Blacks, Jews Take New Steps to Heal Divisions

It was only a matter of time before Louis Farrakhan’s name came up.

The questioner was a Jewish man who shook with anger and hurt as he stood in an audience at the Jewish Student Center at UCLA. Why, he demanded of City Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, an African American, didn’t blacks condemn the Nation of Islam leader, who many Jews believe is an incorrigible anti-Semite?

Ridley-Thomas’ distaste for the question was obvious. He seemed to wince and waited several moments before speaking. His answer, boiled down to its essence, was that he chose not to use his energy to denounce anyone. “I’m not prepared to spend my time dealing with that issue,” he said. “I’ve tried to make it abundantly clear what my political views are. My record speaks for itself. I will not be forced to take some litmus test.”

The answer only made the man angrier, but his attempts to engage Ridley-Thomas in debate over the matter were quickly curtailed by Laurie Levenson, a Loyola Law School professor who was moderating the recent panel discussion organized by the Hillel Council at UCLA, a Jewish service group.

The topic? Whether a black-Jewish alliance could be forged at a time when the two communities have drifted into sometimes hostile camps.

It is a question that is increasingly being asked in Los Angeles and across the country.

Eight days before the UCLA panel, the African American/Jewish Leadership Connection sponsored a conference in May at the Wilshire Boulevard Temple, where about 120 black and Jewish community leaders sought to air sometimes unspoken perceptions and pains on both sides.

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Nationally, similar dialogues are taking place among academics, clerics and activists who have looked on in alarm in recent years as some members of the two groups--formidable allies at various points in their histories, most notably during the civil rights movement--have become bitterly estranged over issues from Farrakhan to the verdict in the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

In an attempt to cool the fires, the historically black Howard University and the American Jewish Committee last month jointly published the first issue of CommonQuest, a magazine whose purpose is to provide a forum for discussion of black-Jewish relations in an atmosphere “beyond frenzy and accusation.”

Later this year, the NAACP, the Hillel Foundation and other groups plan to host a national summit on the issue in Washington.

In Los Angeles, where divisiveness between the two groups has flared and ebbed repeatedly over the last decade, old allies are attempting to breach the divide by talking honestly to each other, agreeing to disagree on some issues and joining forces on those on which they can agree.

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Farrakhan, one participant in the dialogues said, is an example of a topic that probably won’t be agreed on any time soon, if ever.

He is a difficult “knot,” said Raphael Sonenshein, a political science professor at Cal State Fullerton who was on the UCLA panel with Ridley-Thomas.

“A knot should be untied or cut, but not necessarily settled,” he said. “To expect all Jews to accept Farrakhan and all blacks to reject him is unrealistic.”

Most of those involved in the dialogues, however, are optimistic that they will bear fruit in other areas. If reconciliation between blacks and Jews is possible anywhere, they contend, it is in Los Angeles, because the lines of communication between the two groups here have never been completely severed.

Even in the worst of times, said many, individual Jews and blacks have continued to communicate, work in joint programs and attend each other’s places of worship, while more strident members of both communities got the headlines.

“Los Angeles created for about a 15- to 20-year period the most important black-Jewish alliance than probably any major metropolitan area has ever had,” said Sonenshein, referring to the political coalition of mostly Westside Jews and South Los Angeles blacks that put Tom Bradley in the mayor’s office and kept him there for two decades.

“The question is not why we keep fighting,” Sonenshein said. “The question is why are we still talking?”

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Rabbi Harvey Fields, chairman of the Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation, an umbrella organization of Jewish groups, cited the shared history of blacks and Jews as persecuted people and civil rights champions.

“This is a relationship with roots back in the 19th century,” Fields said. “Jews and African Americans have been partners in the battle for civil rights for our communities and everyone else. This is a valued partnership.”

Ridley-Thomas agreed.

“There is an almost unquenchable thirst on the part of the two communities to remain in communication,” he said, “because we do see ourselves as important in this experiment called Los Angeles.”

Sonenshein agreed with both men but warned against painting too rosy a picture of the past.

In reality, he said, the two groups have clashed locally and nationally as often as they have worked together since the turn of the century, when progressive Jews, other whites and blacks formed the NAACP.

He told the UCLA audience that he had found a magazine with an article that bemoaned the poor state of the relations between blacks and Jews. The year of its publication? 1944.

In an interview, Sonenshein also cited the rift that occurred between the two communities during the birth of the Black Power movement in the 1960s, when young black activists accused Jewish and other white activists of paternalism and drove them away from their organizations.

Even in Los Angeles during the height of the Bradley coalition, the relationship was not always stable, said Bill Elkins, Bradley’s longtime confidant and mayoral aide.

He recalled the anger and hurt feelings among blacks that resulted from Jewish calls for Andrew Young’s 1978 firing from his post as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, after it was revealed that Young had met in secret and without authorization with PLO officials.

A year later, black and Jewish Angelenos were yelling at each other again over involvement of some Jews as leaders of the anti-busing movement. Some blacks demanded they be denounced.

Perhaps the most rancorous dispute, however, was a few years later, when Jews demanded that Bradley denounce Farrakhan over what were seen as disparaging remarks about Judaism that Farrakhan made before a trip to Los Angeles. Bradley finally did criticize Farrakhan, but only after Farrakhan made remarks in Los Angeles that were also seen as inflammatory.

Since then, the public relationship between the two groups has deteriorated as the result of the support many blacks give Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, and also over accusations by some Jews that black youth are anti-Semitic and accusations by some blacks that Jews are racist.

Other factors such the difference in the two groups’ levels of prosperity, the end of the Bradley era, and a general tendency in recent years for both Jewish and black communities to turn inward for spiritual and social sustenance also contributed to the drifting apart, all parties agree.

It was against this backdrop two years ago that Rabbi Fields decided to “jump-start” a dialogue and reach out to John Mack, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the Urban League, one of the oldest black civil rights groups in the country.

Fields, who had just been named chairman of the Jewish Federation’s Community Relations Committee, and Mack met without fanfare and began quietly bringing leaders of other social, political and religious organizations into the discussions.

The result is the African American/Jewish Leadership Connection.

Before last month, when a few journalists were invited to observe that gathering, the group had gone public only once before, when it called a news conference last fall to announce its opposition to Proposition 187, the measure that seeks to deny public education and other social services to illegal immigrants. Voters eventually approved it.

The news conference got little attention, however, because its organizers had the misfortune of scheduling it Oct. 3--the same day the O.J. Simpson murder trial verdict was announced.

Talk now is centered on whether the group can come up with a consensus on the California ballot measure that would ban affirmative action based on race, gender, ethnicity or national origin in public employment, contracting and public education.

Some Jewish organizations have opposed the measure, others have supported it, and at least one--the Anti-Defamation League, which has come out against affirmative action in the past--has decided to remain publicly neutral on it.

Fields, Mack and Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, the organizer of the UCLA forum, say that another task in the reconciliation between blacks and Jews is to bring more young people into the discussion.

“In both communities, youth no longer harbor a commitment to reaching out,” Seidler-Feller said.

Nor, he added, do they have the common experience of the civil rights movement or the Bradley years.

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Students involved in the UCLA dialogue said the situation on campuses may be worse than in the general population.

“Black students don’t see any difference between the average Jewish student and the average white student. Jewish student participation in [causes supported by students of color] is no longer there,” said Jioni Palmer, editor of Nommo, a newsmagazine produced by black UCLA students.

Nevertheless, Palmer, along with a Jewish student who is a former editor of the campus newspaper, the Bruin, agreed that dialogue between black and Jewish students should be pursued.

“Where we can agree, we can. Where we can’t, we can’t,” said Palmer, adopting the vocabulary of his elders. “Let’s work on those things we can agree with.”