What Black / Jewish Split? : All Voters Have Their Causes, but We All Vote as Americans

With three weeks remaining, the California primary is increasingly being seen as the final showdown between Jesse Jackson and Michael Dukakis. Some may also expect it to bring about a further sharpening of hostilities between blacks and Jews.

As so often before, the tensions that are heating up are being caused by a specific personality and event rather than by real differences in interest or attitude.

This time the personality is Rev. Jesse Jackson and the event is his candidacy for President. Jews do not forget Jackson’s Jewish slurs and his friendship with anti-Semites like Louis Farrakhan, Yasser Arafat and Moammar Kadafi. Blacks resent such criticism of Jackson, considering it evidence of racism. They cannot understand how people of good will can reject an idealistic program like that proposed by their favorite candidate.

It is typical of the political process that here, as in so many other instances, the popular generalities ignore the Jews who are backing Jackson, and the blacks--including committed Democrats--who have failed to endorse him.

Perhaps both groups should heed the old American Indian advice of “walking a mile in the others’ moccasins.” If a Jewish candidate were campaigning for the nomination, would Jews not tend to vote for him (or her) even if they did not see eye to eye on every issue? Would they not resent anyone’s presumption that a Jew can’t win? Might they not overlook the candidate’s questionable associations? Conversely, if any non-black candidate had associated with the grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan or had embraced the prime minister of South Africa while presenting an otherwise attractive political platform, would not blacks hesitate to vote for him (or her)?

In the distorting emotional atmosphere of the political campaign it is especially important for all concerned to remain aware that the black and Jewish segments of America’s population still have much more that unites than divides them.

Jews, in spite of the prominence in neo-conservative circles of some of their numbers, still tend to be more liberal than other whites of similar socio-economic backgrounds. Some say that Jews fight for the underdog, support religious and ethnic minorities other than their own, and “vote against their pocketbook” because they remember harsh treatment in Europe and during their immigrant days in the United States. Others point to the emphasis on charity in 3,000 years of teaching by the biblical prophets and generations of rabbis.

Whatever the reason, Jews have moved toward conservatism more slowly than other upwardly mobile elements of the population. They still are found in disproportionate numbers in such organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union and Common Cause. Proportionately, more Jews than other non-blacks may be found among both the founders and the current members of the NAACP and the Urban League.

Similarly, the overwhelming majority of blacks who have escaped the grip of poverty have remained committed to a progressive political agenda. They remember their roots, and they continue to believe that government has an important role to play in creating opportunity and in combating social inequity. Even blacks who are frustrated in their upward economic mobility show little taste for separatism and opt to stay in “the system.”

Blacks and Jews share the same enemies, especially the violence-prone neo-Nazi organizations springing up in various parts of our country. They share a common apprehensiveness that acceptance by the dominant WASP culture is a tenuous matter. Though Jews and blacks may differ on the methods to obtain economic and educational justice, with one group preferring goals and timetables while the other opts for quotas, these differences are not insurmountable, nor do they cancel out wide areas of agreement and of potential for cooperation.

The black church, still the major source of spiritual nurture in its community, derives its liberating message not only from Jesus and the Apostles but from the same Moses and the same Hebrew prophets whose words are heard in the synagogue.

For blacks, the paragon among their many martyrs is still Martin Luther King Jr., whose dream included Americans of all races and religions. Their man of the hour is Jackson, whose stand on domestic and international issues appeals to a rainbow coalition and who accepts his political success as a sign that “hope has been unleashed” not only for blacks but for the country as well.

Seen in perspective, perhaps Jews and blacks act no differently from any other definable interest groups in the American body politic. They argue their special concerns within each party until the convention. They fight for their party and its candidate after the convention. And on Election Day they vote as Americans.