CNN, SILENCE IS NOT AN OPTION -- In the wake of anti-Semitic comments from prominent Black athletes and entertainers, we examine the strong alliances and deeply ingrained tensions between the Black and Jewish communities. How does their solidarity during the 1960s Civil Rights movement inform these relationships today? Don talks to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who recently penned an article on this topic, as well as historian Marc Dollinger and political strategist Ginna Green.
Dollinger, a Jewish Studies professor at San Francisco State University, said that alliances between African Americans and white Jews were stifled beginning in the mid-1960s.
“As white Jews were able to benefit from the white supremacy of America and the Black community — sociologically speaking — was not, there became more and greater resentment,” Dollinger said.
A big part of the tension, he said, is that the Black and Jewish communities don’t live near or socialize with each other often.
“[Anti-Semitic comments] reveal, to me, what happens what we’re isolated and separated from one another.”
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Page updated August 20, 2020, 9:22 a.m.