opinion
The Kyrie Case Isn’t About ‘Blacks
Vs. Jews.’ It’s About Bigotry
BY ANDREW SILOW-C ARROLL
A powerful revival of “Parade,” the 1998 Broadway
musical about the 1915 lynching of the Jewish
factory manager Leo Frank by a Georgia mob, is
wrapping up a short-term engagement at New York’s
City Center. The show is stirring and moving without
trivializing or exploiting one of the worst antisemitic
incidents in U.S. history.

And yet I couldn’t quite shake my discomfort that
this lavishly orchestrated, heart-tugging musical
about the post-Reconstruction South was focused
on the lynching of a white man. Alfred Uhry, who
wrote the book, and Jason Robert Brown seem to
have anticipated this. They include a song, sung by
two Black characters, noting that the Frank case
would not have gotten half the attention it did if
Frank or the girl he allegedly killed were Black.

For all the glorification of Black and Jewish
cooperation in the civil rights era — some of it
exaggerated, much of it deserved — the two com-
munities have long been locked in this kind of com-
petitive suffering. Black leaders have questioned
Jewish claims to victimhood — especially when
Jews accuse other Black leaders, such as Louis
Farrakhan, of antisemitism — and have accused
Jews of amplifying the power and reach of Black
antisemites for their own ends.

Jews, meanwhile, resent being told that, as a
community that tends to be seen as white, suc-
cessful and politically influential, they can’t be
regarded as victims of bigotry, especially when it
comes from a disempowered minority.

Both dynamics have played out in the case of
Kyrie Irving, the Brooklyn Nets star who shared
a link to “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black
America,” a 2018 film that contains a host of
antisemitic tropes and that is based on a book that,
no doubt thanks to Irving, is now a bestseller. In
defending his decision to share the film — and giv-
ing it perhaps the widest platform it ever enjoyed
— Irving downplayed his own sizable Twitter fol-
lowing and influence. “You guys come in here and
make up this powerful influence that I have … [and
say], ‘You cannot post that.’ Why not? Why not?” he
asked reporters.

The canards shared in the film — especially the
notion that Blacks are the “real” Jews — are rooted
in the idea that “the greatness of Black men is
being hidden or stolen from them,” as Jemele Hill,
a Black sports journalist, explains in a piece in
the Atlantic. What dismays Hill and other critics
of Irving — Black, Jewish, both and neither —
is that this understandable impulse to promote
14 NOVEMBER 17, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
The Jewish community
doesn’t have the luxury
of condescension when
celebrities, however
troubled, insert insidious
ideas into the social
media ecosphere.

Black empowerment draws on a history of classic
antisemitism: The film cites Henry Ford’s antise-
mitic opus “The International Jew” and denies the
Holocaust. It claims that Jews have used false-
hoods to “conceal their nature and protect their
status and power.”
Writes Hill: “Irving has joined a troubling club of
high-profile Black male celebrities — also including
the rapper Kanye West — who have stubbornly
embraced conspiracy theories, particularly anti-Se-
mitic ones, under the pretext of seeking a deeper
truth about their own origins.”
Some white liberal Jews are uncomfortable
about calling out certain forms of antisemitism
by prominent Blacks precisely because of a per-
ceived power imbalance between Blacks and Jews,
or because the ideas come from a place where
ignorance meets legitimate grievance. Some Black
leaders have similarly excused the long history of
antisemitism and bigotry by Farrakhan’s Nation of
Islam because the group has been seen as a force
for good in impoverished Black communities.

And still others have suggested that Ye, with a
history of mental illness, and Irving, who often
dabbles in conspiracy theories, should not be sub-
jected to the blunt outrage used to combat white
supremacy and anti-Zionism. Or that none of us
should be in the business of “policing the expres-
sion of Black athletes,” as the sports journalist
Shireen Ahmed put it (before condemning Irving,
it should be said).

These attitudes are patronizing, and it’s import-
ant to note that few if any influential Jews or Black
commentators went there this week. West and
Irving had few defenders for the antisemitic things
they said or shared (although there was some
Twitter “what-aboutism” suggesting the NBA was
more concerned about a Black man’s antisemitism
than China’s treatment of the Uighurs — a sticking
point for a league that does major business in
China). On the left, Dave Zirin of The Nation writes
about the link between racism and antisemitism
and the far right: “What terrifies me about the cur-
rent moment is that Kyrie’s politics are migrating
and finding a sick alliance among Nazis, fascists,
nationalists, and all manner of white suprema-
cists who have long promoted these notions but
wanted no part of Black politics unless it was about
expressing common separatist ideas.”
As Zirin suggests, the canards West and Irving
are sharing are hardly unique to the Black commu-
nity. Antisemitism and racism are social prejudices
“that all peoples and societies fall prey to,” is how
Kendell Pinkney, who is Black and Jewish, put it in
a JTA essay.

The Jewish community doesn’t have the luxury
of condescension when celebrities, however trou-
bled, insert insidious ideas into the social media
ecosphere. On Nov. 3, as the Nets, Kyrie, the NBA
and the Anti-Defamation League were going back
and forth on how to defuse his behavior, the FBI
warned New Jersey synagogues of a credible “broad
threat” against them, apparently from a man, so far
unidentified, who holds “radical extremist views.”
Jews are vigilant about diehard conspiracy theo-
ries, political dog whistles and online harassment
not because they want to “protect their status and
power,” but because they have seen spasms of
deadly violence inspired by garbage shared online.

Late on Nov. 3, Irving at last apologized for
his tweet, writing, “I posted a Documentary that
contained some false anti-Semitic statements,
narratives, and language that were untrue and
offensive to the Jewish Race/Religion, and I take
full accountability and responsibly for my actions.”
His statement came after the Nets suspended him
for a minimum of five games.

It’s not clear what other acts of contrition he
might undertake, but I suggest he read up on
the Leo Frank case, in which a Jewish man was
falsely accused of murder by the same bigots
who enforced Jim Crow. He might learn that when
it comes to confronting hate and bigotry, Jews
and Blacks have more to gain by listening to one
another than tweeting about each other. JE
Andrew Silow-Carroll is editor-in-chief of the New
York Jewish Week and senior editor of the Jewish
Telegraphic Agency.