In which I sit like patience on a monument

Dear DovBear,
I noticed your piece on the Meam Loez. Do you think that the Meam Loez was describing a racial group based on the color of their skin or was he saying that the Torah is referring to a specific group who happen to have dark skin? Not all blacks in our society are uneducated and exhibit self defeating character traits, however there certainly seem to be a disproportionate amount who do. This disadvantage has probably been existent throughout history and it would seem plausible that there would be a reference to this in the Torah. - P

Dear P.
There isn't a reference to it in the Torah. The reference is found in the Mean Loez, a work written in Ladino, for ignorami. (Read his intro). The traits you describe exist among all races, and the fact the you see it in some black people has more to do with the legacy of slavery than anything else.

Dear DovBear,
I used to be quite open minded and got upset at people who stereotyped black people or anyone for that matter. Over the past ten years I have dealt with many black people (not necessarily lower class or descendants of slaves), and have formulated a very different opinion. I have begun to wonder whether blacks have certain innate tendencies that promote the kind of behaviour that may have lent itself to them becoming slaves in the first place. I find it hard to believe that skin color alone was to blame. - P

Dear P,
The characteristics you are referring to are nurture not nature. Also, black people were slaves for the same reason white people were slaves in ancient Rome, ancient Greece and in Europe (the Slavs, for example) The enslaved groups were weak; the enslaving groups were strong. And, by the way, Jews were slaves in concentration camps and condemned to "eternal slavery," as Pope Paul IV put it in Cum Nimis Absurdum for the exact same reason.

Dear DovBear,
Why do you suppose though that many other races who have been enslaved have not displayed the same type of socially deviant behaviour upon becoming free? Also, not being a historian, is there any place and time in history where black people have flourished as a successful honourable race among other nations? - P

Dear P,
You wont like this, but I cant help that... The Jews of Europe were in some ways similar to American blacks. Don't be fooled by the ways we romanticize the past. Living in ghettos as an oppressed, persecuted hated and abused race took its toll on our psyche just as surely as 400 years of slavery affected blacks. If we don't see it now, well, perhaps its because Hitler murdered 6 million of us.