Saying nothing allows hate to thrive

“It hurts when people talk about you and they don't know you're in the room,” Richard Levenson told me.

He was my college roommate at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

He said that 53 years ago after a cross was lit and left on our dorm room's door. He was Jewish, but we knew the cross was for me. The floor counselor had an intervention with students on the floor. It was 1969. It was the South. I was supposed to know my place.

Nothing was really resolved, but Richie spoke up. He said he was Jewish, and because I am Black, how easy it was for them to target me, less so for him.

It got heated. He challenged the shallowness of the meeting.

“You only deal with hate by dealing with the truth,” he said.

There was silence. I felt he would, and could, protect me if things got too heated. And like that, a bond built — friends for life. I learned apathy and naiveté can allow certain things to become part of our echo chamber if we don't act to change the narrative.

I was touched by Sunday's editorial — “Antisemitism's rise cannot be met with silence.” Many people avoid accepting that either their actions, and often non-actions, can create firestorms of hate, acrimony and distrust. Truth is ignored as love is denied. Never forget how Carroll ISD in Southlake attempted to use Texas HB 3979 to sanction books and limit teachers' abilities to ferret out the truth, as some wanted to present “opposing” views of the Holocaust. It was thwarted because people spoke up.

Don't act as if we are surprised at the events involving Kanye West, the antisemitic rapper now known as Ye, and the white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-largo. Please. Did we forget who these people are or the crimes since the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va.? Did we forget the Holocaust? Where are the good people?

We are here. We remember and tell our stories.

I'll never forget sitting at the table of my friends, the Goodsteins, in Knoxville, Tenn., and seeing the tattooed numbers on their parents' forearms; visiting the Dachau concentration camp while stationed in Germany with the Army; and taking our son to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. None of us should miss opportunities to share the truth with our children. That way we know the story is told.

There's a story about a frog and a scorpion you may have heard. The scorpion wants to cross the river but cannot swim. The scorpion asks to ride on the frog's back. The frog, knowing what the scorpion is, says “no.” The frog knows the scorpion could sting him. The scorpion denies this, and the frog relents. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog. They both drown, but not before the frog confronts the scorpion about his lie. The scorpion simply reminds the frog, “It's my nature.”

No matter what we think or whom we talk with, if we do nothing, then we give people carte blanche to do anything they want. Do we act as the frog knowing the nature of others? Do we help bad actors by letting them get on our back?

No, we deal with the truth. We cannot be silent if we hope to survive.