Things I Never Want To Hear Again: "We Should Be More Like The Jews"

There is this constant meme among black folks that we can never come together to do anything right. As Ice Cube once said, "Broke up the family forever\And to this day black folk can't stick together." The other part of that logic holds that other ethnic groups--Jews are usually cited--are somehow better at supporting their own. I remember, a few years back, me and my good friend Eyal Press were coming home from a party and Brooklyn. During the train ride, I explained to him that while black antisemitism gets all the headlines, there is a certain sector of black folks that worship Jews for their vaunted sense of unity. Eyal got a good laugh out of that, mostly because in his picture of Jewish life, debating and fighting were central.

But I digress--my point is that I'm going to slap the next black person I hear say "We need to be more like the Jews and learn to stick together." First of all, it caricatures Jews, but more importantly it caricatures us. Last night Barack Obama won over 90 percent of the black vote in Indiana and North Carolina. I don't know what that is, if it isn't sticking together. Unity, in and of itself, isn't a virtue--black folks "unified" behind OJ. But I really believe, given the people left in the running, black folks really got behind the best man for the job. Last year pundits delighted themselves by pointing out that Barack Obama wasn't black enough. I don't know how you get any blacker than having 9 out of 10 of us behind you. I mean really. Malcolm couldn't even have gotten 9 out 10. To paraphrase Chris Rock, Obama is entering into Pat Riley territory.

Comments

[Derrick Gibson]

Maybe just one more time?

Beyond unity (which is above and beyond argument; Israel has multiple political parties and many sects of Judaism - but they all agree on the right to have a country called Israel), I believe we can model much of black society on what Jews have done, both here and around the world:

- while supporting and defending public schools, most of the Jewish kids I knew growing up also had a day school class every Saturday, where topics specific to their culture were passed on to the next generation.

- beyond just getting an education, many Jews are taught to work for themselves, either by starting their own business in the sense of a proprietor or as a professional hanging up their own shingle. Why do we teach our kids to "get a good job"?

- isn't there some benefit to having your own language, so that you can speak internally and share within your group - even in the presence of others? Kiswahili works here as a nice base language across most Bantu groups.

I am sure there are more benefits - and I really do not care whether we learn these things from Jewish people or any other - but the bottom line is we, as black people (although I am learning to like the phrase "American Afrikans") need to learn that we can accomplish so much more together, so that we can each individually reach our goals.

PS: I like the parallels that the phrase "American Afrikans" allows us to establish globally - British Afrikans, French Afrikans, Brazilian Afrikans, Kenyan Afrikans, Yoruban Afrikans, etc.) as it can be a means to:

- identify us wherever we may reside on the planet
- establish our common identity as Afrikans
- create larger familial groupings, so that we can enhance the tribal relationships with a common, larger context. It has to be us who ends the tribal bloodshed. We cannot ask the same countries that colonized us and enslaved us to teach us to live together in peace.

I know that Pan-Afrikanism was developed in the 20th century, but I believe it is the way to make the 21st century, The Afrikan Century.

[Andrea]

You keep telling yourself that one. It's your story and you are sticking to it. A 90% block is not a qualifier of unity. Mosts Blacks voted that way because it is the quickest, cheapest, and safest high they can get right now of delusional unity.

Your support for Obama prejudices logic --- or unless you are just admitting that the emotional act is more than superficial reactionary measure. Are we too minimize what "Unity" really means for a symbol of unity. How is that special when we can rally passionately to construct devices to facilitate everyday, less sensational, less tangible, less arousing acts of narcissistic role play?

I would like to consider the significance of Blacks supporting Obama of meaningful context but all the value estimates render is the beneficiary proxy of Obama's campaign. It's symbolic yet hallow in quantitative worth.

Idolizing the romanticism of Jewish Unity is a strategic tool to use in comparison and contrasts. There has to be an "X" model in order to hypothesize. Jews are the posterchild example of deference. It does not matter whether they all are not practicing to support monolithic solidarity. They do however have a binding element that gives them a perfunctory contingency to connect to for direction and realignment.

[Cobb]

You know, if there were 3 million blacks of the 36 million who did all that, there would still be 33 million who haven't yet. And we would be exactly where 'we' are. A nation of millions disconnected to a nation of millions.

I happen to have spoken French and Swahili at a young age, due to the fact that my uncle was an economics professor at the University of Ghana. Do you know how many black kids I met until 12th grade who also spoke Swahili? Zero. And of course when I asked for eggs and bacon for breakfast in Swahili, my mother would give me a whithering look.

Try it.

Try to take all of the black books by all of the black authors you have read and learned from, and try and suggest that you are the 'true' black man. Try to tell somebody that your sense of humor is like Charles Wright. Try to say that your sense of family is like Darryl Pinckney. Try to say that your political sense is like George Schuyler. Try to say that this is what blackness should be and it should be these character traits or values or principles, not skin color that should be the basis of a true black brotherhood.

No matter how tight you get your blackness, with your church, with your family, with your academic studies, with your personal growth and development - no matter where you get it or how you get it together, it will always be questioned. That is because at bottom, African Americans believe in blackness as a race-based phenomenon, not as cultural, or value based.

If your family would disown you for being in a strip club. If you are black, you must defend Sean Bell for being in a strip club, because to defy him is to be a traitor to your race, not to your values, your principles, your faith, your logic, your race - that thing that you cannot control, must control you and your interests.

It all comes down to that.

I wonder, TC, why the comparison galls you so. After all, we could all be Jews if we wanted.

[dnA]

Some of us are.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/16/us/16rabbi.html

[Kai]

Cobb, bravo for magnificently missing the point on Sean Bell again. Black people largely defend Sean Bell, because they realize that Sean Bell could have been any of our son's, fathers and brothers. Perhaps it will take a close encounter with the police of your own to realize that going to a strip club is a legal thing last I checked.

Congrats on learning Swahili as a kid, I wonder why you never met another kid who spoke it, if only we all had educated uncles who taught in Ghana. WHat is your point other than you are still clueless on Sean Bell?

Ta-Nehisi, I have to agree with Andrea, a vote for Obama is by no means a show of unity, if anything it is a display of identity politics, or it could be voting for the best available candidate, which he is. I think using the vote as a measuring stick is giving you a false positive on your unity-meter.

"Jews make up well over one-fifth of the student body in America's most prominent institutions of higher learning- wiki Jewish americans.

Thats one of several things we could be more like them with, they are only 2% of the population that is fucking remarkable.

[rainydaiyz]

Andrea, well said.