Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

336 // THEODORE M. SHAW
employers typified the range of black-white (and in this case, Jewish) relationships at
the places where the races touched. In some instances, my grandmother's employers
were distant, condescending and even exploitative. In others, she was embraced as a
part (to the extent an employee can be) of the family. Like many black women who
were domestic workers, my grandmother not only cooked, cleaned, washed, ironed
and scrubbed, she also provided a great deal of care for the children of those families,
whose clothes would eventually be handed down to my siblings and to me (for which
we were eternally grateful). Whatever these relationships were (and they were many
things), they were not the relationships of equals.
10. This success is exaggerated by those who harbor anti-semitic views, who
claim that Jews control Congress, the media, Hollywood, higher education, the
Federal Reserve System, and other power centers. Similar claims punctuated the polit-
ical rhetoric of pre-World War II Germany and were the basis for anti-semitic fervor.
11. See Goldberg, pp. 46 and 280. For Lipset and Raab, see Jews and the New
American Scene (Cambridge, MA, 1995), pp. 25—28.
12. This is not to say that African Americans occupy any place of primacy as
victims of discrimination. To assert that one experience is unique does not mean
that it is more important than another. Those who play the game of comparative
victimization status engage in a senseless and foolish exercise. It is not possible to
compare any experience with the Holocaust, just as it is impossible to honestly
assert that any experience was more destructive to a people or to a nation than
American slavery. Moreover, whatever power one may seek in victimization status is
illusory. Discrimination and oppression do not breed real power; but they do require
remediation.
13. It is no more true to say that all Jews are opposed to affirmative action then
it is to say that all African Americans support it. The Jewish community is split on
affirmative action issues, with many of its important voices in support. However,
many other prominent Jews and some leading Jewish organizations have opposed
affirmative action measures, and there is a common perception of a significant rift
between African Americans and Jews over the issue.
14. The term "majority-minority" is not always an accurate representation of the
composition of these districts. For example, at the time Vera v. Richards was filed,
Texas' Thirtieth Congressional District in Dallas, represented by Congresswoman
Eddie Bernice Johnson, was a forty-seven percent black voting age population dis-
trict. White voters successfully challenged its constitutionality in Vera v. Richards, in
which the Supreme Court during its 1995—96 term, ruled that it and two other
majority-minority districts (Houston's 18th and 29th) were illegally drawn.
Even where majority black districts are less than 50% white often they are among
the most racially integrated districts in the nation. North Carolina's llth, for exam-
ple, was 53 percent black; Cynthia McKinney's district, declared unconstitutional in
Georgia, was 63 percent black.