As someone who does not consider themselves to be particularly well-informed on histories of oppression, I was attracted to this class not because I saw Black and Jewish Americans as having an obvious relationship, but because I was surprised by the connection being made. Likewise, despite living on the edge of Jewish communities which are common in Montgomery County, I was surprised by discussions about Jewish whiteness because I had never considered Jews to be anything but white. Jewish identity was more closely held than other white ethnicities, but I did not perceive Jews to be categorically separate from Italians or the Dutch. This, it is obvious from the readings, would not have been an issue 25 years ago. A couple of decades ago, the …show more content…
At this time, however, Jewish transition to Whiteness was accelerating, from exodus to to the West and South to decreasing White anti-Semitism, and this exacerbated conflicts. West notes the increasingly “strong Neoconservative Jewish Voices,” and how decreasing Jewish liberalism made the community alliance weaken. Likewise, as this time “Black identification with Jews,” made their social ascendancy all the more painful. Michael Lerner later discussed the fact that Jews identified with blacks because they had been excluded from Whiteness. Reasonably, as Jews became more included within Whiteness, this side of the identification also dropped …show more content…
Exclusion from the “anti-Zionist... New Left” paradigm and worries over being harmed by the trend toward affirmative action each reflect the fact that when Jews were more welcome in spaces of privilege, they fit less in progressive ones. Kazis’ conclusion is that dialogue ceded as a result of fewer sparks for conflict, but the most obvious reason for sparks to drop off is because Jews have so effectively fit themselves into the White American mold, and as a result, no longer share a relationship with Black Americans which involves as frequent interaction or as substantial cultural ubiquity. Louis Farrakhan derided the Jewish Community because it was politically useful for him to do so, but as Jews become whiter, the incentive to flame tensions goes down. This isn’t to disagree with the sentiment that Jews should abandon their Whiteness for the sake of effective political union with Black Americans. Rather, it is to say that special associations are conducive to both co-operation and conflict, and abandoning Whiteness will result in