Brigham Young University BYU ScholarsArchive Theses and Dissertations 2012-05-31 Jewish Ethnic Identity and the Dissolution of the Black-Jewish Alliance Nathan G. Caplin Brigham Young University - Provo Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd Part of the History Commons BYU ScholarsArchive Citation Caplin, Nathan G., "Jewish Ethnic Identity and the Dissolution of the Black-Jewish Alliance" (2012). Theses and Dissertations. 3574. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/3574 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by BYU ScholarsArchive. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of BYU ScholarsArchive. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. Jewish Ethnic Identity and the Dissolution of the Black-Jewish Alliance Nathan Gregg Caplin A thesis submitted to the faculty of Brigham Young University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Ignacio M. Garcia, Chair Lynn D. Wardle Mark I. Choate Department of History Brigham Young University June 2012 Copyright © 2012 Nathan G. Caplin All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT Jewish Ethnic Identity and the Dissolution of the Black-Jewish Alliance Nathan Gregg Caplin Department of History, BYU Master of Arts Since the early 20th century, Jews promoted civil rights for Black Americans in law, society, and employment. The Jewish hand of friendship developed into a natural alliance of African-American and Jewish leaders committed to racial equality that blossomed in the 1950s and 1960s and culminated with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Despite their long term mutual efforts towards racial equality, the Black-Jewish Alliance faltered after Jews and Blacks cooperated to achieve these victories, and their alliance lay in ruins by the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Black-Jewish Alliance began to wane as government institutionalized racial preferences in education and employment. While observers argue affirmative action ended these communities’ cooperation, government-mandated racial preferences merely highlighted the underlying cause of the disintegration of Black-Jewish Alliance: the transformation of Jewish American identity from racial minority to “white ethnic.” The Jewish racial transformation—a gradual shift in their association with ethnic communities—augmented racial disputes between Blacks and Jews. As Jewish identity shifted from perceived racial minority to American white ethnicity, the Black-Jewish racial fault line shook along the fronts of Black Nationalism and neoconservatism. These racial cleavages—spurred by the fluidity of Jewish ethnic identity— highlighted divergent Black and Jewish conceptions of the meaning and purpose of civil rights. The chasm separating Black and Jewish conceptions of civil rights manifested itself in the 1970s when the champions of racial equality advocated competing sides of a still contentious philosophical war fought on the battlefields of the U.S. Supreme Court in University of California Regents v. Bakke (1978) and DeFunis v. Odegaard (1974). Keywords: affirmative action, African American, alliance, anti-Semitism, Bakke, black, Black Nationalism, civil rights, ethnic, Jewish, neoconservatism. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank the chair of my thesis committee, Ignacio M. Garcia, for his diligence, patience, guidance, and mentoring. Special thanks to Lynn Wardle for his legal insight and to Mark Choate for his assistance. Thank you to Paul Baltes for his ever watchful revising and to Brian Cannon for his fastidious footnote direction. There are numerous others I would like to thank for their advice, guidance, and wisdom: Harvey Caplin, Betty Lucille Holloway Caplin, Corey Smallcanyon, Julie Radle, Paul Kerry, Christopher Jones, Larry Ping, Rodney Bohac, Susan Sessions Rugh, Brett Dowdle, Neil York, Mary Stovall Richards, and Allan Payne. Toni Brooks Caplin instilled in me a love of history as she read to us children classical literature and our great-great grandmother Juanita Brooks’ short stories and tomes of the American West. I express gratitude to my father Steven Caplin and my aunt Marilyn Dingfelder Caplin for inspiring the question my thesis addresses. Thank you to my father’s fifth grade teacher, Mr. Thompson—and many African American educators like him—for breaking the color barrier in Miami to teach Latino, Anglo, and Jewish school children, and for instilling in my family gratitude for the extensive contributions of brave Black Americans like Mr. Thompson and our family’s hero, Ralph Bunche. I am grateful to my wife, Emily Gubler Caplin, my continuous support and dearest friend. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 THE DISSOLUTION OF THE BLACK-JEWISH ALLIANCE: INTRODUCTION AND LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................1 The Black-Jewish Alliance’s Background ................................................................................4 Black and Jewish Conceptions of Civil Rights and Legal Battles over Affirmative Action .....................................................................................................................................11 Literature Review of the Dissolution of Black-Jewish Alliance ............................................13 The History of Jewish Ethnic Identity was the Foundation of Jewish American Opposition to Affirmative Action ...........................................................................................22 Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................23 CHAPTER 2 JEWISH RACIAL IDENTITY AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: THE BREAKUP OF THE BLACK-JEWISH ALLIANCE ...................................................................24 History of Affirmative Action in the Context of Jewish Racial Consciousness .....................26 Jewish Opposition to Affirmative Action ...............................................................................30 Historical Jewish Racial Consciousness .................................................................................31 Early Jewish Racial Identity ...................................................................................................32 Benjamin Disraeli, 1804-1881 “[N]o existing race is so much entitled to the esteem and gratitude of society as the Hebrew” .................................................................................33 20th Century Case Law and Jewish Racial Identity Rollins v. State of Alabama (1922): Deep South Inquisition into Whiteness? ....................................................................40 The National Geographic Magazine: Jews Were Considered Racially Distinct from European Ethnicities ...............................................................................................................45 20th Century Considerations of Jewish Race in the Media .....................................................50 The New York Times: Jewish Identity and “Harlem on My Mind” ......................................51 Official Military Practice: The Dog Tags of WWII ...............................................................52 Changing Jewish Racial Identity – 1940s to 1950s ................................................................54 Jewish Fear of Quotas .............................................................................................................55 iv The Erasure of Jewish Racial Identity from the Collective Conscience of America: “Exodus” and the Anti-Defamation League “White Jews” and Film: Exodus (1960) .........57 Jewish Organizations Attempt to Minimize Jewish Racial Distinction .................................62 Many Jews Recognized Themselves as a Distinct Ethnic Identity .........................................63 African American Perception of Jewish Racial Identity Because Jews are the best Christians – Black Mississippian (1964) Jews are almost like Negroes – Black resident of Chicago (1967) .....................................................................................................64 Black Anti-Semitism ..............................................................................................................69 Martin Luther King and other Black Leaders Defend Jews and Jewish Participation in the Civil Rights Movement.................................................................................................71 Black Criticism of Jewish Whiteness .....................................................................................73 Culmination of Jewish Opposition to Affirmative Action and Whitening of Jewish Racial Identity – 1960s-1970s ................................................................................................75 CHAPTER 3 THE DISSOLUTION OF THE BLACK-JEWISH ALLIANCE: BLACK NATIONALISM AND NEOCONSERVATISM ..........................................................................79 Jewish Identity Transformation and the True Alliance Theory ..............................................80 Black Nationalists Reject the Black-Jewish Civil Rights Model ...........................................81 Anti-Semitism and Civil Rights: Black Power Players Remove Jews from the Movement ...............................................................................................................................84 Black Power and Its Reaction to Jewish Americans’ Shifting Ethnic and Racial Identity ....................................................................................................................................86