Shalom Lappin:

In a particularly poignant scene of Spike Lee’s superb new film BlacKkKlansman, Ron Stallworth, an African American police officer in Colorado Springs in the 1970s, who infiltrates the local Klan branch by telephone, asks his Jewish colleague, Flip Zimmerman, how he can be so emotionally detached in discharging his role as the white avatar for Stallworth’s operation. “Don’t you realise that you are number two on their list? How can you pretend that you have no skin in this game?”, he wonders. He then points out that Jews have been “passing as white” in America for decades, refusing to acknowledge the reservoirs of anti-Jewish racism that exist in sections of American society. Lee reiterated this point in an interview on BBC Radio 2 in August in which he discussed the film. The scene, and Lee’s comments, are prophetic in light of the shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh last week.

Go to link