Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

396 // LETTV COTTIN POGREBIN
Blacks viewed these historical oppressions as a zero sum game: if the Holocaust
wins public attention, they thought, slavery loses ground. Many Jews, on the
other hand, seemed more intent on staying Number One in the catastrophe ratings
than acknowledging the oppression of others. But in our women's group, we
connected around gender-linked anguish, the rape of Black slaves and Jewish concentration
camp inmates; the unimaginable cruelty of tearing children from their
mothers. Surely, there were enough tears to go around, we said, as we made room
for each other's suffering, and we listened.
While Black distress was immediate and understandable, it was difficult to
explain Jewish paranoia. "In America, though permitted to be rich, Jews are not
permitted to be comfortable," wrote political analyst Leonard Fein. We remember
how quickly Jews were scapegoated in this country during the gas shortages,
the farm crisis, and the Gulf War. We notice that Jews are blamed for the slightest
economic reversal no matter how few we are—only 2.5 percent of the U.S.
population. (The average American estimates that we're 18 percent!) So, regardless
of what Jews may have accomplished or how comfortable we may seem, we
continue to fear the swastika and smell the smoke. In fact, the more we flourish,
the surer we are that the anti-Semites are out there begrudging our success. As
the old joke puts it, paranoids have enemies too.
A friend of mine says he can't relax as long as one swastika appears on a wall
in this country or one Jewish cemetery is vandalized. I have a recurrent dream in
which my children and I are herded into cattle cars en route to Auschwitz. "One
of every three of the world's Jews perished in the Holocaust," I told my Black sisters.
"Wouldn't you be afraid if a third of your family had been murdered in your
own lifetime?"
"But we had nothing to do with it," answered the Black women. "Why don't
you pick on white people for a change?"
They had a point. White anti-Semitism is surely the larger threat, yet it hurts
more when Blacks turn against us. Somehow, Black anti-Semitism makes us feel
not just threatened but betrayed. So the Jewish women complained about Spike
Lee, whose movie Mo' Better Blues included the gratuitously stereotyped Shylock
characters, Joe and Moe Flatbush; and about the rock group Public Enemy whose
best-selling record called Jews "Christ-killers," and whose minister of information,
Professor Griff, said, "Jews are responsible for the majority of wickedness
that goes on across the globe"; and about Oprah Winfrey who benignly accepted
the claim of a guest that Jews murder children for religious ritual; and about
Nobel peace laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, who lectured Jews on "forgiving"
the Nazis for the murder of the Six Million.
The Black women listened but what we said didn't always make sense to
them. They had grown up in neighborhoods where Jews collected the rent, ran
the shops, employed Black domestic workers, checked up on welfare clients, and
taught Black children. They worked in New York City where every Jew seems to