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100 8 Ask for a White Cadillac Krim wrote “Ask for a White Cadillac” as a companion piece to the “Anti-Jazz” article that rankled Greenwich Village with its unorthodox views on the pathologies of black life that, in part, informed jazz. Far from the apology that some of his critics wanted, Krim in this essay furthers his exploration of white fascination with and attraction to black life by setting aside any pretense of objectivity. Here the “I” is front and center. This is Krim’s own story of his love affair with Harlem and how the passion burned itself out. For the student of black-Jewish relations, it is rich with insights and suggestions. Krim writes almost glibly that his “notions about the natural greatness of Negroes” stemmed from his “being the unreligious modern American Jew who feels only the self-pitying sting of his identity without the faith.” Despite the offhandedness, Krim was saying something new: that there was a vacuum at the center of postwar Jewish life that was filled by identification with blacks. Years later, historians wrote about this vacuum. Herbert Hill noted that the Jewish Labor Committee, founded in 1934 to help victims of the Nazis, was without purpose after the war. “In an effort to justify its continued existence, the JLC tried to become a civil rights organization within the labor movement” (Hill 1998, 265). Another writer saw that during the 1950s, the left as a whole— with Jews prominently represented—“seized upon [Martin Luther] King and the Civil Rights Movement to regain some of its vitality and popular support” (Friedman 1998, 122). Krim here suggests, in 1959, that a similar lack of vitality existed within individual Jews attracted to black life. He was also early to understand that his “fixed” nose was like the hairstraightening products used by blacks to copy white models of beauty. And when he says that among blacks “good looks are earned by the way in which you bring art (dress, a cool mustache, the right earrings) to shine up an indifferent nature. Ask for a White Cadillac . 101 The Negro has been and is an artist out of necessity,” he offers a way to understand the prominence of Jews in the cosmetics business. Helena Rubinstein, Charles Revson, and Estée Lauder may also have felt they had to earn good looks through artistry in a Christian society that did not value their natural attributes. A fter I wrote my article on the white jazz hipster and noveltydigging people of every stripe who imitate the Negro’s style I came in for biting criticism in Greenwich Village, where I live. Friends of mine, and newly made enemies as well, accused me of being antiNegro ; the influx of tense, self-conscious, easily offended Negroes who have recently hit the Village has made any frank statement about colored life extremely delicate and often full of double-jointed guilt feelings; in fact I myself began to have grave doubts as to the truth of what I had written when I saw the reaction. I now believe (a year and a half later) that my comments were essentially valid—in spite of my own, and every man’s, limited angle of vision—and therefore of value, since any ounce of truth that can be dug out of the world and placed on the scale of justice wins you a moneyless prize, but one that gives point to your days. After the anger, sentimentality and truly hurt communications that I received after my original piece, I felt compelled to investigate the whole bruised subject in more depth and background, to search for my own true attitude in relationship to the Negro. More than most white or non-Negro men I have haunted colored society, loved it (and been stomach-kicked by aspects of it), sucked it into my marrow. I aim here to tell as much of the truth about myself in connection with Negroes as I am capable of, with the knowledge that while it will no doubt expose my weaknesses of mind and temperament it will be another small step in destroying the anxiety that makes us try to balance on eggshells and bite our tongues and souls for saying the wrong thing. Complete equality for Negroes (and more subtly, for whites in relation to them) will only come when writers and speakers level down the whole dirty highway of their experience—level all the way. Having been born in New York...

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