opinion
We Need to Debunk
Longstanding Jewish-Black
Zero-sum Assumptions
BY ZEV ELEFF
L ast weekend, I had a troubling encounter
with American sport, apart from the Phillies’
unfortunate defeat in the World Series.

On Sunday morning, Hall of Fame football
player Ed Reed tweeted his support of embattled
basketball star Kyrie Irving: “These boys making
business decisions, not worried about the people!
I STAND WITH #KyrieIrving we are Harmed every-
day! Stop acting as if BLACK folk are not treated
worse than any. All the attn (apologies) PROVES
it #CarryOn.”
Irving was suspended last week for posting a
link to an antisemitic movie, “Hebrews to Negroes:
Wake Up Black America.” The propagandist film
is chock full of anti-Jewish tropes and, among
its most egregious claims, denies the historical
Holocaust. Owing to the other recent firestorm
over Kanye West’s antisemitic banter, the news
of Irving’s misdeeds has received ample media
attention. Why did Reed’s Twitter post catch my atten-
tion? Reed played defense for the Baltimore
Ravens, my favorite football team. During his All-
Pro career, I spent many hours cheering Reed in
front of my television screen, and on a few occa-
sions in person.

His comments frazzled my fandom and shook
my sensibilities. I didn’t have another way to reach
Reed, so I tweeted back: “Hate isn’t a scarce
resource. It’s not a zero sum game as you make
it out to be.” Reed responded less than an hour
later: "No hate here playa, just standing with my
brother not on hate bc that’s not what he [Irving]
is about.”
Reed and I exchanged a few more tweets
before I closed my phone in preparation for a
Holocaust education event at Gratz College. At
the program, fortuitously, Elisha Wiesel shared
how his father, the humanitarian Elie Wiesel, had
urged Jews and non-Jews to learn “from” and
“about” the Holocaust.

During the program intermission, I checked
Twitter, curious to learn whether Reed extended
our discussion. Reed didn’t. His only Twitter
activity in the interim was a post to an antisemitic
video clip.

I figured, then, that it would be of no help to
share Wiesel’s wisdom on Twitter; to suggest that
the study of genocide and hate is an opportu-
14 NOVEMBER 10, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
nity to learn narrowly “about” those persecuted
groups and to draw broader lessons “from” those
experiences. Others, however, weighed in on our exchange.

Some tweets took up my cause, explaining to the
retired football legend that the movie Irving had
endorsed was unredeemable. Someone of Irving’s
public stature should not spread lies and hate.

Other commenters took Reed’s side, suggesting
that Irving’s post was benign and, in response to
a Jewish college president raising the issue, sug-
gested that the “Jewish Holocaust already dom-
inates the curriculum in our American schools.”
The Twitter encounter challenged my assump-
tions about Black-Jewish relations. What we
require, I had shared at a recent program held by
them to work apart.

Reed has alerted me that learning “about” hate
is insufficient so long as Jews, African Americans
or any other group believes that remedying injus-
tice is a zero-sum game; that, somehow, too much
of a curricular emphasis about one group will
detract from the available time and energy avail-
able for the other.

Reaching further back into history, this was
Isaac Leeser’s fear in the 1860s. Leeser, one of
Philadelphia’s ranking Jewish leaders, worried
that abolitionists’ success on behalf of Black
slaves might sink Jews to the bottom of the soci-
etal totem pole. We need to debunk this long-
standing zero-sum assumption and consider how
groups can learn “from” one another to cultivate
(Ed) Reed has alerted me that learning “about”
hate is insufficient so long as Jews, African
Amerians or any other group believes that
remedying injustice is a zero-sum game; that,
somehow, too much of a curricular emphasis
about one group will detract from the available
time and energy available for the other.

the Anti-Defamation League’s Philadelphia-based
Black-Jewish Alliance was increased literacy of
the Jewish and African American experiences in
the U.S. As an American historian, I stressed that
the Black and Jewish communities need to obtain
a better handle on the important histories of these
two minority groups and how each was, in relative
terms, kept on the fringes of American life.

Of course, the extent of antisemitism in the
U.S. has never reached the horrors of racism.

Yet, a nuanced view has much to offer about
the complexities of “whiteness” in determining
access to the American mainstream. There’s
also much to say about how Jews and African
Americans worked together, and how civil rights
issues such as affirmative action compelled
mutual support.

We must teach “about” hate and draw lessons
“from” history that support agency and ally-
ship. The classroom discussions examining Elie
Wiesel’s or Toni Morrison’s works should elicit
provocative and applicable conversations about
the people represented in those books and make
meaning for the young people grappling with
those challenging texts.

Bigots and racists load their weapons of hate
speech with limitless ammunition. We, on defense,
ought to recognize that our tools to educate and
engender understanding need not be so limited
like some zero-sum totem pole. JE
Zev Eleff is president of Gratz College.




opinion
Ye’s Hate Speech Awakens My
‘Triple Consciousness’ of Being
Black, Jewish and American
BY KENDALL PINKNEY
W hen I read the news about Kanye West, I
didn’t know whether to turn off my phone,
or throw it.

I knew it would only be a matter of time before
the emails and texts began rolling in: What do
you think about Kanye? What’s to be done about
antisemitism in the Black community? You must
agree that Ye is challenging systems of power,
not being antisemitic! Have you read this article
by Black person X? Have you read this thought-
piece by Jewish person Y? You know Heschel and
other Jews walked with King at Selma; what would
it take to get back to that!?
Here’s the reality: I am Black, I am a rabbi and
I am a theater artist who frequently makes work
that probes the intersections of Black and Jewish
identity. So yes, I get why any number of people
reached out to get my “take.” But to be honest,
I find the Kanye saturation of this moment to be
more exhausting than instructive, as harmful as
his incessant flow of antisemitic bile is.

The reason for my exhaustion is that moments
like this more often result in stale public rehearsals
of facts-and-figures, rhetorical whataboutism and,
in my case, private requests for explanations or
defenses. In cases where there’s a public apology,
we might get a heavily staged meeting between
a symbolic Black person and a symbolic Jew, but
no one really thinks that such a “coming together”
does the real work of forging understanding.

In short, events like these tend to result in panic
and punishment, not in introspection.

Lest I be misunderstood, let me state a few
points clearly:
Kanye is antisemitic, and, like his equally egregious
anti-Black and misogynist statements, his statements
about Jews are appalling and deeply harmful.

Despite the number of books on such topics,
Black antisemitism is not a thing, just like Jewish
anti-Blackness is not a thing. Rather, antisemitism
and anti-Blackness are longstanding structures
of social prejudice that all peoples and societies
fall prey to.

Regarding Black-Jewish civil rights solidarity,
while it is worthwhile remembering the intrepid
Jewish leaders who walked with Dr. King and
other Black civil rights leaders in Selma, that act
of righteous resistance from nearly 60 years ago
will only take Black and Jewish communities so far
into their shared futures.

Inhabiting a Black and Jewish identity in con-
temporary America can be maddening. It is like
navigating a rhetorical funhouse: You know that
your lived experience is fully coherent, but the
reflections you encounter along the path distort,
disfigure and “invisiblize” your reality. More pre-
cisely, as a Black Jew you are forced to consider
your identities from the perspectives of others,
very few of whom have given any thought to your
particular existence. If this idea sounds familiar,
well, it is. It’s actually quite old.

In his seminal 20th century masterpiece, “The
Souls of Black Folk,” the eminent Black polymath
W.E.B. Du Bois addressed the conundrum of
living in a society where the structures of racism
force Black people into a split consciousness. “It
is a peculiar sensation,” Du Bois writes, “this dou-
ble-consciousness, this sense of always looking
at one’s self through the eyes of [white] others, of
measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that
looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever
feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two
souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings …”
While I have reservations about aspects of Du
Bois’ broader worldview (e.g. his intra-Black elitism,
his romantic view of nations and peoplehood) I find
deep resonance in his observations on “double
consciousness.” I have been in countless situations
where I have simply sought to follow my interests,
only for my Blackness to be the cause for minor
and major slights. I have also endured antisemitic
aggression and witnessed anti-Jewish religious
sentiment up close. What is more, I have experi-
enced the above in Jewish communities and Black
communities, respectively. I am not alone in this.

Many Black Jews can attest to the same.

To live as a Black Jew in America means to live
with an awareness of just how precarious group
belonging can be. In the case of hate speech, it also
means an unfortunate familiarity with the frequent
intersections between anti-Blackness and antisem-
itism. Such experience would lead me to believe
that Black Jews might have something unique to
say in this moment. And yet, predictably, what has
happened since Kanye’s recent spate of antisemitic
tweets is that Black Jews have been functionally
overlooked in the public discourse — our voices
relegated to small or parochial news outlets, niche
podcasts, newsletters or Twitter feeds.

To me, this phenomenon places Du Bois’s
observations in greater relief. Namely, being
Black and Jewish in America is more than an
act of “double-consciousness,” it is an act of “tri-
ple-consciousness.” In this configuration, I know
by virtue of my Black, Jewish and American iden-
tities that I am an integrated being who embodies
a way forward for our society, but I am often made
to contend with the fact that my communities, and
society in general, can only grasp my identity in its
discrete parts, not as a whole.

In case you think this “triple consciousness” is
theoretical, let me give a few concrete examples.

To live with “triple consciousness” is to notice
that there were relatively few calls beyond those
of Black individuals to condemn and boycott
Kanye when he trafficked in white supremacist,
anti-Black ideology.

To live with “triple consciousness” is to argue
with non-Jewish acquaintances that pointing out
the number of Jews in finance and media does
not a keen observation make, nor does it provide
evidence of a powerful cabal.

To live with “triple consciousness” is to carry
the distinct, lived histories of two peoples in your
heart and mind at all times. To live with “triple
consciousness” is to know in the most intimate
way that anti-Black rhetoric hurts Jews, and
antisemitic rhetoric hurts Black people, because
there are many of us who carry both identities and
cannot disentangle them one from the other.

Finally, and most personally, to live with “triple con-
sciousness” is to wonder whether my mixed Jewish
child will grow up in an America where she feels
compelled to closet aspects of her identity because
society cannot hold the wonder of her complexity.

I cannot solve the issue of “triple consciousness”
— after all, I did not create the strange reality under-
pinning it. Such a feat calls for a tremendous amount
of work, honesty and humility. It also requires a crit-
ical willingness to interrogate how multiple oppres-
sions are interlinked, rather than to dismiss such
language as performative and overly “woke.”
I am not interested in virtue-signaling, much less
ideological purity. Rather, I want what everyone
wants, what Du Bois wanted: the simple dignity to
be myself — Black, Jewish and American, “without
being cursed and spit upon.” JE
Kendall Pinkney is a New York-based theater art-
ist, producer and rabbi. He is the rabbinical edu-
cator at Reboot and the founding artistic director
of The Workshop, an arts and culture fellowship
for BIPOC-Jewish artists.

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