White Jewish folks: I told you—I don’t follow white men’s parameters on racialization anymore. I follow Black feminist standpoint on race and racism. That perspective applies to Palestinian liberation too. https://twitter.com/thespinsterymc/status/1352570066471165953

Normalize and center Black feminist epistemologies on Jewish history and politics. That’s the work I will be doing for the rest of my life. Black feminist materialism holds the key to dismantling Eurocolonial ideologies and systems. We’ve seen the results: Black feminism works.

Currently, dominant Jewish epistemologies (big word for systems of thought) center Eurocolonial/white patriarchal standpoint. We see this everywhere from the rabbinate to the nonprofit world to government. I want us to decenter that standpoint and adopt Black feminist frameworks.

I don’t think any living Jew in Earth today can conceive of a Jewish reality outside of white colonial gaze. That is the result of nearly two millennia of European Jewish thought. European standpoint shapes present day Jewish perspective. That’s our number one problem.

Our perspectives on antisemitism, oppression, fascism, and liberation center whiteness. Our analysis of race and racism is grounded in whiteness. We center whiteness as the human default from which all human reality is perceived. We have to switch out whiteness for Blackness.

You don’t need to be personally Black to center Blackness as your standpoint. I centered white patriarchal gaze for the first 40 years of my life. Every day since then has been dedicated to removing my white man gaze and cultivating a Black feminist perspective. It can be done.

I’m still not where I want to be when it comes to relying on Black feminist knowledge. My white man framework is deeply conditioned and engages automatically. I have to step back in my own head and turn it off. Engaging Black women’s epistemological work is what keeps me focused.

If you aim to transform human society at all, you NEED to cultivate a Black feminist perspective. You need to ground your identity and lived experiences in Black women’s knowledge frameworks. I don’t care who you are or where you live. Black feminism is the road out of hell.

Jewish men, especially you white boys? You need Black feminist epistemologies more than anyone else on Earth. Your white man frameworks are leading to the global inertia and irrelevance of Judaism and Jewish thought. You are letting whiteness destroy the purpose of Judaism.

Judaism singlehandedly created the prophetic traditions that religious and secular thinkers all over the world rely on. And yet Jewish leaders are allowing whiteness and Eurocolonialism to rot Jewishness and Judaism from the inside. Those white lenses gotta come off, y’all.

Black feminism has the power and the knowledge to save Judaism. I know it does. Because Black feminism saved me. Black feminism pushed me to stop running away from my queerness and Jewishness and embrace myself. It restored my wholeness. It can do the same for you too.

Every day, white and non-black people around the world demand that Black women save you from your own colonial messes. Each day, you demand the service and intellectual labor from Black women that you’ve taken for granted. No more. Black women already created the tools. USE THEM.