Blacks and Jews – Lessons From Malcolm X Part 3

When I was growing up, I always thought that Jews and blacks were kindred spirits. I was taught that Jews were major allies to blacks during the Civil Rights Movement and were virulent integrationists. Jews knew oppression and racism firsthand; of course they would lend a helping hand to another oppressed racial group. This particular slant in my early education may have had something to do with the fact that I am, well, Jewish.

As I developed a deeper understanding of urban history, I had to reject most of my preconceptions. Blacks and Jews, at least in America, have had a very interesting relationship. Sure, Jews were often the only folks to sell houses or rent to blacks, but they were also the urban slumlords. Many Jews were often the most vocal proponents of civil rights, but that didn’t mean some weren’t racist. Jews were fine with opening shops in urban ghettos, but that often meant the gross exploitation of black, urban residents. They provided goods to the community, but often with exorbitant mark-ups.

In his autobiography, Malcolm X recounts a conversation he had with a Jew, summarizing his thoughts on the relationship between Jews and blacks:

“I told him that, yes, I gave Jew credit for being among all other whites the most active, and the most vocal, financier, “leader” and “liberal” in the Negro civil rights movement. But I said at the same time I knew that the Jew played these roles for a very careful strategic reason: the more prejudice in America could be focused upon the Negro, then the more the white Gentiles’ would keep diverted off the Jew. I said that to me, one proof that all the civil rights posturing of so many Jews wasn’t sincere was that so often in the North the quickest segregationist were Jews themselves…

And an even clearer proof for me of how Jews truly regard Negroes, I said, was what invariably happened wherever a Negro moved into a neighborhood that was thickly Jewish. Who would lead the whites’ exodus? The Jews!” [p. 380]

Last week, I wrote about casual, recreational racism among Jewish friends. That situation pales in comparison to the following video of American Jews in Israel. After President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world in Cairo last week, a film crew asked a group of drunk Jews partying in Israel for their reactions. Ta-Nehisi Coates has written a few interesting posts on this topic, which are worth checking out. But, I think the video speaks for itself:



Jews and blacks have…well…a complicated relationship. Historical tensions fuel contemporary animosities and add to the contradictory relationship between the two groups. Friends and foes, allies and enemies. A simultaneous contradiction, of sorts.

Now, Malcolm X certainly had some questionable and problematic views when it came to Jewish folks. But he does challenge us to rethink the simplistic paradigm of black-Jew solidarity—another one of his lasting lessons.