A Historiography of the Black-Jewish Alliance

1,534 words

Marc Dollinger
Black Power, Jewish Politics: Reinventing the Alliance in the 1960s
New York University Press, 2024

Marc Dollinger is a member of the Jewish Studies faculty at San Francisco State University. According to the revised preface, the purpose of his book, Black Power, Jewish Politics, is to build on the supposed moral fervor generated by the George Floyd uproar and re-create the black-Jewish alliance of the first social revolution of the 1960s.

This ideological bent channels the book into a form of liberalism which looks upon the “civil rights” movement with rose colored glasses. As such, it isn’t all that interesting or informative.

Dollinger shows that there are two predominant historiographical schools of thought about the relationship between blacks and Jews during and after the “civil rights” movement. The first is that the two groups converged in the early 1960s and then moved out together in lockstep, bringing love and progress to America. This can be described by the letter “Y.”

The second historiographical view is more accepted. It holds that blacks and Jews converged briefly and then, after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, went different directions politically. This is the rather famous black – Jewish quarrel which started in the late 1960s with the neo-conservative reaction to the Black Power movement, and it can be graphed as an “X.”

Obviously, the “Y” view of the relationship between blacks and Jews is not correct, although many liberals still cling to that narrative. Dollinger seeks to show that the “X” narrative is also incorrect. Instead, he shows that the organized Jewish community was not as hostile to the Black Power movement as supposed in either historiography. Additionally, Black Power activism allowed Jews to reject the assimilationist timidity which they are said to have had in the suburban America of the 1950s and revel in their own identity.

Jewish Support for Black Power

Jewish support for Black Power starts in the earliest days of the “civil rights” effort. Dollinger writes,

In a 1914 address to an African American audience, [Jewish activist Joel] Spingarn revealed that he was “tired of the philanthropy of rich white men toward your race.” He acknowledged the limits of white liberalism, its gradualist approach to social change, and its reluctance to cede operational control of the civil rights agenda to African American leadership.

Marcus Garvey, the black activist who wanted sub-Saharans in the United States move to an ethnostate of their own in Africa, had support among Jews – some Jews at least. The Yiddish-language press called Garvey’s anthem, Ethiopia, Thou Land of Our Fathers, “The Negro Hatikvah.”

In the 1930s, the black ethnonationalist religion, The Nation of Islam, started to make headway among sub-Saharans who’d migrated to the cities of the North. By the late 1950s, The Nation of Islam and other black activists were starting to see Jews as part of the “institutional racism” structure. Nonetheless, the literature of Jewish “civil rights” activists at the time, “demonstrated understanding and support for Black (sic) separatism long before it became part of the public discourse.”

The Anti-Defamation League defended the Nation of Islam in 1958. A year later, when Time magazine published an article accusing the Nation of Islam of antisemitism, the ADL’s Arnold Forster, concluded Time’s charges “lacked veracity.” Forster went on to issue confidential memos to his regional officers urging them to downplay the Time story. In 1961, Shad Polier, a Jewish defense attorney, sued the US Reformatory in Lorton, Virginia for banning Nation of Islam inmates from wearing their religious emblems and reciting daily prayers.

After the 1964 Civil Rights Act

Dollinger is frank about the direction of sub-Saharan race-activists after the 1964 Civil Rights Act. At every level, the blacks became more militant. Many sub-Saharan race-activists dropped their support for integration and one group, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) deliberately dropped “nonviolent” from their title becoming the Student National Coordinating Committee.

The historiography which claims that Jewish “civil rights” activists didn’t see this coming is wrong. Jewish activists had clearly been calling for Black Power radicalism as early as 1914, and internal ADL memos showed that they were aware of the direction of radical sub-Saharan activists were taking by the late 1950s.

American Jews responded to the Black Power movement by turning inwards. Young Jews became smitten with the so-called State of Israel after the 1967 Six Day War. In the late 1960s, the Hebrew Bible and the Jewish Catalogue (a publication that showed how to craft traditional Jewish items) became the top first and second respective books sold in Jewish bookshops. By 1970, Jewish young adults had become more Kosher than their parents.

The culmination of this ethnic revival – spurred on by the inspiration of Black Power – was the movement to allow Soviet Jews to leave the Evil Empire. Dollinger writes,

Black Power activism inspired American Jews to internalize the call for identity politics. The fight for Soviet Jews emerged, then, as the next political step for Jewish liberals once dedicated to African American civil equality. If Black nationalists pushed Jews out of domestic social justice causes, arguing that each ethno-racial group must take care of its own, then a movement to save Soviet Jews developed as the logical response. As historian William Orbach wrote, “Jewish youth, possibly influenced by black activism and rejecting their parents’ lethargy, demanded decisive action on behalf of Soviet Jewry.” While the antisemitic policies of the Soviet government could have triggered American Jewish interest a decade earlier, Orbach understood the delay. The “growing disillusionment with the civil rights struggle, in the face of increasing black militancy,” he concluded, served as inspiration for Jews to ride the era’s new “ethnic wave.”

Critical Thinking & Why There Won’t Be a Repeat of the Black-Jewish Alliance

One could cynically say Jewish support for Black Power was a ploy deliberately crafted to cause young Jews to more seriously embrace their identity. Jews also benefited from the Affirmative Action set-asides created due to Black Power activists. Jewish women – as women – were pre-positioned due to their wealth, social connections and educations to fully exploit Affirmative Action jobs, schooling billets, and other spots.

Otherwise much of the quotes and historical vignettes which underpin the claim of Jewish support for black militancy seems cherry picked even though the breakdown between blacks and Jews after the illicit second constitution, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was made law is described in the book in an understated way. Marcus Garvey, for example, was imprisoned and deported by Jewish prosecutors and a Jewish judge. The Anti-Defamation League still spends a great deal of time trying to disrupt the activities of the Nation of Islam.

Dollinger doesn’t dwell deeply on the serious concerns that formerly radical leftist Jews developed as Black Power became a major factor in society. One such former leftist was the late David Horowitz, who was also Jewish. An article that serves as a memorial to his life states,

An event in David’s departure from the left must be mentioned in any discussion of his legacy. David was part of the Black Panther movement. He recommended his friend, bookkeeper Betty Van Patter, as a help to the Panthers. Van Patter reported to Panther leader Elaine Brown discrepancies in the Panther’s handling of money. On January 20, 1975, Van Patter’s body was found in San Francisco Bay. Some accounts allege that she was raped and tortured before her murder. Her body showed signs of violent assault. This changed David.

The murder of Betty Van Patter demonstrates the evil of Black Power and justifies the prophecies said by harshest critics in the South of the so-called “civil rights” movement while it was ongoing. The entire “civil rights” project was evil and hopeless from the start. There is no way to integrate blacks into any part of white society as equals. Whenever this is attempted, something breaks, although not in a way that is easily predictable.

The murder of Betty Van Patter is an example of what breaks when blacks are integrated. Van Patter was an old-stock American white. She was not Jewish. She was a passionate leftist and a “civil rights” true believer. She had three children and had been divorced twice. She was a bookkeeper and David Horwitz knew her when they both worked at a leftist magazine called Ramparts in the 1960s. Both Van Patter and Horowitz were in the Silent Generation. The bureaucratic normalizers of the “civil rights” revolution were nearly all from that cohort. Van Patter was probably murdered within twenty-four hours of her doing her fiduciary responsibility of reporting an irregularity.

Meanwhile, her Black Panther supervisors were operating an ethnonationalist criminal movement with a social welfare façade. Obviously, Van Patter’s employers were embezzling the money. In other places, the Black Panthers stole the office equipment of nearby leftist organizations confident the leftist whites wouldn’t report them to the police.

A social movement which is led by a race (with a low IQ) which relies on critical technical support from a different race, and the technical support staff are murdered when pointing out a problem, is doomed from the start. There will not be a revival of the black-Jewish coalition except as a media driven mirage or a liberal selfie-fest which is part of a subversive effort directed at Americans.