Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

390 // LETTY COTTIN POGREBIN
Listening to one another, we understood how differently our constituencies
process events and interpret issues. After the Black teenager Yusef Hawkins was
killed in Bensonhurst merely for wandering into a white neighborhood, the Black
women insisted that Jews should have expressed more public outrage. The Jews
just wanted to stay out of the spotlight; we were glad it wasn't Jewish kids who
did it. After the savage attack on the Central Park jogger, the Jewish women
asked for more condemnation from the Black community. "It's white society that
needs to be condemned," shot back one of the Blacks. "Treat our kids like animals
long enough and you can't blame them for acting like animals."
On affirmative action, the Jewish women often had to remind the Blacks that
although 70 percent of Americans oppose affirmative action, the majority of
American Jews, especially Jewish women, are for it. Our dialogue partners were
unaware that the great majority of Jewish leaders had spoken out on behalf of
affirmative action, though not of quotas, and that two of our largest organizations—the
National Council of Jewish Women, and the Union of American
Hebrew Congregations—were on record supporting quotas as well. We had to
explain that to most Jewish women affirmative action is a feminist issue since
women of all colors stand to gain from it, and a majority issue since it benefits the
whole society. We also had to remind our sisters that most of the Jews who object
to quotas do so not because they wish to impede Black advancement but because
they remember—and we remembered—when numerical programs were used to
exclude Jews from schools, clubs, and workplaces.
If our dialogue group worked harder at debating such issues and decoding our
reactions—if we probed deeper into the realm of feeling than other groups I'm
familiar with—it may be because we considered ourselves not just representatives
of our ethnic communities, but advocates of women.
Finding Commonality
By the time we dug into the hard terrain of racism and anti-Semitism, we knew
each other well enough to trust that our truth-telling would not break us apart.
We also accepted the fact that we would keep oscillating between that which
united us as women and that which divided us as Blacks and Jews.
For instance, early on, we acknowledged that both of our communities have
trouble accepting strong women. On the one hand, women were said to be the
backbone of our families and the mainstays of our churches or synagogues. On the
other hand, strong women draw fire for being "suffocating" (Jewish mothers) or
"domineering" (Black mothers). It's our fault that Blacks and Jews are "feminized"
peoples. The resulting concern about male weakness is fequcntly translated
into hostility toward women. Supposedly, our feminine wiles and domestic
omnipotence put men at a disadvantage. The myth of female sexual and maternal
power thus recasts the male in the vulnerable role and justifies his asserting control
over "his" women. With those mindsets operating among our own kind, we