action, which people have insinuated might be the only reason I got into college. These loaded topics can lead to comments like “Why are they always playing the race card?” and “Jews didn’t use slavery as an excuse never to work again” and “Their cultural values are the reason they can’t get ahead.” When you are the darkest person in a room full of angry white people, your eyes dart for the exit, looking for the best escape.
But something changed recently. When the arrest of black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Obama’s initial response came up at the Shabbos table, my husband was not silent. He highlighted the issues between people of color and law enforcement. He tried to get everyone to look at the situation from every angle. A conversation that started out, “Doesn’t everyone agree Obama was stupid for speaking out about this case?” changed because of my husband’s input.
The longer we’ve been married, the more my husband has seen racism up close. He has watched me be subjected to routine, tactless interrogations and commentary about my race, my culture and, of course, my hair, in the Jewish and non-Jewish communities. By seeing the world through my eyes, he has realized that even he is not without taint from the racism that pollutes us every day in the very air we breathe, no matter how much we fight it. And yes, we must fight it.
My husband’s new thoughts on racism are unwelcome outside of the classrooms we teach in. People have worried aloud that he is a race traitor. (I have been accused of the same for marrying him.)
