Pursuit of racial justice has been in TBE’s DNA since 1967 when our first Rabbi, Jacob Lantz, served as the Director of the Roxbury Work Study Project (RWSP). A joint effort of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, Freedom House, and local citizens, 125 college students (including 14 NFTY youth) lived at Northeastern University and worked to build new housing and rehabilitate existing housing owned by families in Roxbury’s Washington Park area. Reflecting on this experience, Rabbi Lantz quoted Dr. Martin Luther King: “…the ability of Negroes and whites to work together, to understand each other, will not be found ready made; it must be created by the fact of contact.”

Bryan Stevenson urges “being proximate” and this is a principle that guides our work in TBE’s Racial Justice Initiative. It is also a key benefit of affirmative action policies that foster diversity in educational institutions, corporations, and sports teams (to name a few) while also addressing the structural systemic policies that have excluded groups of qualified people in where they can live, work, go to school, and vote.

Affirmative action is a powerful tool to address centuries of injustice and discrimination that resulted in racial wealth disparity, health inequities and disparate life expectancies, educational achievement, and segregated communities. As expected, the recent Supreme Court decision in college admissions has unleashed litigation in the corporate world as well as not-for-profit programming, and additional assaults will undoubtedly be forthcoming. Josephine Kalipeni describes these lawsuits as “another whitewashing of the meaning of ‘freedom’ and ‘equity’ from a reverse racism angle.”

Affirmative action is a lever by which we can address the pernicious effects of systemic racism, while living our Jewish value of kavod habriyot, the dignity of every human being.