The matrices of malevolent ideologies: Blacks and Jews

This essay aims to shed some light on the perennial tensions between Blacks and Jews in the United States. Beginning with a brief account of both racism and anti-semitism, I argue that both groups have embraced, if only unwittingly, negative stereotypes concerning the other. I then suggest an innocent confusion that came about during the Civil Rights movement. Finally, I stress the fact that each group must recognize that its suffering, however egregious, does not thereby give it such substantial insight regarding the suffering of the other group that each can understand the other without listening to the other.