The Identity Question: Blacks and Jews in Europe and America (review)

Robert Philipson states in his introduction that his objective in this volume is not a study of interrelations between Blacks and Jews, as indeed the title might seem to imply; rather he intends to focus on the relatedness of Blacks and Jews. This is a major difference between this work and most other recent similar studies, such as Michael Lerner and Cornel West's Jews & Blacks, ¹ that explore tensions that have surfaced between these erstwhile allies for social justice. In shaping the analytical framework for his book, Philipson employs the concept of diaspora articulated in recent literature by Paul Gilroy and others. ² The recurrent theme connecting the book's six chapters is that the origin of many of the central issues under discussion can be found in the intellectual premises of the European Enlightenment. In Philipson's view, "Blacks and Jews were forced to define themselves in opposition to and in conjunction with European ideas about who they were" (p. xiv). This experience in turn produced among intellectuals of the two groups a consciousness that Philipson describes as diasporic--diasporic because, under constant pressure to define themselves simultaneously in terms of Western standards and their respective ethnic norms, Blacks and Jews must resort to universal concepts of belonging. There is no national entity into which they are fully accepted. In other words, the contradictions between the bright promise of inclusiveness of the Enlightenment and the patent practice of exclusion of certain groups in that same tradition fosters the double consciousness expressed in the writings Philipson reviews in this book. He considers the main contribution of his work to be the extent to which it may serve as the most comprehensive effort to date comparing these two diaspora paradigms.

Philipson's chosen method is analysis and interpretation of selected autobiographies, ranging from the eighteenth-century Enlightenment up to the late twentieth century. Most are what he terms "narratives of assent," borrowing language from literary critic Robert Stepto. ³ This refers to books chronicling the success some achieved in gaining acceptance into Western culture. Another category he refers to in passing is what he calls "narrative of immersion," the stories of Black and Jewish writers seeking to return to their original cultures. While most of his discussion centers on America in the twentieth century, Philipson lays the groundwork by initially presenting a helpful historical overview centered more on Europe. This features examples of the parallelisms between the status of Blacks and Jews as groups defined as outsiders, noting from the outset that while Jews were in a better position to gain entry, they could do so only at the price of surrendering their Jewish identity. He also gives a number of examples of how difficult it has been for both Jews and Blacks to avoid representing important elements of their ethnicity even when they wished to escape it. While Philipson's main interest lies in the psychological content of the works he examines, he also devotes much effort to placing them in their historical settings, and displays a broad knowledge of related Western historical and literary writings. The reader can thus view in a somewhat different perspective historical and intellectual themes such as racism, cultural nationalism, antisemitism, fascism, communism, socialism, and feminism.

To underscore his point that the terms of discussion on the status and identity of Blacks and Jews for the past two centuries were set during the Enlightenment, Philipson uses two illustrative autobiographies from the eighteenth century-those by Olaudah Equiano ⁴ and Salomon Maimon ⁵ -- and two from the twentieth--by Richard Wright ⁶ and Alfred Kazin ⁷ --to outline the major questions he wishes to pursue in the book. In his commentary Philipson points to literary lineage over the entire modern period, and refers to the writings of numerous other Black and Jewish intellectuals that support his...