African American–Jewish relations
African Americans and Jewish Americans have interacted throughout much of the history of the United States. This relationship has included widely publicized cooperation and conflict, and—since the 1970s—it has been an area of significant academic research.[1] Cooperation during the Civil Rights Movement was strategic and significant, culminating in the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
"Blacks and Jews" redirects here. For the film, see Blacks and Jews (film).The relationship has also featured conflicts and controversies which are related to such topics as the Black Power movement, Zionism, affirmative action, and the antisemitic trope concerning the alleged dominant role of American and Caribbean-based Jews in the Atlantic slave trade.
Affirmative action[edit]
Many Black people have supported government and business affirmative action, believing that meritocracies are subject to institutional racism and unconscious bias.[104][105] Many Jews, meanwhile, associated affirmative action with quotas that have reduced, rather than increased, Jewish access to jobs and education.[106] Historians believe that this difference in outlook contributed to the decline of the Black-Jewish alliance in the 1970s, when Black people began seeking ways to build on the civil rights legislation of the 1960s.[62][107]
As Black people continued to face widespread discrimination and struggled to make progress in society, Black activism became increasingly outspoken. Greenberg believes that this increased resentment and fear among Jews.[74] As this activism spread to the North, many liberal Jews also began to move out of areas with increasing Black populations, due to what Greenberg describes as the perceived "deterioration of their schools and neighborhoods", sometimes also citing civil rights protests as a motivator.[108]
Herbert Hill's survey of affirmative-action lawsuits found that Jewish organizations have generally opposed affirmative-action programs.[109] A widely publicized example of the Black-Jewish conflict arose in the 1978 affirmative action case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, when Black and Jewish organizations took opposing sides in the case of a white student who sued for admission, claiming that he was unfairly excluded by affirmative action programs.[110]