Meeting Between Black and Jewish Leaders Seeks to Continue Dialogue Between the Two Minority Groups

Some 50 young Black and Jewish leaders met at American University here yesterday to discuss the differences between the two communities and continue the political dialogue that has long existed between the two minority groups in the United States.

“We can together do much more in this society than we can do as individuals,” Rep. Julian Dixon (D. Calif.), chairman of the Black Congressional Caucus, told some 200 persons at a meeting Saturday night at the University to launch yesterday’s forum. He expressed the hope that “there can be a Jewish and Black dialogue that will confront problems openly and honestly.”

The conference yesterday, sponsored by the Political Leadership and Development Program of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Youth and College Division of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was a closed discussion between the young activists from across the nation.

At Saturday night’s meeting, attended by Jewish and Black leaders, Thomas Dine, AIPAC’s director, and the Rev. Edward Hailes, vice president of the NAACP and president of its Washington, D.C. branch, the stress was on the need for the two groups to continue working together.

CITES NEED FOR BLACK-JEWISH COALITION

“Blacks and Jews have shared each others pains and helped each others causes and at times, worked more closely than any other of America’s ethnic groups,” Dine said. Hailes noted that there are “no eternal coalitions but we always have eternal issues we can come together on.”

Hailes said that there have been differences between Blacks and Jews in recent years particularly over the issue of quotas. “Our agendas were different,” he said. But he said the differences are not “deep” and when “we needed this coalition, we often got it.”

Dine, who stressed that American Jews today are a “muscular minority, ” said that Jews want to determine their own destiny. He said he believed that some of the differences which have resulted between Blacks and Jews are due to Blacks, too, no longer wanting others to determine their destiny.

AN OVERSHADOWING ISSUE

The one issue that seemed to overshadow the meeting was Black anger over a recent New York print advertisement sponsored by a group called “Jews against Jackson,” which accused the Rev. Jesse Jackson of being anti-Israel and anti-Semitic, and the Jewish Defense League’s vocal opposition to Jackson’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency.

Hailes said he understood this feeling was not shared by the majority of American Jews and believed the Jewish community could handle this situation, just as he said the NAACP has taken care of its own extremists. Dine said he hopes that Jackson will be “treated fairly” by Jews. He said AIPAC will assess Jackson as it will the other seven Democratic Presidential hopefuls.

Dine and other AIPAC officials met with Jackson last week in an effort to convince him that The New York Times ad did not represent the Jewish community. The meeting was arranged by Mark Siegal, a political consultant, at the request of Washington Mayor Marion Barry, a Black who also attended the meeting.

JEWISH SUPPORT OF BLACK ISSUES

Dine stressed Saturday night that he and many other Jewish leaders received their “baptism in politics in the civil rights movement” of the 1960’s. He pointed out the close working relationship between Blacks and Jews over the years and noted that Jewish members of Congress support issues of concern to Blacks while Black Congressmen support efforts for Soviet Jews and vote for foreign aid to Israel.

He also pointed out that the support of Jews has been crucial in the election of Blacks to political office. He noted that in this year’s elections, 50 percent of the Jews of Chicago voted for Mayor Harold Washington; in Philadelphia, 45 percent of the Jewish voters supported Wilson Goode in his successful election to the mayorality.

“Jews fight and fight hard for a strong just America, an America that guarantees the right of full participation for Jews and all citizens,” Dine said. Hailes said the NAACP’s aim is to bring full equality to all Americans and to break down the “artificial barriers” that keep many Americans from achieving this equality.

Hailes said that there must be a mutuality of concerns since “what affects one of us directly will affect all of us indirectly …. We can’t be satisfied by just being concerned with what takes place in the Black community of the Jewish community. We have to lift ourselves above our own individualistic concerns to the broader concerns” while at the same time “respecting our differences.”

Dine said that “while our objectives are not identical,” both AIPAC and the NAACP are political groups that believe that they can make a difference in the formation and conduct of U.S. domestic and foreign policy.