BROKEN ALLIANCE: The Turbulent Times Between Blacks and Jews in America

by Jonathan Kaufman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 1988

A thoughtful examination of the breakdown of the old Jewish/black civil-rights alliance and its deterioration into open enmity; by Pultizer Prize-winning reporter (Boston Globe) Kaufman. Kaufman delves deeply into the psyches of those he examines here--Paul Parks, Jack Greenberg, Rhody McCoy (of Ocean Hill/Brownsville fame), Bernie and Roz Ebstein, Martin Peretz, and Donna Brazile--making bis work not a history of blacks or Jews in America, but an evocative tapestry of ""a coalition that came together, worked great change, and then began to fall apart."" His approach works very well in rendering real and personal what are often seen as abstract groups. Kaufman pits the old alliance (a large majority of white civil-rights workers were northern Jews, and most of the movement's funding came from out of Jewish pockets) against the sort of hatred that developed only a few years later when a black schoolteacher in New York City read the following poem, written by one of her students, over the radio: ""Hey, Jew boy, with that yarmulke on your head/You pale-faced Jew boy--I wish you were dead."" The people of whom Kaufman writes become microcosms of this tension. Thus, Peretz, editor of The New Republic, made the move in two decades from civil-rights activist to the fringe of neoconservatism, and expended plenty of energy slashing Jesse Jackson for his seeming extremist stances. Kaufman concludes that the black/Jewish alliance was overstated to begin with; that it was, in effect, as much rooted in ""the hard currency of politics and self-interest as in love and idealism."" Thus, black leaders became perplexed when early Jewish support turned into anger at more extreme expressions of black power. Kaufman suggests that, despite an increasingly diversified population, America is more and more becoming ""balkanized."" His book demonstrates how good intentions can deteriorate into such fragmentation, and its perceptions deserve a wide readership.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1988

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Scribners

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION