The Identity Question: Blacks and Jews in Europe and America PDF
Preview The Identity Question: Blacks and Jews in Europe and America
The Identity Question This page intentionally left blank The Identity Question Blacks and Jews in Europe and America Robert Philipson University Press of Mississippi Jackson To Craig Werner In gratitude www.upress.state.ms.us Copyright © 2000 by University Press of Mississippi All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America © 08 07 06 05 04 O3 02 01 00 4 3 21 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Philipson, Robert. The identity game : blacks and Jews in Europe and America / Robert Philipson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57806-292-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 1-57806-293-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Blacks—Europe—Social conditions. 2. Jews—Europe—Social con- ditions. 3. Europe—Ethnic relations. 4. Blacks—United States—Social conditions. 5. Jews—United States—Social conditions. 6. United States— Ethnic relations. I. Title. D1056.2.B55 P45 2000 305.89604—dc21 00-035196 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available Crammed with riches, Europe accorded human status de jure to its inhabitants. With us, to be a man is to be an accomplice of colonialism, since all of us without exception have profited by colonial exploitation. This fat, placid continent ends by falling into what Fanon rightly calls narcissism. Cocteau became irri- tated with Paris—"that city which talks about itself the whole time." Is Europe any different? And that super-European mon- strosity, North America? Chatter, chatter: liberty, equality, fra- ternity, love, honor, patriotism, and what have you. All this did not prevent us from making anti-racial speeches about dirty nig- gers, dirty Jews and dirty Arabs. High-minded people, liberal or just softhearted, protest that they were shocked by such inconsis- tency; but they were either mistaken or dishonest, for with us there is nothing more consistent than a racist humanism since the European has only been able to become a man through creating slaves and monsters. —Jean-Paul Sartre This page intentionally left blank Contents Introduction: Flight from Egypt ix The Light from the West Eighteenth-Century Perspectives 3 The Dawn Patrol 30 American Assents Mid-Century Perspectives 81 The Sunset Generation 112 Transformations in the Promised Land Journey to the West 169 Ethnicity and Its Discontents 189 Conclusion 221 Notes 228 Works Cited 235 Index 247 This page intentionally left blank Introduction Flight from Egypt "Are you not like the Ethiopians to me, O people of Israel?" saith the Lord. "Did I not bring up Israel from the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Syrians from Kir?" —Amos 9:7 Let us start by unraveling an American cultural tangle. The Reverend Al Sharpton, African-American gadfly of New York politics, has led scores of protest marches against assaults and injustices perpetrated on the Black community. This man's name has become anathema to many Jews for what they perceive to be his inflammatory role in the Crown Heights riots of 1991 and the 1995 arson that killed eight people in a Jewish-owned clothing store in Harlem. Yet when Al Sharpton published the autobiography that has become the standard accessory of American celebrity, he gave it the title Go and Tell Pharaoh (1996). The reference, as anyone familiar with the African-American religious tradition would know, is to the spir- itual, "Go Down, Moses," which retells the biblical story of Exodus. Although no member of the Judeo-Christian world could miss the grandiose comparison to Moses, Sharpton prefaces his book with the following lines from the spiritual. Go down Moses Down to Egyptland IX
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