412
PARTISAN
r~EVIEW
today? Two hundred?
So I think we have a case here of trickle-down. Black anti-Semitism
used to be blamed on the Jewish storekeeper in the ghetto, or the
Jewish landlord. In my opinion that was a mistake, but in any event
there are no more Jewish storekeepers or Jewish landlords. Now there
are Koreans, and of course they have a tough time with blacks too. I
myself think that the ideas and the influence of the so-called leaders, the
demagogues, are the source of the problem, and that's why the best way
to deal with it is to deal with them.
Robert W istrich :
So far, I have refrained from intervening in the
"internal affairs" of the American Jewish community and its problems
with the black community. But from the available evidence, including
the American Jewish Committee studies which I've seen, it strikes me
that in certain important areas, although black anti-Semitism does appear
to have grown and does seem to be more significant than in the white
community, this is not true across the board. There are still areas which
particularly concern vital black interests, such as the prevention of an
escalation in white racism or in official discrimination that would be
directed against them, where they seem to perceive that they have some
common interest with Jews.
However much the old alliance is frayed - whether it actually was an
alliance or not, I'm not even so sure - but despite the deterioration in
the relationship, there is, I would suspect, a feeling in the black
community that if they were again to be openly victimized by the white
majority, the Jews would be important allies for them. Therefore they
would not necessarily favor any outright discrimination against Jews.
What I see here is more of a pseudo-intellectual anti-Semitism that has
grown up among a sector of the black community. This could be
dangerous, I think, because we often tend to underestimate the long–
term impact of ideas and of ideology. The fact that it has taken the
form of black radicalism, separatist black nationalism or the Nation of
Islam puts it in line with certain patterns outside of the United States: I
think it may be a good thing that both Jews and non-Jews in the
United States are aware that black-Jewish hostility does not exist in
complete isolation as a purely American problem, that there are some
facets of it which can be understood in terms of the history of anti–
Semitism. But it may not be such a pervasive phenomenon as to justify
describing black anti-Semitism as having increased across the whole
spectrum. I'm not at all sure that out there on the streets you could
demonstrate that there is a larger group of black people today who have
deep-rooted prejudices against Jews. But the overall climate has surely
changed, for the worse.
