Deborah’s mother was English, the daughter of poor divorced Jewish parents (though not Hasidic), who was unlikely ever to be able to marry well. Her father was a man with sub-normal intelligence, though the precise nature of his disability or illness was never identified. She was brought up by her grandparents her parents separated when she was very young. However, she grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn as a member of the Satmar sect of Hasidic Jews. Deborah is in her mid-thirties and lives in Berlin, with her young son.

It therefore seems timely that I recently read the memoir Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman. Several celebrities and public figures boycotted Twitter in protest at the failure of the social media giant to take down Wiley immediately. The rapper Wiley was (eventually) banned from various social media platforms after making posting anti-semitic remarks recently, repeating discredited conspiracy theories. The full report will not be published for some time yet, but this will be a painful period for a party which has tolerance and plurality at its heart. In the last week or two, we have seen a resurgence of another discrimination issue which is much more long-standing, that of anti-semitism the UK Labour Party is currently considering a report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission on anti-semitism in its recent past. The conversation we all now need to engage in will be a difficult one. The movement has taken hold in the UK and throughout Europe too, although it does not appear to be quite as toxic as in the USA.

Some of these, no doubt, subscribe to the view that the oppressed somehow deserve their lesser status.

The #BlackLivesMatter movement is rocking the United States to its very foundations and leading to some intense friction between people who have been historically oppressed and who are saying enough is enough, and people who fear what they might lose. Their talents have been undervalued, their lives and their health have been damaged, their daily lived experience has, for many, been characterised by fear and by acts of hostility.

Many people who have experienced discrimination are angry. We are living in an age where minorities are beginning to find their voices.

Deborah feldman books