Current Events > Politics

After MLK Jr., The Black-Jewish Alliance Replaced By Black Leader’s Antisemitism

(1/1)

SVPete:
After MLK Jr., The Black-Jewish Alliance Replaced By Black Leader’s Antisemitism

https://lidblog.com/black-leader-antisemitism/


--- Quote ---The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a big supporter of the Jewish people and a proud Zionist. One of his close allies and friends was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel,  a Polish-born American rabbi who is considered one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. And he was a leader of the civil rights movement. In many pictures of 1960s civil rights protests, including the famous one in Selma, the Reverend and Rabbi marched close together in the front line. The two great men of faith forged a close alliance between African American and Jewish national Leadership.

But after Dr. King was assassinated, the Leadership of the black community began to feel that American Jews were their competition for getting into the “middle class” and began to spew Antisemitism.
...
The Civil Rights movement’s Leadership was inherited by people like Jesse Jackson, who saw the Jews as their competition for achieving middle-class status. Unlike Reverend King, who was a believer in the Zionist mission—a Jewish State in their eternal homeland Black leaders such as Jackson,  Andrew Young, and Louis Farrakhan went public with anti-Semitic and Anti-Israel comments. As the Antisemitism spread, the hatred didn’t infest all Black Americans but became popular with some of the Black leaders on the liberal side of the aisle.
...
The fraying of the relationship became evident soon after Dr. King was Killed. In May 1968, a new community-controlled school board in the mostly Black BlaOcean Hill-Brownsville section of Brooklyn summarily dismissed 18 white teachers and administrators. In September,  the school board’s action led to a series of citywide teacher strikes led by the Jewish UFT (United Federation Of Teachers) Leader Albert Shanker.

The issue in the job action was the random firing of AFT members, not faith. However, the atmosphere surrounding the strike was poisoned by African-American Antisemitism directed at the many Jewish members of the UFT. Especially the AFT president Albert Shanker. Anti-Semitic catcalls were shouted by protesters and appeared in newspapers put out by the Afro-American Teachers Association. ...
...
Making the nascent mistrust between the two communities expand were the leaders of the South African anti-Apartheid movement. They traveled throughout the United States as conquering heroes, which they were, but at the same time spread Jew-hatred. A leader of this hatred was Bishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu publicly complained about American Jews, saying Jews exhibited “an arrogance—the arrogance of power because Jews are a powerful lobby in this land and all kinds of people woo their support” (Jewish Telegraphic Agency Daily News Bulletin, November 29, 1984). Speaking in a Connecticut church in 1984, Tutu said that “the Jews thought they had a monopoly on God; Jesus was angry that they could shut out other human beings.”
...
IN January 1984, Jesse Jackson referred to Jews as “Hymies” and New York City as “Hymietown.” He commented during a conversation with a Black Washington Post reporter, Milton Coleman. Jackson had assumed the references would not be printed because of his racial bond with Coleman. ...
...
Al Sharpton was a low-level civil rights leader looking to become “big time” by using Jews as his scapegoat. During the Twana Brawley hoax, he said that Brawley telling her story to the State’s Attorney General Robert Abrams, who was Jewish, would be “like asking someone who watched someone killed in the gas chamber to sit down with Mr. Hitler.”
...
2020 saw a string of anti-Semitic comments made by famous African-Americans, including Nick Cannon, NFL wide receiver DeSean Jackson, rapper Ice Cube, author Alice Walker,  former NBA player Stephen Jackson, the Black Lives Matter movement and others.
--- End quote ---

IMO, the greatest tragedy in post MLK race relations in the US has been anti-white racism and the push for re-segregation. The Second, not by much, has been black antisemitism.

I wish this article were more tightly composed and written, but it is very informative. I suspect that going into significant detail of the past ~4 1/2 decades would require a fairly thick book.

Navigation

[0] Message Index