Shameless Discrimination Drives Witches From Town

ז' באייר תשס"ז

An observation in follow up to my previous post, Local Churches Rallied Against Witch School - what is striking about the entire matter is just how shamelessly the opposition to Witch School drives witches out of town. Reading statements reported in the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, where the statements are no doubt the tip of an iceberg, it is clear that the Witch School opposition itself has no significant opposition to check its active discriminatory bias against witches and by extension, against those it deems religiously unworthy by a particular Christian definition to exist or flourish within the community. As one resident, Kendra Smiley (author, speaker and member of the East Lynn United Methodist Church) puts it so bluntly:

"It's not the kind of influence we want in our community."

Clearly, not only does the community not want witches in its community, it also feels clearly no shame in telling us that.

None of this is new to me as a resident of this rural area who has also been actively discriminated against for over a decade. As a poor Jewish woman on the fringes of the community without community support, I was allowed to work every Sunday taking care of the area's poor elderly at the county nursing facility. This is the only job I was able to get despite having 7 years of college education (with both a professional nursing license and a science degree from the University of Illinois) and award-winning research work in my employment history (testifying to my intellectual abilities and critical thinking skills). Two weeks after I publically "came out" as a Jewitch and wore a small pentacle necklace to work in support of community witches, since I am a Jewitch after all, like the Christian nurses wore their crosses and crucifixes, I was no longer allowed to do even this and was fired from my job.

The shameless discriminatory practices of this area are scary. What is even scarier is that there is absolutely no significant opposition to the discriminatory practices endemic to this area. Not even from local Jews - except for the pentacle I wore and the marginalized words I write as a Jewitch - there is no other local Jewish voice protesting this that I can hear. I've been listening for over a decade too.

I shudder at the silence.

Technorati tags: discrimination religious discrimination intolerance religious intolerance bigotry east central illinois witch school social justice