Chicago: When Jesse Jackson, in a speech before a World Jewish Congress in Brussels, Belgium, on anti-semitism and prejudice, called for Jews and Blacks to recreate their old coalition, I wondered whether his call was the symptom of a pimple about to swell with pus or just a simple statement of urgency for both Blacks and Jews.
As I pondered over the text of that July 7 speech, I began to realize that it wasn’t just a simple call for unity but a crooning plea, a sentimental gesture that could ultimately pillage African American interests. Rev. Jackson seemed to plead for a renewed alliance between Blacks and Jews (actually between Blacks and white Jews), without stipulating critical preconditions by which the alliance could endure.
He said that Blacks and Jews should work together for economic growth and peace and to prevent the “scapegoating, racism, anti- Semitism, polarization and violence” that has arisen since the walls of the Cold War came tumbling down. All that’s fine and good. (A writer in the Final Call, Sept. 8 1992).
