The Identity Question: Blacks and Jews in Europe and America

277 Pages·2000·14.84 MB·English

by  Robert Philipson

The
Identity
Question
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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
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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
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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