Chipping Away at Historical Amnesia

Are Jews racist? Are blacks anti-Semitic? Among themselves, what do they say about each other? A new documentary, “Blacks and Jews” (airing on PBS on Tuesday), explores how the legacies of slavery and the Holocaust have shaped the suspicions and fears between these two groups.

The documentary by filmmakers Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman doesn’t offer easy answers. But it does shatter some stereotypes in its interviews with people who participated in the Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn in 1991, in the controversy over Louis Farrakhan and in the media mania that erupted in 1994 when black teens in Oakland laughed during a screening of “Schindler’s List.”

The documentary invites us to listen to new voices and stories that add complexity to these events: a black man saves a Hasidic Jew’s life; a Jewish youth leader brings together teenagers from both communities in Brooklyn; a former Black Muslim leader explains the attraction of the Nation of Islam to African Americans; students in Oakland admit how little they knew about the Holocaust or black slavery. The most fascinating event in the film recounts the 1960 “blockbusting” campaign in Chicago pitting Jewish homeowners against black home buyers. Braving the rage of both groups, a bold rabbi took on real estate speculators and racism in the Jewish community and became a leader of an interracial coalition.

This splendid documentary rightly emphasizes the power of historical memory, especially of the Holocaust and slavery, to ignite fear and terror. Still, some may ask, don’t we all know the separate histories and terrors that still haunt Jewish Americans and African Americans?

Sadly, the answer is no. Last May, I stood before 200 students in a cavernous hall that passes for a classroom at UC Davis. After I referred to the historic sit-in at the Greensboro, N.C., Woolworth’s store (1960) and the Freedom Rides (1961), hands shot up. “What do you mean by ‘sit-in?’ ” “What’s a ‘freedom ride?’ ”

For a moment, I was speechless. Then I asked how many students had seen “Roots.” Five hands went up. How many had seen the documentary series, “Eyes on the Prize.” Eight hands. “What does Jim Crow mean? Who was Medgar Evers, Bob Moses, Ella Baker, Fanny Lou Hamer?” Silence. Their knowledge of the civil rights movement began and ended with the name Martin Luther King Jr. (Their ignorance of the history of Jews was even worse.)

I showed them Connie Field’s splendid documentary “Freedom on My Mind” and several episodes from “Eyes on the Prize.” I spent two weeks lecturing on the civil rights movement. I wondered, if they knew so little about African American history, how can they understand the emotions that swirled around the Clarence Thomas hearings, the beating of Rodney King, the O.J. Simpson trial? Current relations between blacks and Jews?

Our culture encourages historical amnesia. My students didn’t know, for example, whether any common ground exists between blacks and Jews, that both blacks and Jews were enslaved and emancipated. For both groups, freedom brought poverty, discrimination, persecution and violence. In Europe, Jews became the most hated people on the continent; in the United States, African Americans became the nation’s scapegoat of choice. As historian Gerda Lerner observed in her book, “Why History Matters,” American Jews have escaped virulent anti-Semitism because blacks have been the object of the nation’s hatred. In a nation still haunted by the legacy of slavery, Jews can and do easily slip into the white side of the racial divide.

History also can challenge the romantic view of the grand alliances that blacks and Jews forged during this century--at the founding of the NAACP, during the Great Depression and in the modern civil rights movement. But these coalitions were fragile and rarely free of conflict. With the rise of black nationalism in the ‘60s and the growing differences in economic status, both groups turned inward. Positions hardened around such divisive issues as affirmative action and Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism.

Those historic alliances have obscured the daily encounters that may have soured relations between Jews and blacks: Like today’s day laborers, black women lined up on city sidewalks waiting for day work in Jewish homes. In urban slums, Jews often owned the real estate and small businesses that other groups now control. This may not be the stuff of high drama, but some of it fueled simmering resentment and suspicion.

“Blacks and Jews” doesn’t address these other historical encounters. Still, it can help us comprehend why these two groups that have given the nation great moral voices of leadership now are separated by suspicion and distrust.