-
Conclusion
- University of Georgia Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
CONCLUSION By the early19705, the relationship between African Americans and Jews in the South had changed. For the first time, that relationship was shaped by national rather than sectional concerns. Three factors explain this transformation. The first was the emergence of black nationalism. Bythe late 19608, impatience among young black radicals at the pace of racial reform had provoked an often violent resentment against the white establishment. Much of that anger wastargeted at Jews. Tensions were stirred in the summer of 1967when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee launched a scathing attack against Israel for provoking the Six-Day War. Later that year a labor dispute in the New York school district of Ocean Hill-Brownsville descended into a series of retaliatory clashes between Jewish teachers and black parents. The dispute worsened during the 19705 as a result of arguments over affirmative action. These events redefined the relationship between African Americans and Jews throughout the United States. Hitherto conflicts between the two peoples had generally reflected broader tensions between black and white. Now Jews became a target of particular hatred for a significant section of the African American community. During the desegregation crisis, ideological and strategical differences had divided AmericanJewsalong sectional lines. In the future, they would stand united in common opposition to black antiSemitism .1 As one conflict emerged, another drew to an end. Although racialintegration wasfar from a realityin manyparts of the region, the 19705 sawthe South slowly emerge from its political crisis. For generations, southern Jews had lived in the shadows of a society that violentlyrepressedfree will. The collapse of the southern caste system liberated Jews from their reliance upon the continued goodwill of the white Gentile majority. The election in 1969 of Sam 218 CONCLUSION Massell as mayor of Atlanta can be seen as symbolic of the confidence with which southern Jews reentered public life. The increased assertiveness of southern Jews can also be explained by demographic changes. During the 19805, it was estimated that 75-85 percent of the 800,000 Jews in the South were originally northerners. This new generation of southern Jews did not grow up as members of a minority group besieged by a deeply prejudiced majority. Nor do they share the heritage of white supremacism. Indeed, as the writer Arlene Levinson observes,many southern Jews today are not really "southern" at all.2 The political conditions that historically determined the relationship between African Americans and Jews in the South therefore no longer exist. Those conditions set the two peoples apart throughout most of the course of southern history. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the racial attitudes of southern Jews were shaped by their status as a white ethnic minority. Jews occupied an anomalous position within the southern caste system.Although their skin color defined them as white, their ethnic and religious differences set them apart from the white Gentile majority.While Jewswere warmlywelcomed for their contributions to the economic and civic life of the South, they also suffered persistent social exclusion. AsW.J. Cash famously observed, "The Jew, with his universalrefusal to be assimilated,is everywherethe eternal alien; and in the South, where any difference had always stood out with great vividness,he was especially so."3 During the desegregation crisis, southern Jewsweretorn between twocontradictory instincts. A historical experience of persecution sensitized Jews to the plight of other oppressed minorities. Southern Jews were therefore far more supportive of desegregation than the rest of the white community. At the same time it is precisely because of that experience of persecution that Jews have as an act of self-protection striven to adapt to the laws and customs of their adopted homelands. In the American South, that meant more than anything else an acceptanceof racial segregation. Fearof anti-Semitic reprisals forced many southern Jews into an uneasy silence during the civil rights struggle.4 At the time, the failure of southern Jews to support the black struggle for racial equality antagonized not only African Americans but also their northern coreligionists. The perception of a grand political alliance between African Americansand Jewsis to a large degree informed by the stories of student activists and rabbis who traveled South to participate in direct action cam- [44.193.80.126] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 22:14 GMT) CONCLUSION 219 paigns against white racism. One should nonetheless warn against drawing a false dichotomy between northern and southern Jews. As Clayborne Carson has argued, only a minority of northern Jews actively participated in civil rights protest.5...