Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

Affirmative Action: African American and Jewish Perspectives \\ 325
as oppressed peoples. The Old Testament story of Moses leading his people out of
bondage in Egypt has always had deep resonance for black people in America.
When the slaves sang "Go down Moses, way down in Egypt land, tell Old
Pharaoh let my people go," their song was a prayer for liberation, blacks and Jews
share common enemies: the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist organizations
target blacks and Jews in the same breath. If the old maxim "The enemy
of my enemy is my friend" survives, surely blacks and Jews must be allies.
On a purely principled basis, blacks and Jews do share a common interest.
Justice is indivisible. It is not possible to claim with any integrity that one is
opposed to racism as a matter of principle without being opposed to anti-semitism,
or vice versa. They are two heads on the same monster. But we do not live
in a world of pure principle. There is racism in the Jewish community; there is
anti-semitism in the black community. Many black Americans see Jews as a
super-empowered and wealthy minority who are, at the end of the day, still white
and therefore part of the class of race-privileged Americans. Still others have
bought into the ugly ideology of anti-semitism and the stereotypes that serve that
ideology. Many black Americans, peering up from the bottom, cannot comprehend
the insecurities that plague Jews regardless of how privileged and powerful
they may have become. They lose sight of the fact that privilege and power did
not protect European Jews in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, or that not all Jews
are privileged and powerful. Perhaps there is even the belief that anti-semitism
within the black community cannot really threaten Jews given the relative powerlessness
of the black community.
Jews, on the other hand, are white. 8 Their relationship with African
Americans has been very complex, but for the most part it has not been one of
equals. Jews were among the storeowners, landlords and employers in communities
in which they interacted with African Americans. 9 Their involvement in the
early Civil Rights Movement and in civil rights organizations working on behalf
of African Americans was not limited to the role of supporters; often they were
among the leaders. There were no comparable roles for African Americans in the
affairs of the Jewish community.
In part this unevenness is a manifestation of the different experiences of
African Americans and Jews in the United States. Whatever the experience of
Jews with anti-semitic discrimination, they have nonetheless attained success in
education, politics, and business to a degree disproportionate to their numbers. 10
The issue of Jewish empowerment is dangerous ground for those outside of the
Jewish community. It is also a point of some uneasiness within the Jewish community.
Still, there is no denying that Jews have attained positions of power previously
denied to them. J. J. Goldberg, for example, notes that in 1995 there were
nine Jews in the U.S. Senate and twenty-four Jews in the House of Representatives.
In addition, according to Martin Lipset: and Earl Raab, during the last three
decades Jews have made up twenty-six percent of reporters, editors, and executives
at major print and broadcast media, fifty-nine percent of the writers, pro-