Call for Blacks and Jews to Renew Their Partnership on Social Issues

The executive director or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the vice president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC) joined this week in pledging to create a stronger and more “mature” relationship through which Blacks and Jews could renew their partnership on social issues.

Benjamin Hooks, the Black civil rights leader and Albert Vorspan, director of the Commission on Social Action of the UAHC, spoke at a forum titled “A Social Justice Agenda for the 1980s” sponsored by the UAHC here last Sunday night. It marked the first public exchange on Black-Jewish relations since the controversy that grew out of the resignation of Andrew Young as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations following his unauthorized meeting with Zehdi Labib Terzi, the Palestine Liberation Organization observer at the United Nations.

“Blacks and Jews, working together, are indispensable to progress in social justice in America,” Vorspan told some 300 Reform Jewish leaders from across the country at the Washington Hebrew Congregation. “We are linked by a common heritage, a common destiny, a shared vision of America,” he declared.

Hooks told the meeting: “The Black people and the Jewish people are on the threshold of a great regeneration of cooperation. There is every reason to be hopeful about the future and to be optimistic about improving Black-Jewish relations. Black people are not going to abandon their allies or shirk their moral principles over a barrel of oil. It is up to the leaders of the two communities to devise the mature strategies that will reckon with the new emerging world economic order and reduce intergroup tensions.”

Hooks continued: “It is important that calm reasonableness prevail, that the difficulties of adjustment be realized and that without any sacrifice of basic principles, the spirit of sharing and cooperation characterize our future civil and human rights campaigns.”

NEED FOR CANDID DISCUSSION

Both speakers emphasized the need for candid discussion of the issues that divide Blacks from Jews as well as those that unite them.

Vorspan said American Jews had “felt betrayed” when Black leaders gave “respectability to a terrorist group whose sole platform is the extinction of Israel. They have also done infinite mischief by suggesting that Israel and Its Jewish supporters are somehow subversive of American interests,” he said. “Irresponsible Black leaders have let loose the most inflammatory and poisonous bigotry at the very moment when the national mood is angry and looking for a scapegoat.”

Hooks spoke of “two separate and unequal societies in America — one primarily white and privileged; the other primarily non-white and underprivileged.” The answer to underrepresentation is greater numbers of Blacks in the universities and in the professions, he said.

“We do not ask for double standards of performance in any school. We simply ask that an applicant’s color be considered as a way of Integrating the class, of increasing the numbers of Blacks and brown people in the colleges, in professional schools, in skilled jobs. Setting goals, timetables, numerical remedies, the courts have agreed, are appropriate means for achieving the elimination of manifest racial imbalances,” Hooks said.

THE KEY QUESTION

The key question, Hooks continued, was “whether Blacks and Jews can be effective allies in the civil rights movement without candidly facing up to and addressing this pivotal dispute — the position of many Jewish groups in defending ‘merit’ and opposing ‘reverse discrimination’.” Noting that there is a “wide spectrum of views of Black people and Jews,” Hooks said that “Should we disagree, nothing is solved by threats of an across-the-board withdrawal of support for one another’s mutual objectives. Responsible Black leadership will have no truck with ugly anti-Semitism. And we will expect our Jewish allies never to abandon us on a crest of anti-Black sentiment.”

Hooks reiterated the NAACP’s position that the U.S. policy of not talking directly with the PLO was “shortsighted.” But, he added, “recognizing the legitimate rights of the Palestinians cannot, must not, will not mean the destruction of the Israeli State.”

Vorspan observed that “both Blacks and Jews see themselves as beleaguered, threatened, vulnerable. Each sees the other as powerful. Truth is each of us has some limited influence, but both are nothing when compared to the massive power of the political and economic forces that delight in having us at each other’s throats.”

Jewish anger and fear are “understandable,” Vorspan said. “But we must also maintain some balance. Not all Black leaders have joined the demagogic back. Even more important, there is evidence that ordinary Blacks couldn’t care less about the politics of the Middle East. “Noting that Blacks and Jews are already resuming dialogue in local communities throughout the country, Vorspan said:

“This is not a time for heating up a war between Jews and Blacks which can only benefit our common enemies and destroy our continuing common interests in a compassionate and open society. It is a time for cool reassessment. The old relationship, like Humpty Dumpty, cannot be put together again. The injury to Black-Jewish relations is deep and long lasting. Anti-Semitism among Blacks is serious and growing, especially among young people and leaders. Racism among some Jews is also real and growing. Either the rupture will become a permanent alienation or a new and more mature relationship will be forged. No two groups in American society have been tied more closely — and it would be tragic if we allowed this, to become the end of the line.”