Blacks and Jews: The Strained Alliance

Abstract

Martin Luther King once stated that "It would be impossible to record the contribution that Jewish people have made toward the Negro's struggle for freedom, it has been so great." For years there was a good deal of public dis cussion of the commitment of Jews to the relief of black suffer ing and of black appreciation for it. Recently much has been written about the asymmetrical character of the relationship and about the once-masked, now-open evidence of black anti- Semitism and Jewish racism in certain quarters of both com munities, some of them quite strategic. The fact is that Black- Jewish relations have always had a paradoxical quality: Blacks and Jews have been strangers to one another, more than popular liberal sentiment would suggest; neighbors, who, at least in the North, have lived and worked in close proximity if not equality; allies in the struggle for civil rights; and op ponents, especially on issues as diverse as affirmative action and American policy in the Middle East. This article examines some of the paradoxes in "the strained alliance."