Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

218 // PAUL BUHLE AND ROBIN D. G. KELLEY
endowed think tanks. At what sometimes seemed the final round-up a of a tradition,
those once fixed upon the visions of socialism turned their harsh gaze toward
the Popular Frontish elements of film and television and upon the neo-Popular
Front currents of academic multiculturalism as the hydra-headed foe.
And they were not entirely wrong, in their terms, to do so. Jewish memory
repeatedly pulled upon forbidden zones of socialist and even communist idealism,
a past which they could bring back as their own exceptional democratic legacy.
With the history of labor diminished, that past became more and more heavily
colored, so to speak, with the dream of multicultural democracy. Jewish
Communists had not invented, but rather popularized and at times vulgarized,
the transracial notion of solidarity based upon their own identity as outsiders,
nonvictors in white domination of the world by the West. As young Jewish record
producers and journalists programmed and charted the hip-hop scene, leading
Jewish entertainers recuperated moments of the past Jewish Left in which Jews
found themselves victims, executioners, and above all bystanders to the unending
injustice of rich over poor and race over race. 55
Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO's Executive Council, unified on the hopelessness of
labor organization at home and the hopes for guiding business unionism in the
post-communist world, marked the rendezvous of another kind of Jewish socialism
in the domination of global North over South, suburb over inner-city, White
over Black. Of course, Jews outside of the Executive Council, from rank-and-file
unionists to middle-level leadership, have been among the most progressive voices
pushing for trade union democracy and reform. More recently, Shanker and the
established leadership backed Lane Kirkland's heir apparent Tom Donohue,
despite protestations from the rank-and-file. 56 As many labor progressives celebrate
John Sweeney's, Richard Trumka's, and Linda Chavez-Thompson's victory
over the old guard in 1995, it remains to be seen whether the new AFL-CIO will
become a site for the reconstruction of a radical Black-Jewish alliance. And with
Black Nationalism on the rise again and Jewish neoconservatives leading the fight
to dismantle affirmative action and the welfare state, the prospect of an alliance
anywhere seems dim.
But it would be far too early for any such conclusion. Unlike the enraged and
fearful white (and especially male) gentiles who pulled the electoral levers for
Republicans in 1994, Jews voted heavily against the broad swing rightward. 57 It
is more than possible that, with the dramatic rise of the Right, an exhausted
Black Nationalism and Jewish nationalism might find common roots or at least
the basis for a renewed modus vivendi. 58 Whether such a project takes flight
depends upon a vision of regeneration, with reborn urban cultures, an ability and
willingness to clean the wreckage left by an exploitative system, and hope for a
world beyond the ecological devastation at hand.