Reconcile the Alienation Between Jews and Blacks : Jesse Jackson’s Candidacy Is Again, Undeservedly, a Lightning Rod for Bigotry

Now that several Jewish legislators have publicly assailed California’s Assembly Speaker, Willie Brown, for agreeing to co-chair Jesse Jackson’s national presidential campaign, it is appropriate to look with introspection at the causes of Jewish hostility to Jackson.

The American Jewish community was one of the earliest and consistently strongest supporters of the civil-rights movement, which transformed race relations in the United States and ultimately made possible the first serious national candidacy by a black person. Yet American Jews’ feelings toward that candidacy are hostile at best, leading some Jewish politicians to label Jackson an anti-Semite and to criticize other black leaders for supporting his candidacy.

The anti-Semitism charge arose during Jackson’s 1984 campaign, provoked by a private conversation in which he used the word Hymie to refer to Jews (akin to using Jemima to refer to black women), and by his assertion that Palestinians and Israelis have the same rights to statehood and self-determination, and by his accepting the support of Black Muslims even while repudiating minister Louis Farrakhan’s anti-Semitic rhetoric.

From these events many Jews have concluded that Jackson is an anti-Semite. Yet any group that traditionally and pervasively has been confronted with prejudice and negative stereotypes--Jews, blacks and women, to name just a few--knows that most people of all groups have prejudices and harbor demeaning stereotypes about other groups. That does not make all of them bigots, racists or sexists.

Jews have prejudices and hold negative stereotypes about blacks, Arabs and even about non-European Jews, who make up half the Jewish population of Israel. Blacks, most of whom are Christian, have prejudices and negative stereotypes about Jews. This does not necessarily mean that such people are racists or anti-Semites (although some are); most hold these beliefs out of ignorance or insensitivity. The quality of tolerance in a person is not the complete absence of prejudice, but a recognition of one’s own prejudices accompanied by an ability to rise above them.

No black could seriously pursue political office in this country if he dismissed as racist every white person who has uttered a racially derogatory remark or who opposed legislation that outlawed the legal system of racial separation and oppression. That lengthy list would have to include Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford--each of whom initially opposed legislation that became the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts. Yet Jackson, Brown and most other black leaders have made their peace with white political leaders who have broken with their past views.

When American Jewish leaders simply dismiss Jackson and refuse to deal with him as a leader of American blacks, they miss a historic opportunity to address the problems of Jewish racism and black anti-Semitism. Worse yet, they demonstrate a paternalistic and patronizing attitude toward blacks--an attitude that is the core of blacks’ resentment toward their Jewish allies in the civil-rights struggle.

Jackson’s use of the words Hymie and Hymietown (for which he fully apologized) occurred out of anger. The 1984 New York presidential primary was approaching, and he resented the persistent and, in his view, disproportionate preoccupation of the media and Jewish leaders with his embrace of Yasser Arafat in a protocol greeting in 1979 and his support for self-determination for Palestinians as well as Israelis. That support was, and is, only one component of his view that American foreign policy should always support the aspirations of Third World peoples for the liberty and democracy that we cherish for ourselves. Yet little notice was being given then to this broader policy vision, or to Jackson’s criticism of U.S., Israeli and West European support for the white-supremacist South African government.

Jackson, like many blacks, believes that Jewish leaders and opinion-makers follow a double standard. For instance:

--Israel is excused for its active relations with South Africa and Latin American military dictatorships, and the American pro-Israel lobby is excused for dealing with segregationist senators like Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond, all on grounds of political pragmatism. Both Israeli and American Jewish leaders object to the suggestion that these pragmatic alliances reflect sympathy with reactionary views on race and personal liberty. Yet when Jackson, in the face of serious and credible threats against his life in 1984 and the refusal of the government to provide him with Secret Service protection, accepted the security assistance of Black Muslims, he was accused of anti-Semitism and his explanations were derided.

--Many American Jewish leaders have disavowed some of the more racist views of the Israeli right wing, but few of them have dissociated themselves from right-wing leaders and former terrorists like Menachem Begin who, long before any Arab-Israeli war, believed in a Jewish supremacist state in the entire historic Israel, including the Arab-populated West Bank. When Jackson made the same distinction regarding the Black Muslims, he was called an anti-Semite.

--Israeli laws that provide preferential treatment for Jews in matters of immigration, citizenship, religion, land and water rights are viewed as understandable responses to the Holocaust and centuries of oppression. When blacks support affirmative action for racial minorities to remedy centuries of slavery and oppression in the United States, it is called reverse discrimination.

--American Jewish leaders vigorously support fellow Jews in Israel, the Soviet Union and elsewhere. When American black leaders, feeling some affinity for other people of color, urge Palestinian self-determination (a view held also by many Jews in the United States and Israel), anti-Semitism is inferred.

Jackson is saying that if blacks in America can make their peace with George Wallace and segregationist whites, then Israelis can make their peace with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinians. Jackson believes that such a peace would serve Israel and its Jewish population. He does not believe that Palestinians have forfeited their basic human rights for all eternity, even if it were true that Arabs were exclusively responsible for past Israeli-Arab conflicts.

Jackson’s views on the Palestinian question are reasonable, even if many people don’t agree with them, and consistent with his approach to race relations in this country. He is entitled to hold and state those views without being accused of anti-Semitism.

In a recent interview with David Frost, Jackson said that Jews and blacks should be able to deal with each other and these problems as adults. What he was telling the American Jewish community is that American blacks want a relationship based on equality and mutual respect, even in areas of disagreement.

Jackson knows the pain of being the object of brutal racism, and he takes great personal pride in having risen, both spiritually and materially, above race hatred. He is also a leader of American blacks and a personification of their aspirations, particularly those that have long been denied to blacks in this country.

Jackson is not without human frailties and some prejudices. But he is not a bigot; he is not an anti-Semite. And, given his life-long personal commitment to civil rights and human equality, it is cruelly unfair to call him either.

American Jews want, even expect, blacks to be understanding of special Jewish sensitivities about both Israel and affirmative-action quotas. Blacks want similar understanding from Jews concerning their sensitivities about worldwide white colonization and exploitation of people of color, and their insistence on being treated as equals.

In 1988 Jackson is seeking to broaden his electoral appeal. It would indeed be tragic, and bitterly ironic, if he were to succeed in the white community at large but fail in the Jewish community because of misplaced fears that Jesse Jackson is less than fully committed to the equality and dignity of all peoples.