Literary Blacks and Jews
by Carolineabout a half hour ago, i handed in a paper on race relations between blacks and jews. it was a fascinating topic to research and this passage from james baldwin in particular is staggering. actually, the whole essay it comes from is amazing. i was reading it and actually exclaiming aloud at things he was saying.
“Of course, it is true, and I am not so naive as not to know it, that many Jews despise Negroes, even as their Aryan brothers do. It is true that many Jews use, shamelessly, the slaughter of six million by the Third Reich as proof that they cannot be bigots — or in the hope of not being held responsible for their bigotry. It is galling to be told by a Jew whom you know to be exploiting you that he cannot possibly be doing what you know he is doing because he is a Jew.
“One does not wish, in short, to be told by an American Jew that his suffering is as great as the American Negro’s suffering. It isn’t, and one knows that it isn’t from the very tone in which he assures you that it is.”
cynthia ozick in another essay refers to a black reaction to Jewish sympathy as a perception of “greenhorn uppityness,” another really fascinating phrase, but one which baldwin seems to have explained pretty well in that passage.
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