The Ocean Hill-Brownsville Conflict
Intellectual Struggles between Blacks and Jews at Mid-Century
By (author) Glen Anthony Harris
Publication date:
18 May 2012Length of book:
226 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739166833
The history of Black-Jewish relations from the beginning of the twentieth century shows that, while they were sometimes partners of convenience, there was also a deep suspicion of each other that broke out into frequent public exchanges. During the twentieth century, the entanglements of both groups have, at times, provided an important impetus for social justice in the United States and, at other times, have been the cause of great tension.
The Ocean Hill-Brownsville Conflict explores this fraught relationship, which is evident in the intellectual lives of these communities. The tension was as apparent in the life and works of Marcus Garvey, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin as it was in the exchanges between blacks and Jews in intellectual periodicals and journals in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. The Ocean Hill–Brownsville conflict was rooted in this tension and the longstanding differences over community control of school districts and racial preferences.
The Ocean Hill-Brownsville Conflict explores this fraught relationship, which is evident in the intellectual lives of these communities. The tension was as apparent in the life and works of Marcus Garvey, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin as it was in the exchanges between blacks and Jews in intellectual periodicals and journals in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. The Ocean Hill–Brownsville conflict was rooted in this tension and the longstanding differences over community control of school districts and racial preferences.
Devoting one chapter to the Ocean Hill-Brownsville conflict that pitted African American district leaders against Jewish teachers and administrators, Harris (Univ. of North Carolina, Wilmington) intriguingly explores at greater length the intellectual and conceptual roots of that clash. He examines the ideas of Jewish and black intellectuals ranging from Franz Boas, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Kenneth Clark, and Ralph Ellison to Rabbi Stephen Samuel Wise, Nathan Glazer, and Norman Podhoretz. Baldwin stated bluntly in the headline of his 1967 New York Times Magazine essay that 'Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White.' The psychologist Clark proved more hopeful about black-Jewish relations, although self-identifying Jewish liberals or social democrats—some later turned neoconservative, such as Podhoretz—increasingly expressed concerns by the 1960s. Podhoretz's Commentary magazine was at the heart of many of the intellectual squabbles, including those involving Ellison, who insisted that northern liberals had devolved into 'the new apologists for segregation.' Harris aptly examines the radical turn of the civil rights movement; his chapter on the New Left-Old Left clash fits less neatly. He concludes that US black and Jewish intellectuals sought different things, with the former desiring free engagement and the latter wanting an orderly existence protective of their interests. Summing Up: Recommended.