American Jewish leaders have rejected charges of “Jewish racism” in Hollywood that were leveled last week in Los Angeles at the annual convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
The charges, they say, revive the old anti-Semitic canard that the Jews run the media, and serve as an irritant to black-Jewish relations.
“This is a dangerous myth,” Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, said of the cliche that Jews monopolize certain professions.
“That kind of thinking develops and leads to the canard of Jewish control and from there to Jewish racism,” he said.
At issue are a number of statements made July 11 at a panel discussion on blacks in the entertainment industry, one of the workshops held at the NAACP national convention.
One of the speakers, Legrand Clegg, chairman of the Coalition Against Black Exploitation and city attorney of Compton, Calif., said that the careers of black entertainers and producers had been held back due to the “century-old problem of Jewish racism in Hollywood.”
He urged black leaders to “call a summit meeting with the Hollywood Jewish community in the same spirit that Jews have called for summits” to discuss anti-Semitic statements made by such black leaders as Louis Farrakhan and Nelson Mandela.
Maria Gibbs, producer and star of the NBC situation comedy “227,” also made controversial statements.
She was quoted in the Los Angeles Times as saying it is time that blacks admit that “the Jewish system in Hollywood was not set up for us.”
Gibbs, claiming to have been misquoted, clarified her statement later in a New York Times interview.
“What I said was that when Jewish people constructed their television business, they did so to make money and they did so from their perspective. They didn’t have us in mind, and we wouldn’t have had them in mind if we had been doing it,” she said.
MORE EXPECTED FROM NAACP
Jewish leaders feel that the NAACP has not gone far enough to distance itself from the statements.
In an initial statement, the NAACP’s executive director, Benjamin Hooks said the remarks “are not necessarily” the views of the national organization, but he did not repudiate them.
In a subsequent statement, Hooks said the NAACP continues to believe that blacks are discriminated against in the entertainment industry.
“We do have a position there has been racism in Hollywood. White folks run it,” he said. “Now if you want to separate it into Italian-American, Jewish-American or Greek-American, they’re all white folks as far as we’re concerned.”
Jewish leaders are not satisfied. The NAACP “still has not condemned” the statement, said Foxman, who has written a letter to Hooks urging him to take a stronger position in the issue. “Disassociating is not condemning. Those who are in positions of authority should be condemning those kinds of attitudes and beliefs,” he said.
Explanations aside, Jewish leaders are still concerned about the characterization of the film and music industry as “Jewish.”
“One has to be very careful in talking about ‘us’ and ‘them,’ the Jews and the blacks,” said Rabbi A. James Rudin, national director of inter-religious affairs at the American Jewish Committee, who has just completed a book on black-Jewish relations.
“It’s very dangerous to talk about the industry as being Jewish. If left untended, it can continue to exacerbate black-Jewish relations.” In Los Angeles, the Jewish Community Relations Council and local chapters of AJ Committee, the American Jewish Congress and ADL were to meet Tuesday afternoon to discuss strategies for dealing with the problem.
“This is an issue of serious concern to the Jewish community in L.A.,” said Rabbi Gary Greenebaum, AJ Committee regional executive director. “The statements had anti-Semitic aspects to them and the entertainment industry is a major part of what goes on here.”
NO DISCRIMINATION IN HIRING
ADL associate counsel Tzivia Schwartz, who attended the NAACP workshop, said that “in light of Mr. Clegg’s long record of anti-Semitic rabble-rousing and his obsession with the entertainment industry, his statement does not surprise us.”
In radio appearances and at public lectures, Clegg has made statements hostile to Israel and the Jewish community, according to Rudin, who participated in a radio program with him.
David Lehrer, ADL regional director for southern California, labeled Clegg’s statements as “outrageous anti-Semitism and patent nonsense. The Sony Corp., MGM, Universal and all the other studios do not have religious affiliations. They choose to produce films because that’s what will sell,” he said.
Executives within the industry agree. Claiming that Hollywood is no longer under private ownership, Barry Meyer, executive vice president of Warner Brothers, defended the impartiality of the entertainment industry.
“Black Americans have a difficult time in all industries. I don’t think it’s harder in entertainment than in other fields,” he said. “And I know for certain there’s not any form of discrimination in hiring practices.”
A recent survey by the Beverly Hills/Hollywood chapter of the NAACP, however, reported that blacks have fewer opportunities now to attain Hollywood executive positions than they did 10 years ago.
(JTA correspondent Tom Tugend in Los Angeles contributed to this report.)
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