David Christopher Kaufman is a former New York Post editor and columnist. Follow him @kaufmandavidnyc.
(JNS) February marked Black History Month in America, and this year has brought an unusually large amount of content and programming focused on both exploring and reaffirming historic links between African Americans and Jewish Americans. The most ambitious effort is the four-part PBS series “Black and Jewish America: An Interwoven History," hosted by noted Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., which offers a new look at two communities that are, says PBS, “defined by solidarity and strained by division."
Despite being black and Jewish, such high-concept productions hold little personal appeal-not because they aren’t useful, but because the obsessive need among academics and intellectuals to align blacks and Jews feels both anachronistic and of questionable value. A quick look at a clip from one of the show’s early episodes perfectly illustrates why.
Speaking about the “stakes" involved with restoring black-Jewish unity, and clearly concerned that existing communal cracks may further deepen, Gates immediately latches on to the rising scourge of white nationalism as the greatest issue unifying the two peoples right now. As he explains, both groups have long faced a common and emboldened enemy in rising extremism among white nationalist politicians and institutions. This is why, inveighs Gates, the two communities possess organic alignments that need to be rebuilt.
Gates, of course, is correct(ish). From political commentators and agitators like Tucker Carlson to Nick Fuentes to Carrie Prejean Butler, the past year has seen an unprecedented-and frankly, unimaginable-surge of Jew-hatred from the right.
But his analysis, while meaningful, is equally short-sighted.
True, Jews and blacks may both be at the receiving end of white nationalist animus, but Jews these days face a very different enemy, which is just as deadly, if not far more so: Islamic fundamentalism and jihadism, most potently in the name of #palestine.
This is not business as usual; it does not fall under the banner of white nationalism or David Duke-styled Christian extremism, under which Jews are now being hunted and even killed across America right now.
This is a threat-at least, in the United States-that Jews, and not blacks, are bearing.
Indeed, much like the already disproved genocide libel, which was recently amplified yet again by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), the unwillingness of academics like Gates to acknowledge the impact of pro-Palestinianism on African-Americans reflects the larger moral failings that define the post-Oct. 7 era.
At the core of these failings-an obsession with moral parity rather than moral clarity-are half-truths, omissions, falsehoods and outright lies. In this case, the greatest omission is the fact that many of the folks chanting for Jewish blood in the name of “Palestine" happen to be African-American. Not all of them are, of course, not even by a long shot. But while Hamas was still massacring its way across southern Israel two Octobers ago, African-Americans were among some of the most vocal champions of the Palestinian Arab cause and its accompanying wave of anti-Jewish violence.
There is nothing particularly unknown or deep-thinking about this troubling state of affairs; it’s been broadcast across social media without relief. Nor is there anything racist or anti-black about acknowledging it. Vast numbers of Americans of every color and ethnicity, including a dishearteningly large number of Jews, have expressed similar anti-Zionist sentiments, often far louder.
But in an age where identity politics and intersectionality hold such potent and pervasive sway, the current focus on blacks and Jews demands an honest accounting of existing community relations. And by failing to engage with Palestinian Arab extremism and its influence among some blacks, programs like the one featuring Gates are failing to deliver that honesty-or are, at least, guilty of dishonesty by omission.
It’s easy to understand why such omissions have made their way into both the PBS program and most conversations about blacks and Jews right now. As I’ve previously written, there is a “feel-good" familiarity to America’s decades-long obsession with black-Jewish relations. And indeed decades ago, both communities shared some overlap of disenfranchisement and discrimination to warrant such outsized attention.
No more. As evidenced by my own black and Jewish families, the two communities now inhabit vastly different political, cultural and economic realities. They don’t actually have that much in common anymore, which begs the question of why demand that they realign when such realignment feels so questionable and contrived.
Instead, thought leaders such as Gates and culture-makers like PBS should pour some of their vast cultural and economic privilege into examining why so many young African-Americans have aggressively embraced the Palestinian Arab cause, and its resulting antisemitism and anti-Zionism.
Because ultimately, blacks may now have little in common with Jews in the United States, but they have even less in common with Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip. This is the message that should inform any efforts at rebuilding black-Jewish alliances, not the threat of white nationalism, at least, not solely.
Acknowledging such truths will be hard in this age of political litmus tests and ideological gate-keeping. But a truly critical look at black-Jewish relations is both necessary and long overdue. Most crucially, it’s also far more honest. Because real leadership demands real risk-taking-something crowd-pleasing odes to outdated ethnic alliances are dangerously failing to deliver.