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33 Black/Jewish Imaginary and Real Real 1: The Black/Jewish Tangle In attempting to escape the black/white binary in which so much racial discourse is mired, and to situate Jews appropriately in this discourse, I’ve suggested a tripartite racial scheme based on cultural stereotypes and gradations of privilege that exalt whiteness. But racial reality is not a tidy trinary either. To the extent that race has meaning, it reflects a complicated and intricate history of mixing, from rape to love; or, more abstractly, from distance and detachment to proximity, intimacy, and influence. The large-scale immigration of Jews from Europe and the Ottoman Empire to the United States was closely followed in time by the Great Migration of African Americans northward.1 Fleeing a shrinking pool of agricultural jobs and the circumscriptions of bigotry; seeking newly available industrial jobs and the promise of freedom, southern blacks often landed in Jewish neighborhoods. Over the years as many Jews vacated, Jews continued to own property and stores where African Americans resided and shopped. In the late 1960s, James Baldwin pointed out that the white people African Americans mostly encountered were cops, teachers, social workers, landlords and shopkeepers; all but the cops were often Jewish.2 “The special relationship”3 has not been either simple or uniformly positive. Yes, African Americans and Jews worked together for racial justice in the labor movement, especially under the auspices of the Communist Party (CP); but all good communists did the same, as the issue ranked high on the CP agenda.4 Yes, African Americans and Jews worked together in the civil rights movement; but Jews who went south for—say—Mississippi Freedom Summer numbered only a few hundred, hardly legions of allies. One might as readily characterize the relationship as frequently out of touch, periodically at odds, with both sides often failing to understand each other’s point of view. African Americans are more likely to be focused elsewhere, while a fair number of Jews may be heard swearing that they understand how it is: Weren’t we slaves in Egypt? Haven’t we suffered? Aren’t we just like you? In addition, those Jews who are politically progressive may respond to African Americans they encounter—or wish to encounter—with a hunger [2] 34 the colors of jews for approval. In some circles, the presence of African Americans at a meeting or demonstration marks success or failure. One example: In New York during the winter of 1994, Chinese Staff and Workers (CSWA) put out a call. Restaurant workers were on strike at Chinatown’s Silver Palace and they needed to increase visibility and pressure . Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) responded, along with several other organizations. It was a vicious winter, but people showed up every Sunday to add our bodies to the picket line. This went on for months. Important alliances were built, and the workers finally won some concessions from the restaurant owners.5 Yet throughout this time, there were JFREJ members calling up to chastise us, as though we had been waylaid by the wrong struggle. Aren’t you working with African Americans? they’d ask incredulously, as though that were the sole measure of antiracist activity. When we’d explain the solidarity work we were doing, some callers would react with anger or wistfulness: But don’t you have any black-Jewish dialogue groups? The complaining phoners couldn’t see the struggle for racial and economic justice in front of their faces; nor did they notice that the clamor for dialogue groups was noticeably louder among Jews, while African Americans were much more apt to seek concrete action or relief. African Americans and Jews have had a distinct relationship born of proximity, as people of the cities; of some powerful shared biblical tradition ; and even (though we should not exaggerate likeness) as outsiders . Yet—for example—as leadership of the often idealized International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) remained firmly in the hands of white, mostly Jewish men, the tales of discrimination against the union’s increasingly female black and brown membership could turn your stomach . The stakes were high, including not only jobs and decision-making, but also subsidized housing; and the ILG leadership pumped considerable money into workers’ housing, from which people of color were routinely excluded.6 “How could this happen in a union that is supposed to be so liberal?” asked one union member in the early 1980s. “The blacks, Hispanics, the Chinese...

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