Blacks and Jews Alliances And Arguments Author:Paul Berman (Editor) This is a stimulating collection of essays old and new, edited by Berman, whose provocative piece reprinted from the New Yorker-"The Other and the Almost the Same"-serves as introduction. Notable chestnuts include James Baldwin's "Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White" and Norman Podhoretz's "My Negro Problem-and Ours," updated wit... more »h an ungentle postscript. Other essayists include Andrew Hacker, Shelby Steele, Jim Sleeper, Clayborne Carson, Ellen Willis, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Leon Wieseltier and Cornel West. One might quibble over some omissions-no Letty Cottin Pogrebin, no black more nationalist then Derrick Bell-but this is a worthy omnibus. Most surprising are Joe Wood's meandering yet heartfelt meditation on race inspired by Podhoretz, French leftist Michel Feher's call for a difference-acknowledging "cosmopolitanism" as a middle ground between identity politics and liberal universalism and philosopher Laurence Thomas's subtly powerful suggestion that Jews, but not yet blacks, have group autonomy and a "narrative," a set of stories that defines values, positive goals, history and rituals.
Contents: On Spiegelman's valentine and having a headache / Paul Berman
-- The other and the almost the same / Paul Berman
-- Negroes are anti-Semitic because they're anti-white / James Baldwin
-- Literary Blacks and Jews, with afterword / Cynthia Ozick
-- My Negro problem
-- and ours, with postscript/ Norman Podhoretz
-- The problem Negro and other tales / Joe Wood
-- The politics of relations between African-Americans and Jews / Clayborne Carson
-- On Black-Jewish relations / Cornel West
-- Jewish racism, Black anti-semitism / Andrew Hacker
-- The lives people live / Julius Lester
-- Breaking our bond of shame / Shelby Steele
-- The myth of the powerful Jew, with prologue / Ellen Willis
-- The new anti-semitism : a geshrei / Richard Goldstein
-- The uses of anti-semitism, with memoirs of an anti-anti-semite / Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
-- Keeping a legacy of shared struggle / Bell Hooks
-- The battle for enlightenment at City College / Jim Sleeper
-- Taking yes for an answer / Leon Wieseltier
-- A semblance of safety / Derrick Bell
-- The schisms of '67... / Michel Feher
-- Group autonomy and narrative identity : Blacks and Jews / Laurence Thomas.« less