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PARTISAN REVIEW
when used as in "The Jews," reduces, crushes, a remarkably varied people
into a sloppy and interchangeable mass: that is the essence of anti–
Semitism.
Part One: The Mickey Finn and the Minstrel Face.
The connection be–
tween Negroes and Jews is one that has been nearly exhausted in discus–
sions, whether serious or anti-Semitic. More often than not, the talk cir–
cles around abundant cliches of "mutual difficulties with societies spiritu–
ally afflicted by prejudice." This is true, but far too simple. The coming
to power of Christendom led to Jews being demonized by the dark and
poisonous side of the udder from which drips also the milk of Western
civilization. So if someone somewhere in the world takes Horace
Greeley's suggestion and goes West, culturally, the trip might lead to as
much darkness as light, for our prejudices are as much of who we are as
is our high-mindedness. For instance, one can be sure that when
Commodore Perry arrived in Japan a hundred and fifty years ago, he
didn't sit in paper houses sipping tea and listening to complaints about
Jews.
Since then, however, the Mickey Finn of anti-Semitism has been
squeezed into those Far Eastern cups, which is why Japanese businessmen
show themselves as most unfortunately Western when they speak of
Jewish conspiracies in the business world, not minding that the Japanese
dependency on Middle Eastern oil has nothing
to
do with Jews; not
minding that there are no meaningful numbers of Jews in Japan. They
are late arrivals in a very old tradition. Neither Negro-Americans nor
black Africans have had the ongoing demonic role imposed on them
that Jews have. Most of the anti-black justifications for unfair play came
into our American lives long after John laid down the lousy laws about
Jews in the New Testament. Slavery, of course, transformed Africans
who were considered livestock into Americans. As Americans, Negroes
have also been Christians - a commonality held with the whites who so
often made their lives so hard - and saw in the same Christianity the
moral reasons to revolt against the dictates of slavery and the later racist
ideas put into segregated policy.
But there is a strong connection between Negroes and Jews in our
society, and it has played itself out quite profoundly in show business, for
one, where exchanges took place that are rarely dicussed with any accu–
racy. In that arena, which has had such a large influence on our national
sensibility, the most important thing about the relationship of Negroes
and Jews to American music and popular entertainment is the fact that
the Negro has long been a symbol of pure Americana. What is never
observed about, say, the early film
The Jazz Singer
is that the convention
of blackface served as a way of entering big-time American show business.
