Reviewing the Situation: Jewish and Black Identities—Inventing Strangers
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36366/frontiers.v32i2.468Keywords:
Class and race, Jewish and Black American identities, Inventing strangers, Stereotypes, Prejudice, DiscriminationAbstract
Dominant national myths create versions of reality that we need to deconstruct if we are to take students beyond stereotype. Using the USA as an example, histories that do not align with critical national narratives become silenced or muted. Preoccupation with Black and White dichotomies is just such a narrative that has hidden the significance of class; the idea of the USA as a haven for the stranger similarly blurs a long history of anti-Semitism. The essay demonstrates that collective identities are constructs not objective realities. They devolve from myths, acts of imagination, seductive narratives. A transition from myth to history, from archetypal dream to reality, reveals complexities that subvert simplistic stereotypes. Conventional assumptions about ethnicity and race need to be subject to deconstruction; if exported abroad they are likely to bring confusion rather than clarity. In these circumstances, destabilizing student perceptions is an intellectual imperative.
Downloads
References
Alexander, Michael. Jazz Age Jews. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691187471
Baldwin, James. “From the American Scene: The Harlem Ghetto: Winter 1948.” Commentary, February 1948https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/from-the-american-scene-the-harlem-ghetto-winter-1948/. Accessed September 2019.
Bigsby, Christopher. Arthur Miller 1951 – 1962. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2008.
"Black Sabbath: The Secret Musical History of Black-Jewish Relations,” Exhibition Catalogue. San Francisco: The Contemporary Jewish Museum, 2011.
Brustein, William. “Anti-Semitism and the Mobility of Prejudice,” Borders, Mobility and Migration. Boston: CAPA, 2019, pp. 101 – 115.
Dobkowski, Michael N. The Tarnished Dream: The Basis of American Anti-Semitism. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1979.
Epstein, Jon. “Al Jolson, champion in the battle for racial justice”, Scholars and Rogues. April 5, 2016 https://scholarsandrogues.com/2016/04/05/al-jolson-champion-in-the-battle-for-racial-justice-scholars-rogues-honors/ Accessed September 2019.
Fiedler, Leslie. No! In Thunder: Essays on Myth and Literature. New York: Stein and Day, 1972.
Mendes-Flohr, Paul R. and Jehuda Reinharz, eds. The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1980.
Hyndman, William. Unpublished presentation. EAIE, September 14, 2017.
Isenberg, Nancy. White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America. London: Atlantic Books, 2017.
Karp, Jonathan. “Performing Black-Jewish Symbiosis: The ‘Hassidic Chant’ of Paul Robeson,” American Jewish History, Jews and Performance. Vol. 91, No. 1. March 2003, pp. 53-81. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ajh.2004.0032
Lazarus, Emma. “The New Colossus”, The Poems of Emma Lazarus v. 1. Narrative, Lyric and Dramatic. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.
Lerner, Michael and Cornel West. Jews and Blacks: A Dialogue on Race, Religion and Culture in America. Harmondsworth: Penguin/Plume Books, 1996.
Malamud, Bernard. The Tenants. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971.
Manchester, William. The Glory and The Dream. New York: Bantam Books,1974.
Podhoretz, Norman. “My Negro Problem—and Ours,” Commentary. February 1963, pp. 93 – 100.
Prinz, Joachim. Speech during the March on Washington, Aug. 28, 1963.
Szwed, John. Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth. London: William Heinemann, 2015.
Turner, Frederick Jackson. The Frontier in American History. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1920.
Wenger, Beth S. New York Jews and the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
Wyatt, Robert. “Beneath the Underdog - A Paradox of Jazz and Racism,” https://www.strongcomet.com/wyatt/beneath-the-underdog/ n.d. Accessed September 2019.
Zinn, Howard. A People's History of the United States. New York: Harper Row, 1980.
