None Of Your Questions Answered

One site that pops up doing a Google search on civil rights movement Jews (and for some reason using that term makes me uncomfortable) is From Swastika to Jim Crow - Black-Jewish Relations, for the ITVS program of the same name. Was a bit surprised to see this praise for the show, given the source:

The story of Black-Jewish relations in the United States is a long and complex one.... Jews were among those who worked to establish the NAACP in 1909. African-American newspapers were among the first in the U.S. to denounce Nazism.... FROM SWASTIKA TO JIM CROW creates hope and reminds us of a time in U.S. history when the two communities came together.

- David Horowitz, Washington Review

I mean, that doesn't sound anything like the current David Horowitz:

You'll recognize many of the names of the Reparations movement leaders immediately. It's a who's who in the racial shakedown racket: Jesse Jackson. Al Sharpton. Johnnie Cochran. Randall Robinson. Cornel West. These men, and others from the far left, are preparing for the biggest legal shakedown in the history unless they're stopped. During the past half year, David Horowitz has spoken campuses across this great nation, appeared on countless television and radio talk shows, and distributed thousands of books and booklets detailing who is behind the reparations movement and why. Hes worked hard to expose the true motivation - money and power -- behind the movement and to educate millions of Americans to the damage this divisive movement will do our nation if it is allowed to proceed and succeed.

I like the <em> tag. It's purty.

You don't have to be in favor of reparations -- I'm not, after all -- to find rhetoric like that more damaging and divisive than the call for reparations itself. Reasonable people may disagee on this, as with all things.

Back to the show:

With the late 1960s came the birth of the Black Power movement, emphasizing self-determination, self-defense tactics and racial pride, and representing a radical break from the nonviolence and racial integration espoused by the Reverend Martin Luther King. The separatist rise of Black nationalism was just one of the difficulties facing the Black-Jewish alliance since the end of the Civil Rights movement. The rapid decline of American anti-Semitism since 1945, combined with the nation's continuing pervasive racism, convinced Blacks there was an insurmountable racial gulf separating the two groups. Blacks no longer perceived the division as one between the persecutors and their victims - including Jews - but between those with white skin and those with black. Through the eyes of Blacks, Jews became Whites with all the privileges their skin color won them, regardless of alliances they had in the past.

As early as the first two decades after World War II, James Baldwin, Kenneth Clark and other Blacks encouraged liberal Jews to give up the "special relationship." This came in part from a fear that the Jews' determined belief in their bond with Blacks would eventually become offensive and, paradoxically, provoke Black anti-Semitism. The prospect of this shift was incomprehensible to Jews who believed that their own history, culminating in the Holocaust, defined them as oppressed and thus incapable of being the oppressor.

And here we are today.

There's an utterly appalling -- there's that word again -- little site called Blacks and Jews Newspage, which describes itself as "dedicated to the dissemination of accurate information about the historical relationship between Blacks and Jews. This site IS NOT an OFFICIAL website of the Nation of Islam or of any individuals or organizations named within."

They provide a helpful link to the Nation of Domination site, though.

Found a link there at another site that pops up in the original Google search, Jewish Tribal Review. Their self-description states:

This site exists for non-profit educational purposes only. Its purpose is to elicit public discussion about the issues above. It is against all forms of bigotry. Criticizing the wealthiest ethnic group in America and any expression of its ethnocentrism, in-group solidarity, racism, unethical behavior, dual moral standards, political influence, dedication to a foreign nation, and exertion of power is not bigotry. It is one of our most elemental rights in a free society: to expose the bias, hypocrisy and injustice of influential power elites that effect all our lives.

(The Jewish Tribal Review has been defamed by a web site called "The Hate Directory" as an example of "hate." That defamation is fraud. Read our email exchanges with that Hate site's proprietor and decide for yourself which web site -- that one or this one -- holds the higher moral ground).

If the words "wealthiest ethnic group in America" don't set off alarm bells, there's something very wrong with you. True or not -- and I can't be arsed to look up the stat, and worry about anyone who'd actually note such a thing -- it plays to some very old stereotypes.

Mind you, there is a double standard about stereotypes, too.

The site is listed under Google Directory - Society > Issues > Race-Ethnic-Religious Relations > Hate > Hate Groups > Anti-Semitism, and they've some fairly nasty company.

There's also a category for Google Directory - Society > Issues > Race-Ethnic-Religious Relations > Hate > Hate Groups > Jewish.

At an August 17, 2002 rally in Washington to demand "slavery reparations" -- also attended by the black Hitler Louis Farrakhan, recently returned from giving aid and comfort to America's enemies in Iraq -- ungrateful New York City Councilman Charles Barron threatened to storm the Treasury Department for his "40 acres and a mule" before promising random racist violence if his demands were not satisfied: I want to go up to the closest white person and say, "You can't understand this, it's a black thing," and then slap him, just for my mental health.

A former Black Panther, Barron joined with Brooklyn Borough President Marky Markowitz in ousting pictures of the Founding Fathers from Brooklyn Borough Hall in favor of the drug-dealing pimp, rapist and woman-beater Malcolm X, who admitted in his ghost-written Autobiography that he enjoyed beating white prostitutes for his "mental health."

Oh, that wacky Jewish Task Force.

There are only 7 Jewish hate groups listed, as opposed to 12 for blacks. But the winner, and still champion, with 242 different organizations of sweet, sweet hatin', are white folks.

This figure does not include warblogs. They need a new directory editor.