Legitimate Jewish concerns Black America should be willing to hear

SERIES II — PART I

For several years, I have asked Christians to confront Christianity’s long contribution to anti-Judaism and antisemitism. I recently completed a book-length study of that history, serve on the advisory council of the Holocaust Legacy Foundation, and have written repeatedly about antisemitism for Jewish and general audiences. That work has required me to examine a tradition I love without pretending that love excuses its failures.

It has also forced a second question upon me. If I expect Christians to examine their history honestly, and if I expect Jewish institutions to listen when Black Americans raise concerns about racism and power, am I equally willing to examine antisemitism, historical misunderstanding and unfair generalizations within Black America? Even the language of “Black America” and “Jewish America” requires qualification because Black Jews remind us that these populations overlap; the distinctions used here describe recurring institutional and political patterns, not sealed communities.

I have tried to answer yes. In 2023, I wrote an essay titled “A Black Man’s Guide to Avoiding Antisemitic Remarks” because our own history of suffering from racism does not make Black people incapable of repeating stereotypes about another people. A community can be the victim of prejudice in one context and reproduce prejudice in another. The concerns that follow are therefore not an indictment of Black America, nor are they the views of every Jew. They are recurring Jewish concerns that Black participants in reconciliation should be willing to hear before rushing to answer them.

Why Won’t You Just Condemn Farrakhan?

One of those concerns involves Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan has spoken powerfully about Black dignity, self-determination, family, economic independence and personal responsibility, which helps explain why he occupies a complicated place in Black political and religious life. Those contributions do not make antisemitic rhetoric less antisemitic. For decades, he has made claims about Jewish control of finance, government, media and Black entertainers and has repeated collective accusations about Jews and slavery. Such claims draw upon familiar antisemitic structures: hidden Jewish power, financial domination and collective Jewish responsibility.

The Jesse Jackson controversy in 1984 helps explain why the issue became so painful. Jackson himself used the derogatory terms “Hymie” and “Hymietown,” later acknowledged they were wrong and sought reconciliation. Farrakhan defended Jackson and escalated his own attacks on Jews. Jackson eventually described Farrakhan’s antisemitic statements as reprehensible and morally indefensible but resisted demands that he repudiate Farrakhan personally or reject his support. From Jackson’s perspective, he could reject the rhetoric without allowing Jewish organizations to determine who could support a Black presidential candidate; from the Jewish perspective, that distinction was difficult to understand.

The moral problem becomes clearer when the roles are reversed. Black Americans would likely object if a prominent Jewish candidate accepted enthusiastic support from a nationally known figure who repeatedly demeaned Black people while insisting that condemning the words was sufficient. That analogy does not make Farrakhan identical to David Duke or every white supremacist. It establishes a comparable standard: if Black Americans expect Jewish organizations to confront anti-Black racism coming from Jews, Jews can reasonably expect Black leaders to confront antisemitism coming from Blacks without minimizing it because the speaker has made other contributions.

Jews Also Remember Who Went South

Historical memory creates another source of misunderstanding. Black Americans reasonably expect people entering discussions about race to know something about slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, segregation, redlining, the civil-rights movement and contemporary racism. Jews can make a parallel complaint about people who pronounce judgment on antisemitism, Zionism or Israel with little knowledge of pogroms, the Holocaust, restrictions on Jewish immigration, university quotas, 1948, 1967, accusations of dual loyalty or the security concerns that lead American synagogues to maintain precautions that many churches do not require.

There is also a specifically American history some Jews believe Black Americans have forgotten. Jewish participation in the civil-rights movement was disproportionate to Jewish population size. More than half of the white Freedom Riders were Jewish, nearly two-thirds of the white Freedom Summer volunteers were Jews, and roughly half of the white civil-rights lawyers in the South were Jewish. Goodman and Schwerner died alongside Chaney. Seventeen Jewish activists arrested in St. Augustine in June 1964 wrote “Why We Went” because they believed they could not remain spectators in the presence of segregation.

My regular participation in synagogue life has helped me understand that the concern is not simply a demand for gratitude. Jewish memory is deeply connected to religious practice and communal identity. Remembering who stood where, who suffered, who acted and who remained silent becomes part of the moral story a community tells about itself. To forget Jewish participation in civil rights can therefore feel like more than losing a historical detail.

Does Remembering Create a Debt?

This is where a legitimate Jewish concern meets a legitimate Black objection. Some Jews remember the civil-rights movement and think, in effect, we stood with you when doing so was dangerous. After October 7, that memory became especially important for Jewish Americans who looked toward Black political, religious and civic leaders expecting immediate recognition of Jewish vulnerability. Instead, some heard occupation, colonialism and Palestinian resistance before they felt that the massacre itself had been mourned. For people whose communal memory includes the Holocaust and repeated anti-Jewish violence, October 7 did not initially feel like a distant foreign-policy dispute; it felt like Jews being hunted again.

Black Americans should be willing to hear the pain contained in that reaction before constructing the counterargument. Recognition after trauma does not require agreement with every political conclusion later drawn from it. Yet Jews also need to hear the Black response: civil-rights solidarity cannot create permanent political debt. Goodman’s sacrifice cannot purchase a Black person’s opinion about Gaza, and Heschel’s march at Selma cannot obligate Black Americans to support Netanyahu or any Israeli government. The healthier relationship remembers sacrifice without converting gratitude into obedience.

Jews, Neighborhood Power and Slavery

Economic history creates a similar need for specificity. Some Jewish merchants genuinely served Black neighborhoods that other white businesses neglected. Some Black customers genuinely experienced dependence, high prices, poor treatment or exploitation. Both experiences could exist in the same neighborhood. The appropriate question is what happened in a particular institution or relationship, not what Jews are like as a people.

The same discipline applies to slavery. Some Jews owned enslaved people, and some Jewish merchants participated in slave economies; those facts should not be denied. They also should not be inflated into claims that Jews dominated or were disproportionately responsible for the Atlantic slave trade. The responsible approach is to identify individuals, document what they did, place their conduct in historical proportion and condemn wrongdoing without converting it into a theory about an entire people. Black Americans know why that standard matters because we object when individual Black wrongdoing is turned into evidence about Black character.

Jewish Success Is Not Evidence of Jewish Control

Jewish Americans have achieved high levels of educational and professional success, and there are legitimate questions about how white-presenting European Jews benefited from postwar incorporation into American whiteness while Black Americans continued to face exclusion from housing, education, employment and capital. Those questions can be studied without moving into conspiracy. Saying that many Jews benefited from white privilege is an argument about racial structure; saying that Jews control the banks, media, Hollywood or government reproduces a long-standing antisemitic theory.

The evidentiary discipline is straightforward. If Bill Ackman’s influence concerns us, analyze Bill Ackman. If AIPAC concerns us, investigate AIPAC. If a financial institution or studio executive is relevant, identify the institution or person and present evidence. “Jewish power” is too imprecise to substitute for analysis, especially for Black Americans who know what happens when outsiders replace evidence about individuals with generalized claims about a racial group.

Reciprocal Historical Literacy

Black Americans rightly become frustrated when people discuss race without learning Black history. Jews can experience something similar when people make sweeping judgments about Israel, Zionism or antisemitism without knowing Jewish history. Learning that history does not settle every political argument. Understanding Zionism does not require support for Netanyahu; understanding why Israel matters deeply to many Jews does not require agreement with Israeli policy; understanding the Holocaust does not erase Palestinian history.

Historical knowledge serves a different purpose. It makes us capable of understanding why the person across the table hears the same word differently. A Black American may hear “occupation” through histories of colonialism and racial domination, while a Jew may hear a call to eliminate Zionism through histories of statelessness, exclusion and persecution. The obligation is reciprocal: Jews who want Black Americans to understand Jewish history must learn Black history deeply enough to recognize why particular institutions, symbols and analogies carry meanings formed by slavery, Jim Crow, colonialism and continuing racial inequality.

We Cannot Demand a Standard We Refuse to Meet

In the companion essays, I want Jewish readers to hear several things clearly. Criticizing AIPAC is not inherently antisemitic. Criticizing Israel is not inherently antisemitic. Discussing the white privilege experienced by many Jewish Americans is not antisemitic. Examining the influence of particular Jewish institutions or individuals is not antisemitic when the analysis is grounded in evidence. Black Americans have corresponding responsibilities: criticism of AIPAC should not become a theory that Jews purchase Congress; discussion of Jewish wealth should not become a claim that Jews control the economy; criticism of Israel should not impose collective responsibility on Jews everywhere; and opposition to Netanyahu should not automatically become rejection of Jewish national self-determination.

The same standard should govern how we speak about racism and antisemitism within our own communities. Black Americans cannot reasonably ask Jewish institutions to examine anti-Black racism while explaining away antisemitism when it comes from Black leaders we admire. Jewish Americans cannot demand sensitivity to antisemitism while dismissing Black concerns about racism, inequality or Palestinian rights as inherently hostile to Jews. I want this standard applied to my own writing as well: Jewish readers should correct me when I misunderstand Jewish history or minimize Jewish vulnerability, and I should retain the freedom to challenge Jewish readers when I believe racial inequality, power or Palestinian rights are being minimized.

A relationship in which only one community may correct the other is not reconciliation; it is hierarchy. The mirror has to face both directions, not because Black and Jewish histories are identical or because every criticism carries equal weight, but because neither community should construct a moral standard for the other that it refuses to apply to itself. That is where reconciliation becomes difficult, and it is also where it becomes real.

Selected Sources and Research Notes

• ADL, Farrakhan in His Own Words — https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/farrakhan-his-own-words
• Washington Post archive, Jesse Jackson/Farrakhan controversy, 1984 — https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1984/05/04/jewish-leader-sees-jacksons-bid-as-rallying-black-separatism/c54ba71e-a604-4ed9-ade2-772625038490/
• My Jewish Learning, Blacks and Jews in America, 1960s–1980s — https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/blacks-and-jews-in-america-1960s-1980s/
• Hebrew Union College, “Why We Went” — https://huc.edu/news/why-we-went-1964/
• Pew Research Center, Jewish Americans in 2020 — https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/05/11/jewish-americans-in-2020/