I do not believe Jesse Jackson is an anti-Semite; but
there are shadows of anti-Semitic sensibilities shot
through his language. In principle, he would struggle
against anti-Semitism, demonstrate against it. But it?s
very problematic to have a leader of left-liberal forces
in America who has this kind of baggage. It?s in some
ways a tragedy.

In Jesse Jackson we have someone who highlights the
unprecedented business attack on working and poor
people in this country, one of the few people who
emphasizes this issue and speaks with power and passion
about it. How do we evaluate and assess such a ?gure
who uses as his social base the most loyal group in
America to progressive politics?Black Americans? Do
we support him, hoping that he will continue to grow
and move beyond the shadows of anti-Semitic sensibili-
ties, or do we oppose him and then align ourselves with
?gures who won?t talk about the business assault on the
poor? Or do we try to tease out some of the Black elected
of?cials who are much more sensitive but who have as
encompassing visions as Jesse Jackson?the Bill Grays
of this world? That?s another option. Or do we wait for
a third, extraparliamentary ?gure who boldly and de?-
antly challenges corporate power, racism, anti-Semitism,
homophobia, sexism? At the moment, I remain a critical

PAPER: BLACKS AND JEws

Class, Women,

supporter of Jackson?s efforts to change America.

The future dialogue between progressive African-
Americans and Jewish Americans will be dif?cult. On
the international front, the conservative form of Zionism
that regulates Israeli policies on the West Bank and Gaza
Strip warrants wholesale rejection and fundamental
reorientation. Palestinian national self-determination
must be confronted and accommodated by all who take
seriously Jewish national self-determination?on moral
and political grounds. Similarly, Blacks must criticize
the atrocities in Kenya, Uganda, and Ethiopia?not
simply the ugly realities in South Africa?with the
same moral outrage with which they criticize those
atrocities committed against Palestinians as a result of
the Israeli government?s policies. On the domestic front,
the Black?Jewish alliance must be rejuvenated and
reconstituted?especially in the labor movement, among
Black womanists and Jewish feminists, among Black
Christians and Orthodox Muslims and religious Jews,
and in the new emerging group of American left-liberal
activists now led by Jesse Jackson. The ?rst step is to
break the ice with engaged dialogue, openness to change,
and constructive attempts at collective thought and
action. This is the road to substantive internationalism
and rooted universalism. 

and ?The Black?Jewish Question?

 

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

do a lot of speaking in the women?s movement

about anti-Semitism and racism, and I ?nd I need

to explain that anti-Semitism is a form of racism?
which shouldn?t be news to people, but it is. Because
feminists have for some years committed themselves to
?ghting racism?~this is not the place to debate the
sincerity or effectiveness of this commitment?I try to
establish a continuum of racism that includes racism
against Jews, a continuum on which the separate but
related lines of race and class are traced. The problem

 

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz worked in the civil rights movement
in Harlem in the early sixties and has continued as an activist
in antiwar; feminist, lesbian, and progressive Jewish politics
including Middle East peace work. She is coeditor of The Tribe
of Dina: A Jewish Women?s Anthology (Beacon, 1989).

is that most Americans are groomed to be ignorant
about class structure and class oppression. So the related
but distinct issues of race and class are fuzzed and
confused, and this fact in turn confuses the meaning
and danger of anti-Semitism.

Here?s how it works. Rich WASPS are taken for
granted?as perhaps entitled? Poor WASPS and other
poor whites-?the rural white poor, for example?are
simply invisible. Poor Jews are a contradiction in terms.
Most Americans see racism as identical to economic
oppression; they see race and class as the same thing.
They also see Jews as excessively economically privileged.
It?s obvious: How can racism have anything to do with
Jews? In fact, the logic goes, not only is anti-Semitism
an entirely different animal from racism, it?s trivial,

97

since it?s only directed against privileged, powerful
people. Indeed, if Jews are the rich and people of color
are the poor, then healthy and essential class an-
tagonism distorts into anti?Semitism?a phenomenon
August Bebel observed in Europe many years ago: Anti-
Semitism is the socialism of fools.

This is not to say that anti-Semitism is caused by
capitalism; it is, however, a convenient channel for
discontent.

 

It?s unfair that the ahuses of
capitalism are hlamed on Jews. But
for us to combat the angers
manifestation without also combating
the angers cause?economic
injustice and cruelty?
is likewise unfair

 

I don?t think I need to point out that there is a
severely strati?ed class structure in this country and
that many Jews are located somewhat advantageously
in it. I may need to say that most of these comfortable
Jews are men or affiliated with men, that many Jewish
women?especially single mothers?and old people
are poor, and that Jews endure about the same rate of
poverty as do other immigrant groups who came to the
US. at the same time. I don?t think I need to say that a
large part of the Black community?perhaps half?has
been systematically and increasingly locked into extreme
poverty. As the proportion of homeless women with
children increases?and, in New York City, for example,
90 percent of the homeless are people of color?this
phenomenon will only get worse.

How this adds up: when it comes to Jewish?Black
relations, some of what stands between us is class.

But that is not what seems to stand between us. What
seems to stand between us is Black anti-Semitism and
Jewish racism. I do not minimize these realities. Two
examples:

0 Steven Cokely (a Black aide of appointed Mayor Sawyer
in Chicago), who claimed that Jewish doctors are giving
AIDS to Black people;

0 ZBT, a mostly Jewish fraternity at the University of
Wisconsin at Madison, which held a slave auction in
which pledges wore blackface and Afro wigs.

We should just hold a moment of silence in horror at
both of these events.

But Black anti-Semitism is a subdivision of American
anti-Semitism, or Christian anti-Semitism, or some-
times Islamic anti-Semitism. Jewish racism is a brand

98 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 4

of American racism, or white racism, or sometimes
European racism. The Cokely incident is symbolic of
the struggle for power in Chicago city politics following
the death of that compelling uni?er Harold Washington.
The fraternity incident epitomizes campus backlash,
validated by people like Allan Bloom with their great
white male books. Neither Black anti-Semitism nor
Jewish racism is so special in itself, although both are
especially destructive in their implications.

Let me take another tack. I am not one who believes
in group paranoia; I believe in the fundamental sound-
ness of suspicion and fear. I?m forty-three years old.
The camps were opened the month before I was born.
Why shouldn?t I be afraid? At the same time, I know
that the US. tests products on people of color in Third
World countries. I know food and drugs deemed unsafe
here are marketed abroad. I read in the paper recently
about a doctor in Dayton, Ohio, who for years performed
unnecessary experimental surgery on the sexual organs
of hundreds of women without their prior knowledge
or consent, and dozens of other doctors knew and did
nothing. So when Steven Cokely claims that Jewish
doctors are giving AIDS to Black people, what stands
out is, first, a real fear that Blacks will be experimented
on in deadly ways, and second, that Jews are being
scapegoated for this fear.

Similarly, last year, when a Black priest, Reverend
Lawrence Lucas, at a New York City rally, attacked
Jews as ?those who are killing us in the classroom 
look at the Board of Education  it looks like the
Knesset in Israel,? he underscored two points: first, the
New York City school system is desperately failing to
meet the needs of Black children; and second, Jews are
being scapegoated.

I?m not going to answer, ?Why blame the 
question with no answer. I want to point out how the
media exacerbate Black?Jewish tension: there are lots
of discussions of the Black?Jewish con?ict, but they
boil down to the same old rehash of incidents; like the
mall bookstores with ten thousand books?only it?s ten
different titles, a thousand copies of each.

How many of you know who Albert Raby is, for
example? He died recently, fifty-?ve years old: he was
the organizer who brought Dr. King to Chicago; he ran
Harold Washington?s successful campaign for mayor;
he was co-chair of a group of Blacks and Jews formed
to deal with the fallout from Cokely?s remark. Albert
Raby was an important man in the history of Black
struggle, in the history of Chicago, in the history of
Black?Jewish relations, and about three people at this
conference have heard of him. But how many have
heard of Louis Farrakhan?

Or, think of the difference in attention?the way the
mainstream Jewish establishment lovingly dwelled on

details of con?ict between Jackson and Jews, downplayed 

attempts at conciliation, and only brie?y reacted to the
news about Bush?s campaign being full of Nazis. This is
a double standard. I, for one, may ?nd Black anti-
Semitism more personally painful than I do white ruling-
class anti-Semitism, but I do not find it more dangerous.

Let me be clear. Cokely?s statement made me sick,
not just because of the trouble I knew it would stir up,
but because I have a well-developed realistic sense of
Jewish terror. But if, as progressive Jews, we want to
heal the Black?Jewish con?ict, we need to deal not
only with the anti-Semitism of the Cokely incident but
with the fear behind the remark. Jews must not be
scapegoated for Black concerns, but we must help our
communities address themselves to these concerns. I?ll
come back to this.

want to talk about basic stereotypes, the ones that

make me intensely nervous even to say them because

of how they have been used against my people and
against Black people: the Jewish landlord and the Black
rapist. Jews are rich and Blacks are violent.

Historically these stereotypes originate in very dif-
ferent ways. The Jewish landlord originates in a grain of
truth, probably in Harlem, where some members of the
Jewish community retained stores and houses after they?d
moved to other neighborhoods?houses where Black
people lived, stores where Black people bought. The
Black rapist, on the other hand, originates in the white
South?s fantasy. No southern Black man with his mind
intact would have raped a white woman, given the
danger of such an act; but the of the Black rapist
has served to terrorize and Black men, to constrain
white women, and to oppress Black women by making
their particular vulnerability to white male sexual abuse
invisible and unspeakable.

Never mind what any economic analyst can tell you;
most owners aren?t Jewish. Never mind what any woman
could tell you; any man walking behind her on an
otherwise empty street might be a rapist; and many
rapists are men of privilege who rape in the form of
sexual harassment and coercion, not to mention abuse
of their own children.

But stereotypes have a powerful life of their own.
The landlord, symbol of privilege and exploitation.
Landlords stand in for all exploitative owners, that is to
say, for capitalists: those who make money, hoard money,
live at the expense of others. And Jews are peculiarly
associated with money.

The rapist, symbol of urban Violence?and Blacks
are peculiarly associated with both sex and violence.
Perfect. It?s revealing that the Black rapist is always
thought of as raping white women, since this assumption
ignores statistics, which show that Black rapists tend to

 

 

rape Black women, as white rapists rape white women.
Rapists choose women to rape based on accessibility
and on whether they?the rapists?think they can get
away with it.

So why is the rape victim in this white? Because
she symbolizes white men?s property, sexualized to avoid
the awkward fact of economic inequity. (Her whiteness,
his blackness also cleverly conceal the essentially patri-
archal nature of violence against women.) The concern
is not with any woman?s safety, but with Black men?s
theft of white men?s property.

So as landlords stand in for all exploitative owners
(those who make money), rapists stand in for all thieves
(those who steal money, the have-nots, the threatening
clamorous underclass).

You see where these stereotypes connect fundamen-
tally with class. If the problem is Jewish greed, if the
problem is Black immorality, then capitalism itself is not
the problem. So let me say clearly that capitalism is a
problem, and the Jewish?Black problem will be a prob-
lem as long as there are economically oppressed peoples.

We could spend a lot of energy on why it?s unfair that
the abuses of capitalism are blamed on Jews. It is

BLACK -JEWISH RELATIONS 99

unfair. But for us to combat the anger?s manifestation
without also combating the anger?s cause?economic
injustice and cruelty?is likewise unfair. I also believe
it?s stupid and destructive.

he landlord and the rapist, the Jew and the
Black, are men. Where are the women?

Many of you teach on campuses, and I hope
you are aware of the upsurge in attacks on Jewish
women under the rubric of JAP, that favorite laugh for
Jewish male comics. The Jewish American Princess is
the contemporary version of the Jewish mother, who at
least was nurturing, while the Jewish American Princess
does nothing but nag and consume?this at a time
when Jewish women, like other women, are working
outside the home in unprecedented numbers. She?s not
sexually subservient. She?s a woman who doesn?t submit.

Inside the Jewish community, the JAP epithet is clearly
backlash by men who seem not to understand or care
that the term is not only sexist (and, of course, racist
against Japanese people) but anti-Semitic. Outside the
Jewish community, the Jewish American Princess not
only functions as a magnet for anti-Semitism; she also
takes the rap for capitalist consumption. She is the
scapegoat?often quite literally she is excluded by signs
that proclaim No JAPS Allowed Here, and in one instance
in Arizona a woman?s husband killed her and went free
on a defense? obtained by the same lawyer who
got the killer of Harvey Milk and George Moscone ac-
quitted on a ?Twinkie defense.?

In the Black community, I see the stereotypes of the
Black matriarch (remember the woman Pat Moynihan
blamed for undermining Black manhood, instead of
honoring her for helping Black people survive) and
Sapphire the whore (who will probably soon be blamed
for spreading AIDS). I also see a similar backlash against
assertive Black women?though not on the scale of
Jewish men trashing Jewish women. Take Alice Walker,
who has got to be the most generous person on the face
of the earth and who believes practically everybody has
the capacity to change, and she has been viciously
attacked as hateful toward Black men because she writes
about father-daughter incest, battering, and, god forbid,
lesbian love.

Outside the Black community, the common stereotype
of Black women is the welfare mother sucking'the
country dry. It?s her fault that taxes are high; she brings
up her kids wrong; she?s sexually irresponsible; she
doesn?t understand protein (as though anyone on food
stamps can ?understand? protein). All the ravages of
capitalism are blamed on her. She is the passive version
of the rapist/mugger: he takes money, she spends money
not her own. She is the poor version of the Jewish
American Princess; she?s a parasite who does nothing

100 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 4

but consume, the main difference being she can?t con-
sume very much.

So again we have the greedy, evil moneybags, and the
inferior, immoral leech; one is blamed for capitalism,
the other for capitalism?s fallout.

When Jewish and Black women step outside these
stereotypes and are themselves, I believe that we?and
many other ethnic women?have not only our differences
to deal with, but also some similarities, similarities that
can help us learn from and support one another.

want to look at women in another way, as potential

sources of solutions. Let me say baldly that the

women?s movement is ahead of the mixed left on
this issue for a couple of reasons. One, despite Tikkun?s
editorial a few months ago stating that the women?s
movement never became a mass movement, the women?s
movement is a mass movement. Amorphous and not
always full-bodied in its analysis, it nonetheless has
changed the lives of millions of women?and men?
and brought women from many different communities
into contact with one another. There is barely a city in
this country that does not have explicit women?s activities
taking place, and in all these places a challenge is being
articulated and strengthened to combat racism and, to
a lesser extent, anti-Semitism.

There?s another aspect to this picture. Lesbians have
always formed a disproportionately high number of
cross-class, cross-race, cross-culture relationships. Often
these relationships retain familial status even after break-
ing up. Many of us maintain very close ties with our
home communities. So these relationships spin out into
networks of family connections, including in-laws and
children; and inside these relationships much pain is
felt raw. Dealing positively with Black?Jewish tension
is not abstractly desirable but concretely necessary.

Not surprising that some of the most hopeful devel-
opments in Black-Jewish relations have been among
feminists. Out of con?icts in the women?s movement
have come dozens of dialogue groups, coalitions, and
various attempts to work through some of these issues;
and because women have been working on these issues,
we?ve reached some places that have not been reached
by the mixed left.

The other source of solution is inside the Jewish
community. If we approach the problem from the source
of the division, namely class, we will look for leadership
to those in the Jewish community who share concerns
with members of the Black community?for example,
women, seniors, and gays. What this means is that
Jewish men have to step back and listen to the concerns
of the whole Jewish community, not just the part that?s
comfortable for or visible to them. Healing the Black?
Jewish split will also challenge the hierarchy and sexism

of theJewish community, including the progressive Jewish
community.

What will our agenda look like? It will be a long list
including: medical care, day care, decent employment,
housing, af?rmative action (all this talk of Jews opposing
af?rmative action when Jewish women have always sup-
ported it), reproductive rights, protection for sexual
preference, AIDS research and treatment, prevention
of violence against women, urban safety, sensible foreign

 

What will pull us together
is hearts outraged by injustice and
committed to generosity.

 

policy (no intervention on the side of repressive govern-
ments, foreign aid as the right of developing nations),
antiracism legislation and protection, separation of
church and state, and a strong education platform?
from public schools through college. How many in this
audience were educated through the free City College
system? I was. That option no longer exists. It is a
disgrace that the percentage of Black college students,
after an upward surge, is decreasing.

We Jews need to articulate strongly a pro-Jewish
antiracist voice to address not just our common ground
of discrimination and race hate but our not-so-common
ground of economic inequities. And we need to do this
visith as Jews. Many of us who are working against
racism and on various progressive issues don?t identify
ourselves as Jews and we should ?nd ways to do so. A
very related part of this work is building Jewish pride
and solidarity.

Jewish visibility is critical when it comes to the issue
of South Africa. The battle against apartheid is, of
course, very important to the Black community, and
Israel?s relationship with South Africa is a sore point in
Black?Jewish relations. We need to publicize that the
Israeli left, like the left here, is working on sanctions
against South Africa. We should also name as Jews those
Jewish South Africans who have fought and continue
to ?ght against apartheid: people like Ruth First, Nadine
Gordimer, Abie Nathan, Albie Sachs, Helen Suzman,
Janet Levine, and a South African organization called
Jews for Justice.

I believe that the politics of most Blacks today and
the politics of progressive Jews are basically similar.
This is common sense. Blacks are the most predictably
progressive group on the majority of political issues.
But what will pull us together is not an instant or
easy trust. Nor is it nostalgic longing for equal victim
status (a resurrection of Leo Frank, the Jew) or
revisionism (embarrassed erasure of Judah Benjamin,
the ?nancial brains of the Confederacy, the progressive
Jews? nightmare). I believe what will pull us together is
hearts outraged by injustice and committed to generosity.

A character in a story of mine?a woman much like
myself?on the subway in New York thinks: ?Today I?m
here in Hymietown as Jesse Jackson was stupid enough
to call it and never be forgiven for by people every one
of whom has heard shuartze once in her or his life
without protest.? The time for self-righteousness is over

I want to remind us all of some words of Che Guevara
which I thought I understood when I ?rst heard them
at age twenty but which I believe I am coming to
understand now: ?At the risk of sounding ridiculous I
need to say that the true revolutionary is guided by
feelings of great love.? Examine if you will the dis-
comfort many of us have come to feel with the word
?revolutionary??whether because of the rhetoric or
from healthy Jewish suspicion?but hold onto the in-
junction . that acts of solidarity from the heart are what?s
needed. Where our hearts, or hearts in our community,
are closed by fear and bitterness, we need to do the
hard, important work of opening them as big as possible.

That?s our Jewish job. El

 

 

TIKKUN TAPES

Tapes from the Tikkun Conference
are now available. For a list of the
tapes and ordering information
please write:

Tikkun Tapes
5100 Leona Street
Oakland, CA 94619

 

 

 

 

RELATIONS 101