 © Joseph Mack Branchcombe
|
Searching for Common(sense) Ground Click to read Click to |
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© Joseph Mack Branchcombe
|
Searching for Common(sense) Ground Click to read Click to |
Searching
for Common(sense) Ground
"Black anti-Semitism and Jewish anti-Black racism are real, and both are as
profoundly American as cherry pie."
—Cornel West, 1993
"You’re a Black Jew," said my five-year-old brother, angry over my refusal to share my candy with him. His slur was a common one used in our biracial Washington, D.C. neighborhood, and, while it angered me, it couldn’t change the fact that I had a full pack of Now or Laters and that he was candyless. Unable to take the candy from me or buy himself a pack, he was reduced to invectives.
"Na-na, na-na-na," I responded.
Sometimes I look back at the appearance of former Nation of Islam spokesman, Khallid Muhammed at Howard University in fall 1993. In the controversy surrounding Muhammed there was something frighteningly similar to my brother’s juvenile insult and my equally juvenile response. Young blacks—angered, frustrated and envious of Jewish power—used the controversy to insult Jews, who responded with assertions of rising black anti-Semitism. What angered me more than the foolish rancor of the controversy, with its childish and hysterical language, was its unleashing of vapid, opportunistic demagogues.
This controversy had little to do with Jews. It had much more to do with the black quest for control of D.C. and those roguish individuals who, like preacher-pimps, wait to exploit that need. A climate of raw despair exists in D.C.’s black community. The federal government is reclaiming control it earlier gave to local citizens under "home rule." We have high unemployment, endemic violence, inadequate housing, substandard health care, and a criminally incompetent city government. Add to this the current attack on affirmative action and the stunted vision of current black leadership, and you have a desperation as palpable as D.C.’s brutally humid summers. Against this backdrop, blacks are re-examining historically solid relationships with whites, including those with unions and progressive Jews. The history of Jewish participation in the civil rights movement in years past, however glorious, is not sufficient to save today’s victims: my incarcerated nephew, my addicted sister, or my chronically unemployed brother. In fact Jews, like other whites, have exploited blacks. As a young man in D.C.’s housing projects, I remember the community’s ambivalence toward Jewish merchants who provided essential goods, yet over-charged for substandard merchandise. But no one in my neighborhood was stupid enough to suggest, as do the current black demagogues, that Jews were the root of our problem.
Khallid Muhammad and our local demagogue-lites were given TV coverage and newspaper headlines simply for uttering anti-Semitic slogans. They assured their followers that victims of white supremacy cannot be themselves racist or anti-Semitic (just as Jewish demagogues assured themselves that they cannot be racist because of the Holocaust). I have been roundly attacked in D.C. for simply questioning these intellectual oafs and their equally idiotic (and racist) social theories, which usually involve melanin or genetics.
The danger black anti-Semitism presents to Jews pales in comparison to the danger faced by a D.C. community poised precariously on the threshold of the next century. We lost precious moments in our struggle during the Khallid Muhammad controversy. Demagogues lead us away from the real issues. We must address the sharing of American wealth and power. Progressive black struggle requires the principled alliance of all fair-minded people as we work to repair our fractured capital city. Still, we reserve the right to determine the course of our struggle and reject the idea of blind alliance. Only intelligence and vigilance can eliminate the evils of racism and anti-Semitism. Progressive African-Americans and Jews in D.C. are already beginning the process of finding common ground and common sense in this moment of distrust. History and destiny leave us no choice.
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