From Heidi Pickman: After hearing this morning from the IJJ
fellows how issues of race had affected their journalism and, later, listening
to a presentation by Brian Smedley on racial and ethnic health care
disparities, I had two thoughts I want to share:
- Erase “MINORITY” from our vocabulary.
It occurred to me while listening to one of our speakers
that the word minority should be erased from our vocabulary.For one, changing demographics in many places are rendering
the traditional interpretation of minority moot. For example, when talking about minorities in
Los Angeles, that mean Anglos as well as African Americans. When we talk about racial injustice, we
aren’t talking about discrimination against white people. FYI: LA’s population is approx. 47% Latino,
33% Anglo, 12% Asian and 9% African-American.
Second, play word association with the word “minority.” You say “minority” I think … minor, less
important, underdog, “not the winner.”Suggestions for
other words?
- Life experience that
shaped my feelings about race.
Right after I
introduced myself and the next person was already talking, I realized what
occurred in my life to shape my feelings about race and justice.I’m Jewish, which
means I grew up learning about the Holocaust.
Jewish people (for good reason) are obsessed with the Holocaust. All my life, I had it crammed down my throat. There were after school Hebrew lessons,
watching all nine episodes of SHOAH with my parents (and every other movie
about the Holocaust,) visiting Yad Vashem in Israel – twice.The main reason most
Jews learn about the Holocaust is to make sure that it never happens
again.The other takeaway
for me was that it is not OK to be killed for who you are, however you define
yourself. (Jews don’t like to see
themselves as a race because that’s what the Nazis called them. We are a religious ethnicity.) Seeing the pictures of dead Jew skeletons
piled on top of each other, my people, gave me a sick feeling of injustice and
how the Nazis got it all wrong. If I
can’t empathize with other similar tragedies, then I can’t honor the memory of
the 12 million who died in the Holocaust (6 million Jews and 6 million others,
including disabled, homosexuals, gypsies).
P.S.: Simon
Wiesenthal died yesterday at 96.
Heidi Pickman is an
IJJ racial justice fellow. She is an independent radio producer who lives in Santa
Monica, Calif. Most recently, she was the founding producer of “Weekend
America”, a weekly public radio magazine that can be heard on NPR member
stations.
