Long before the recent hullabaloo surrounding Kanye West’s self-immolation on the steps of the Anti-Defamation League’s headquarters, much ink had been spilled over the complicated relationship between American blacks and Jews - though, not much recently.
This is well written and engaging. I don’t think it is actually that spicy insofar as no one is denigrated and made the sole cause of the dynamics you point out.
I’m Jewish. One of my closest friend as a high school kid in Philadelphian in the 1980s was a black kid where most of his cousins were into the whole black nationalism/Islam thing. Most had gone to jail and this was a source of self discipline and belonging from what I saw. They were all I to the white devil stuff but they were actually quite kind to me - at least when I was in front of them. Easier to be bigoted to an abstraction than a real person. It always struck me as a rather cobbled together set of beliefs. Lots of stuff in the hood was jury-rigged and kind of wonky so why not the religion and political leaders too. There was no elks club or rotary. The small business owners were few and far between and the businesses were very small indeed. My buddies mom was a pillar of the community and she owned a small laundromat. She was a great and sweet woman but she certainly didn’t have a lot of extra resources, time or administrative/business capacity to fulfill what one might want in a pillar of the community. My buddies dad was an addicted longshoreman generally not in the picture. So as a role model her greatest accomplishment was owning a rather ramshackle laundromat. Single mom. Getting pregnant by a guy who blew his $ on crack. A great heart. Loved her son like crazy and did her best to figure out something better for him. She was than most in the neighborhood but a lot of people would say her life wasn’t stable or something to aspire to.
So much of my buddies community and life was improvised. The history they taught each other was improvised. Work was random and not building towards any concrete goal. The community leaders were people who had a bit more but not too much to share or teach. Repairs to houses and businesses were improvised and never took anything up to where things had used to be. And a huge chunk of the folks in the neighborhood just wrecked stuff or got up to craziness.
One of my buddy’s cousins wanted him (a decent student who eventually got off to college for a year or two before he flamed out unable to handle the freedom without his mom riding his ass) to break into a police impound lot to break into his car which had been impounded to get the drugs he had left in the trunk of his car. Maybe don’t illegal park your registry expired car with your stash in the trunk. But also don’t try and bribe your little cousin into screwing his life up.
The system had definitely abandoned these people (most notably a guy got killed on my friend’s stoop and the cops didn’t bother to deal with the murder scene till the morning. Left him on their front steps for hours till they could get there.
That being said they were trying to solve an unsolvable problem. The criminals in the community were petty criminals. No Meyer Lanskys. Philly tried to ape the mob with the Junior Black Mafia but couldn’t even pull of criminality as well as the immigrants did. The problem was that the black community just didn’t have enough smart motivated people. The few that were there were dragged down. The women had no good men to choose from. The politics and religion was often similarly kind of stupid, thin, self-serving and wasn’t capable of leading to things like small business development and home ownership. It could get a few folks a storefront activism gig and make some locals into micro-celebrities as good talkers of this stuff on the corner. It didn’t offer a real center for finding a good spouse, telling you how to live a good life, how to raise a child, what you owe to your neighbors.
And if your culture is fundamentally screwed and you can’t acknowledge it then resentment, jealousy and wishful thinking will take root like crazy and make things worse.
My buddy failed out from a full ride scholarship he got at Duke. To this day I feel terribly guilty as me and my family helped him apply to colleges as we knew unlike his mother how to apply to schools and new a black kid in the 80s from the hood who had decent test scores could and did get a full boat scholarship. But he didn’t have the cultural capital to know how to party at college while making sure not to fail out.
His mom died after he was at school. He moved back to Philly after failing out. he has kids from different women and works construction and is always trying to borrow money he can’t pay back. We drifted apart.
This is super long but this is one bit of lived history between a black and Jewish kid. We really loved each other like brothers. Didn’t have a happy ending. His community was absolutely screwed up. Jews are one of the earliest minority that managed to make it at least materially once the world have them a decent chance.
I used to have to pretend to date one of his girlfriends in high school as her parents wouldn’t have been cool with a black boyfriend. Which seems terrible. But now as a father I think back to him and he started having sex when he was 13. He has children with multiple women. He was funny and charming. Also smoked a lot of weed and his dad was an addict. If I had a daughter this is not the kind of guy I’d want for her. You would have to hope that he transcended his background. That is really really difficult.
Did you ever consider they had a "cobbled together set of beliefs" because unlike Jews they had no religion or standards they could call thier own?
Jews routinely exclude others from thier own inner circles and communities based on their own ethnic identity. Nobody else in America is allowed to do this openly.
While you seem to be content to blame the plight of African Americans to be largely attributed to themselves (and you're not entirely wrong) I think you miss the point that the Jewish people having an unspoken social privilege in America that allows them to openly discriminate and exclude others at will has helped them form those cohesive communities and beliefs that you claim African American people lack.
The essay cited by DC about the Jews and African Americans being sideways both want to wear the banner and get the benifits of victimhood seems obvious in retrospect.
Except America herself did this to African American people and not Jews.
From such a perspective, America doesn't owe the Jewish people the hall pass they get to discriminate at will. In fact, America really doesn't owe the Jewish people anything at all.
But it's African American people who really do have a legitimate claim here. It seems natural they would be disgruntled by the Jews getting thier dues instead when looked at from thier perspective
Do you actually think that everyone reading this piece or anyone capable of writing my comment is unaware of the historical reasons that black people are adrift and have less contiguous cultural heritage?
And do you actually believe in our identity obsessed culture or given the history of wasp settlers versus catholic immigrant history that Jews are the only group who generated ethnic mutual aid societies and social institutions? Or that the interplay between Protestants and Catholics isn’t inextricable from ethnic cultural lines? How to assimilate versus how to keep some connection to a tradition is a difficult problem that no group or individual can solve perfectly. And even if most aren’t as forcefully disconnected by something like slavery every American group struggles with this.
What about my comment made you think I am wanting some special dispensation for my Judaism? We all struggle with history. No one got a perfect shake. Best you can hope for is a stubborn adherence to the facts as best as you can ascertain them and a decent amount of sensitivity to each others reasonable loyalties, tragedies and triumphs.
You're making some good points that I won't argue against.
But you're disregarding my chief point that Jews have been given a carte blanche to discriminate and exclude anyone they choose who isn't in thier circle.
Like it or not, nobody else on earth in America gets to do that.
You're right, everyone in America has had to fight for thier place and earn thier respective place
... except the Jews.
There status of victimhood and privilege was given in America
Not earned in America.
You can't honestly deny that.
Many unique cultural groups in America have faced adversary. But only Jews are given special status.
African American people, and everyone else facing similar degredation to thier respective cultures means nothing. But Jews, are a protected class. Insulated from all and everything. Because the powerful monetary interests that be decided it would be that way
We all see it.
Jews have , by standard and practice, advanced themselves and excluded others by principle. And this has been accepted practice for them. But not by anybody else.
South Africa was destroyed and laid wasted because of apartheid conditions that the world rejected by the Boer and black people.
But in Israel, where nearly identical conditions exist with the Jews and Palestinians, we're simply not allowed to discuss it. Despite the obvious parallels and circumstances.
I guess Mr 'wiengard'has no desire to debate the difference between the privilege the Zionist agendas could buy the Jewish people vs the African American people who were denied the same privilege because they couldn't pay the same fee's.
It's funny how you mention the press attempting to act like this is a singular event, and then go on to write an essay about it. Anyone who's listened to your God's socialist series or knows their civil rights history has seen this play out before, but it seems like this is a subject that "polite society" would rather get swept under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist. Thanks for having the balls to broach this subject Darryl, it's only going to get wilder from here and you're one of the few that has something nuanced to say about these topics
God's Socialist. One of the best pieces of work I have ever consumed. I'm not kidding when I say I think about (micro & macro) issues from that series on an almost daily basis. I have listened to it once a year for 3 years now.
It was recorded during the 2020 riots and I was living on Hollywood Blvd, it crystalized what I was seeing play out. Cult like behavior, socialist propaganda, using minorities as a battering ram to push through the frontlines of civility and intimidation. Up until that point, I knew we were being fucked over but I couldn't quite put my finger on all pieces. That series was a bucket of cold water. All of my questions were answered.
If you go to the Martyrmade podcast, you can find the series...IIRC it's in three parts. Truly worth the listen! I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment expressed by others; it is an incredible piece of writing. It's difficult to find good writing on such fraught subjects that don't attempt to convert you, the reader, to one side or the other. Darryl does a masterful job of showing the background that generated Peoples Temple, without justifying what Peoples Temple did. You come away feeling heartache for these people and how badly they went off the rails, without feeling hatred towards them.
This is a beautiful piece; the writing especially, but with such a fraught subject matter you’ve done a really admirable job floating high above the fray when appropriate and diving deep when you need to do so to make the right impression. And always with genuine sympathy, and empathy, for both sides, which is the hardest part.
Just an impressive, difficult, and commendable piece of work.
Daryl is a master at painting uncomfortable truths while wearing his literary painter’s smock and keeping his Sunday best clean. I say that with the utmost respect.
Called it! US Black and Jewish history for the win.
Anyway, it's a tough subject, but I think you nailed it. Relying on all of those quotes and speaking with obvious empathy should mean you are safe from any unfair accusations.
I really feel for American's blacks. Losing their Jewish allies wasn't good, and they've recently been used as a political football by "anti-racist" progressives and anti-crime conservatives in a way that is not healthy. An unwillingness to call out the excesses of Black Lives Matter and the post-Floyd riots by the "friendly" press cost them a whole lot of public support.
Now you have ever growing numbers of Latinos and Asians who do not feel responsible for slavery and will not politically agree to special treatment for black people. The only hope I see is that many no longer want to be taken for granted by the Democrats. This should result in more courting by both parties, which can hopefully result in greater political participation and be funneled into real investment in their communities.
Yeah Darryl made that same point in one of his broadcasts, though I can't recall which one. They can celebrate the downfall of the white majority in the US all they like but the black minority is more worse off than ever, and the Sino/Latino rising majority doesn't want to hear about racial grevience from 200 years ago (especially as the majority of slaves crossing the Atlantic went south but ssshhhh!).
I think it was the Rittenhouse episode. That line stuck with me as well. We forget that blacks make up a dwindling 13% of the population. White libs need them to stay down like a mother with munchausen needs her child to stay sick.
I agree with all of this, but particularly this part:
“[T]hey’ve recently been used as a political football by ‘anti-racist’ progressives and anti-crime conservatives in a way that is not healthy. An unwillingness to call out the excesses of Black Lives Matter and the post-Floyd riots by the ‘friendly’ press cost them a whole lot of public support.”
This has been one of my biggest issues with most people left of center since 2020, particularly in my personal life (I actually grew up and my mother still lives about four blocks from where Floyd was killed). After what happened in Minneapolis, where almost all of my friends and loved ones want to be “good progressives”, it became clear how disturbingly uniform the response and opinion would be among almost everyone I knew. Only my mother--who is a journalism veteran from the 70s and 80s, so she’s legit--was able to articulate why she didn’t want to outright call the riots what they were: to essentially admit to conservative critics that they had a point and thus invalidate the BLM movement as a whole. Nevertheless she did admit it and she also pointed out that her feelings--which did not override the truth--are really what was at the core of why so many people (the media included) didn’t want do anything except play down the worst social unrest this country has had in half a century. Essentially, there are some more radical types who genuinely believe rioting was a good, natural, and necessary response to the killing of Floyd, but I suspect the vast majority just don’t care all that much about black people as people and see them, as you put it, as a monolithic political football and are only concerned with being perceived as a.) good progressives and b.) totally not racist white allies. This behavior on the part of progressives only incentivizes many conservatives to behave accordingly in the inverse and it, as you also say, is not healthy. And ultimately American blacks are probably going to be the biggest victims in this.
I’m glad I’m not the only one in our space trying to parse this out. My own analysis was much smaller in scope (I only went back to 2015 or so) and looked at it from the modern “privilege” discourse/framework described by Phoebe Maltz-Bovy in her great book on the subject, so getting actual, concrete historical context is always welcome.
Honestly most antisemitism I’ve experienced has been a diverse (lol) affair when my own heritage comes up but when it’s come from someone who’s black it’s been very telling to see a switch flip. I don’t know any NOI folks or BHI folks (to my knowledge) but the strain of “antisemitism-lite” that comes from knee-jerk Palestinian rights fetishists (as in the ones who don’t understand the complexities of the geopolitics and history of the region and just know that to be a “good progressive” you have to name check Palestine) has always produced an awkward tension because it seems like there’s a very strong disconnect with people like that and how Jews or people of Jewish descent blend in perfectly if they don’t wear a yarmulke or have the weird curly cue hair. I don’t care if someone takes a position on Palestine like that--it’s usually rooted in something defensible. But I do think it’s telling when some of the stereotypes start to seep through.
I guess this gets at why I do think antisemitism deserves its own sort of category when it comes to types of bigotry; while all bigotry is rooted in psychological structures that make us suspicious of those we consider “counterfeit”, Jews--especially Ashkenazim, like my ancestors--became particular victims of that psychological bias, and thus the subsequent discrimination and violence, because they did essentially “look like” everyone else (of course adding to the fact that they had become associated with specific professions, including sordid ones, because frankly, they didn’t really have much choice in medieval Europe but to do things that didn’t involve trade guilds).
Where I part company with a lot of folks is that I think this dynamic is why antisemitism requires unique discourse. Unfortunately, this can turn into demands for unique (read: special) treatment, which has always rubbed me the wrong way with some of the more overzealous ADL types. I get how invoking the Holocaust can feel REALLY cheap to motivated black activists--as was demonstrated by Al Sharpton back in the 90s on I wanna say Springer, when he shouted “I’m sick to death of hearin’ ‘bout the Holocaust!”--but I do think it’s necessary, BUT ONLY WHEN IT’S RELEVANT. Same goes for black activists invoking slavery. This is why both conversations require unique, distinct discourse 99% of the time.
That is, of course, unless someone like you is trying, brother. Well done and looking forward to the next one.
I listened to a Roundtable by Bari Weiss on this subject and my lasting impression is of one of the panelists managing to blame Trump for the deterioration in Jewish, black relations, with no one even mentioning that every video you see of violence against Jews in Brooklyn etc involves blacks, it was if it’s just an intellectual thing. Big win to you.
Your insights into the life long effect (including prejudice and shame) of being beaten up as a child by members of an intrinsically meaner/stronger racial group resonates with me -- I experienced multiple brown on white violence as a child and to this day as a 63 year old I still think about this occasionally concurrent with a variety of emotions. I try not to let this make me a rascist but deep down??
Excellent essay. Thank you. I was reminded of my (ex) Rabbi, who still dutifully attends Thanksgiving Jewish/ Black dinners in New York city, hoping to build solidarity and common understanding using 1950s methods. He is one to push aside Ye or Sharpton as outliers, no matter what. I think a further wrinkle is that most American Jews today are no longer the "Podhoretz Jews" (a recent boss came to me on the eve of Passover asking "is this when we don't eat bread, or when we fast?"). They have become staunch believers of the Dem Party and are reliably anti-Israel, and pro any and all group grievances and microaggressions (BLM, "Stop Asian Hate!" Love is Love). I'm reminded of your essay mentioning Robert Maxwell and how post WWII many Jews thought themselves as Jewish, with strong Judaic moral tenets and obligations. Can the same be said of most American Jewry today? Is Doug Emhoff Jewish the way Podhoretz was? Zuckerberg? Merrick Garland? Admiral Levine? Jews of my parents' generation contributed to hospital wings (Zuck gets points here), and synagogues with attached day-schools. Today they contribute to Schumer's latest fundraiser. We are likely hearing the last of the howls of protest about antisemetic comments by Blacks from Jewish organizations.
I often listen to The Glenn (Lowry) Show, looking for Black intellectuals with different views, but my impression is that he's walking in the wilderness all alone. Sorry for the rambling, but I cannot pull these threads together as masterfully as you. Merry Christmas.
Great history, sober approach. Imagine if Baldwin debated Podhoretz instead of Buckley. The street-smart Brooklyn Jewish kid instead of the pampered Catholic intellectual with a voice only National Lampoon could love.
I must say you have a special gift when it comes to handling topics that are so touchy. Excellent piece and I believe you will escape being shot down in flames or crucified. Merry christmas DC. Love your work. Its important what you do👍
Good essay although I tend to think the white southerners who are so easily looked down upon in todays world as this holiday season West Point is taking the time to finally get rid of all indications that Robert E. Lee ever existed.
Those southerners after the American civil war had a difficult time integrating with a black culture that was very different than theirs. The whites of the old confederacy get roasted for this difficulty in the history books and all the symbols of white southern culture is now denigrated but if we look at the history of the United States it seems to me those in the north flying that Yankee flag had a equal if not a worse time of it finding that smooth path of integration that is still rocky to this day.
I went to high school (early 2010s) where it was 50/50 white and black with many of the black students coming from a bad parts of town due to bussing programs. It was an experience that one can’t really talk about without sounding racist in today’s climate. Podhoretz type experiences are still very prominent today, yet are never talked about.
What a shame that simply sharing your experiences would get you labeled as a racist. I still have hope that one day society will once again rise above the sophistication of children.
Honestly all my problems stemmed from the white kids who wished they were black. Most of the black kids were glad to be out of the hellhole their schools had become.
RE: whether it's a good or bad thing that major publications don't run articles like those from Baldwin or Podhertz...there are articles like that, but they only run one direction and their authors don't have the intellectual gifts of either man. It's a long way down from Baldwin to Coates. Reminds me of the essay from Ebony you discussed in the Whose America prelude...better written that most anything recently published in the prestige press.
This is well written and engaging. I don’t think it is actually that spicy insofar as no one is denigrated and made the sole cause of the dynamics you point out.
I’m Jewish. One of my closest friend as a high school kid in Philadelphian in the 1980s was a black kid where most of his cousins were into the whole black nationalism/Islam thing. Most had gone to jail and this was a source of self discipline and belonging from what I saw. They were all I to the white devil stuff but they were actually quite kind to me - at least when I was in front of them. Easier to be bigoted to an abstraction than a real person. It always struck me as a rather cobbled together set of beliefs. Lots of stuff in the hood was jury-rigged and kind of wonky so why not the religion and political leaders too. There was no elks club or rotary. The small business owners were few and far between and the businesses were very small indeed. My buddies mom was a pillar of the community and she owned a small laundromat. She was a great and sweet woman but she certainly didn’t have a lot of extra resources, time or administrative/business capacity to fulfill what one might want in a pillar of the community. My buddies dad was an addicted longshoreman generally not in the picture. So as a role model her greatest accomplishment was owning a rather ramshackle laundromat. Single mom. Getting pregnant by a guy who blew his $ on crack. A great heart. Loved her son like crazy and did her best to figure out something better for him. She was than most in the neighborhood but a lot of people would say her life wasn’t stable or something to aspire to.
So much of my buddies community and life was improvised. The history they taught each other was improvised. Work was random and not building towards any concrete goal. The community leaders were people who had a bit more but not too much to share or teach. Repairs to houses and businesses were improvised and never took anything up to where things had used to be. And a huge chunk of the folks in the neighborhood just wrecked stuff or got up to craziness.
One of my buddy’s cousins wanted him (a decent student who eventually got off to college for a year or two before he flamed out unable to handle the freedom without his mom riding his ass) to break into a police impound lot to break into his car which had been impounded to get the drugs he had left in the trunk of his car. Maybe don’t illegal park your registry expired car with your stash in the trunk. But also don’t try and bribe your little cousin into screwing his life up.
The system had definitely abandoned these people (most notably a guy got killed on my friend’s stoop and the cops didn’t bother to deal with the murder scene till the morning. Left him on their front steps for hours till they could get there.
That being said they were trying to solve an unsolvable problem. The criminals in the community were petty criminals. No Meyer Lanskys. Philly tried to ape the mob with the Junior Black Mafia but couldn’t even pull of criminality as well as the immigrants did. The problem was that the black community just didn’t have enough smart motivated people. The few that were there were dragged down. The women had no good men to choose from. The politics and religion was often similarly kind of stupid, thin, self-serving and wasn’t capable of leading to things like small business development and home ownership. It could get a few folks a storefront activism gig and make some locals into micro-celebrities as good talkers of this stuff on the corner. It didn’t offer a real center for finding a good spouse, telling you how to live a good life, how to raise a child, what you owe to your neighbors.
And if your culture is fundamentally screwed and you can’t acknowledge it then resentment, jealousy and wishful thinking will take root like crazy and make things worse.
My buddy failed out from a full ride scholarship he got at Duke. To this day I feel terribly guilty as me and my family helped him apply to colleges as we knew unlike his mother how to apply to schools and new a black kid in the 80s from the hood who had decent test scores could and did get a full boat scholarship. But he didn’t have the cultural capital to know how to party at college while making sure not to fail out.
His mom died after he was at school. He moved back to Philly after failing out. he has kids from different women and works construction and is always trying to borrow money he can’t pay back. We drifted apart.
This is super long but this is one bit of lived history between a black and Jewish kid. We really loved each other like brothers. Didn’t have a happy ending. His community was absolutely screwed up. Jews are one of the earliest minority that managed to make it at least materially once the world have them a decent chance.
I used to have to pretend to date one of his girlfriends in high school as her parents wouldn’t have been cool with a black boyfriend. Which seems terrible. But now as a father I think back to him and he started having sex when he was 13. He has children with multiple women. He was funny and charming. Also smoked a lot of weed and his dad was an addict. If I had a daughter this is not the kind of guy I’d want for her. You would have to hope that he transcended his background. That is really really difficult.
What an interesting bit of bio you have written here. Insightful and sensitively shared.
Fitting, given the similar qualities in DC's writing.
Did you ever consider they had a "cobbled together set of beliefs" because unlike Jews they had no religion or standards they could call thier own?
Jews routinely exclude others from thier own inner circles and communities based on their own ethnic identity. Nobody else in America is allowed to do this openly.
While you seem to be content to blame the plight of African Americans to be largely attributed to themselves (and you're not entirely wrong) I think you miss the point that the Jewish people having an unspoken social privilege in America that allows them to openly discriminate and exclude others at will has helped them form those cohesive communities and beliefs that you claim African American people lack.
The essay cited by DC about the Jews and African Americans being sideways both want to wear the banner and get the benifits of victimhood seems obvious in retrospect.
Except America herself did this to African American people and not Jews.
From such a perspective, America doesn't owe the Jewish people the hall pass they get to discriminate at will. In fact, America really doesn't owe the Jewish people anything at all.
But it's African American people who really do have a legitimate claim here. It seems natural they would be disgruntled by the Jews getting thier dues instead when looked at from thier perspective
Do you actually think that everyone reading this piece or anyone capable of writing my comment is unaware of the historical reasons that black people are adrift and have less contiguous cultural heritage?
And do you actually believe in our identity obsessed culture or given the history of wasp settlers versus catholic immigrant history that Jews are the only group who generated ethnic mutual aid societies and social institutions? Or that the interplay between Protestants and Catholics isn’t inextricable from ethnic cultural lines? How to assimilate versus how to keep some connection to a tradition is a difficult problem that no group or individual can solve perfectly. And even if most aren’t as forcefully disconnected by something like slavery every American group struggles with this.
What about my comment made you think I am wanting some special dispensation for my Judaism? We all struggle with history. No one got a perfect shake. Best you can hope for is a stubborn adherence to the facts as best as you can ascertain them and a decent amount of sensitivity to each others reasonable loyalties, tragedies and triumphs.
You're making some good points that I won't argue against.
But you're disregarding my chief point that Jews have been given a carte blanche to discriminate and exclude anyone they choose who isn't in thier circle.
Like it or not, nobody else on earth in America gets to do that.
You're right, everyone in America has had to fight for thier place and earn thier respective place
... except the Jews.
There status of victimhood and privilege was given in America
Not earned in America.
You can't honestly deny that.
Many unique cultural groups in America have faced adversary. But only Jews are given special status.
African American people, and everyone else facing similar degredation to thier respective cultures means nothing. But Jews, are a protected class. Insulated from all and everything. Because the powerful monetary interests that be decided it would be that way
We all see it.
Jews have , by standard and practice, advanced themselves and excluded others by principle. And this has been accepted practice for them. But not by anybody else.
South Africa was destroyed and laid wasted because of apartheid conditions that the world rejected by the Boer and black people.
But in Israel, where nearly identical conditions exist with the Jews and Palestinians, we're simply not allowed to discuss it. Despite the obvious parallels and circumstances.
This cannot be factually denied. And you know it
I guess Mr 'wiengard'has no desire to debate the difference between the privilege the Zionist agendas could buy the Jewish people vs the African American people who were denied the same privilege because they couldn't pay the same fee's.
Thanks for clearing that up Aaron
C'mon Mr 'wiengard'.
Let's openly discuss this
It's funny how you mention the press attempting to act like this is a singular event, and then go on to write an essay about it. Anyone who's listened to your God's socialist series or knows their civil rights history has seen this play out before, but it seems like this is a subject that "polite society" would rather get swept under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist. Thanks for having the balls to broach this subject Darryl, it's only going to get wilder from here and you're one of the few that has something nuanced to say about these topics
God's Socialist. One of the best pieces of work I have ever consumed. I'm not kidding when I say I think about (micro & macro) issues from that series on an almost daily basis. I have listened to it once a year for 3 years now.
It was recorded during the 2020 riots and I was living on Hollywood Blvd, it crystalized what I was seeing play out. Cult like behavior, socialist propaganda, using minorities as a battering ram to push through the frontlines of civility and intimidation. Up until that point, I knew we were being fucked over but I couldn't quite put my finger on all pieces. That series was a bucket of cold water. All of my questions were answered.
Do you have the link to this?
If you go to the Martyrmade podcast, you can find the series...IIRC it's in three parts. Truly worth the listen! I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment expressed by others; it is an incredible piece of writing. It's difficult to find good writing on such fraught subjects that don't attempt to convert you, the reader, to one side or the other. Darryl does a masterful job of showing the background that generated Peoples Temple, without justifying what Peoples Temple did. You come away feeling heartache for these people and how badly they went off the rails, without feeling hatred towards them.
I dunno, there are a few I feel hatred towards. Jones in particular.
Agreed!
This is a beautiful piece; the writing especially, but with such a fraught subject matter you’ve done a really admirable job floating high above the fray when appropriate and diving deep when you need to do so to make the right impression. And always with genuine sympathy, and empathy, for both sides, which is the hardest part.
Just an impressive, difficult, and commendable piece of work.
Thank you, Randall, that really means a lot
Daryl is a master at painting uncomfortable truths while wearing his literary painter’s smock and keeping his Sunday best clean. I say that with the utmost respect.
Called it! US Black and Jewish history for the win.
Anyway, it's a tough subject, but I think you nailed it. Relying on all of those quotes and speaking with obvious empathy should mean you are safe from any unfair accusations.
I really feel for American's blacks. Losing their Jewish allies wasn't good, and they've recently been used as a political football by "anti-racist" progressives and anti-crime conservatives in a way that is not healthy. An unwillingness to call out the excesses of Black Lives Matter and the post-Floyd riots by the "friendly" press cost them a whole lot of public support.
Now you have ever growing numbers of Latinos and Asians who do not feel responsible for slavery and will not politically agree to special treatment for black people. The only hope I see is that many no longer want to be taken for granted by the Democrats. This should result in more courting by both parties, which can hopefully result in greater political participation and be funneled into real investment in their communities.
Yeah Darryl made that same point in one of his broadcasts, though I can't recall which one. They can celebrate the downfall of the white majority in the US all they like but the black minority is more worse off than ever, and the Sino/Latino rising majority doesn't want to hear about racial grevience from 200 years ago (especially as the majority of slaves crossing the Atlantic went south but ssshhhh!).
I think it was the Rittenhouse episode. That line stuck with me as well. We forget that blacks make up a dwindling 13% of the population. White libs need them to stay down like a mother with munchausen needs her child to stay sick.
I agree with all of this, but particularly this part:
“[T]hey’ve recently been used as a political football by ‘anti-racist’ progressives and anti-crime conservatives in a way that is not healthy. An unwillingness to call out the excesses of Black Lives Matter and the post-Floyd riots by the ‘friendly’ press cost them a whole lot of public support.”
This has been one of my biggest issues with most people left of center since 2020, particularly in my personal life (I actually grew up and my mother still lives about four blocks from where Floyd was killed). After what happened in Minneapolis, where almost all of my friends and loved ones want to be “good progressives”, it became clear how disturbingly uniform the response and opinion would be among almost everyone I knew. Only my mother--who is a journalism veteran from the 70s and 80s, so she’s legit--was able to articulate why she didn’t want to outright call the riots what they were: to essentially admit to conservative critics that they had a point and thus invalidate the BLM movement as a whole. Nevertheless she did admit it and she also pointed out that her feelings--which did not override the truth--are really what was at the core of why so many people (the media included) didn’t want do anything except play down the worst social unrest this country has had in half a century. Essentially, there are some more radical types who genuinely believe rioting was a good, natural, and necessary response to the killing of Floyd, but I suspect the vast majority just don’t care all that much about black people as people and see them, as you put it, as a monolithic political football and are only concerned with being perceived as a.) good progressives and b.) totally not racist white allies. This behavior on the part of progressives only incentivizes many conservatives to behave accordingly in the inverse and it, as you also say, is not healthy. And ultimately American blacks are probably going to be the biggest victims in this.
Oh boy. You're screwed. We still love you.
Rambling response:
I’m glad I’m not the only one in our space trying to parse this out. My own analysis was much smaller in scope (I only went back to 2015 or so) and looked at it from the modern “privilege” discourse/framework described by Phoebe Maltz-Bovy in her great book on the subject, so getting actual, concrete historical context is always welcome.
Honestly most antisemitism I’ve experienced has been a diverse (lol) affair when my own heritage comes up but when it’s come from someone who’s black it’s been very telling to see a switch flip. I don’t know any NOI folks or BHI folks (to my knowledge) but the strain of “antisemitism-lite” that comes from knee-jerk Palestinian rights fetishists (as in the ones who don’t understand the complexities of the geopolitics and history of the region and just know that to be a “good progressive” you have to name check Palestine) has always produced an awkward tension because it seems like there’s a very strong disconnect with people like that and how Jews or people of Jewish descent blend in perfectly if they don’t wear a yarmulke or have the weird curly cue hair. I don’t care if someone takes a position on Palestine like that--it’s usually rooted in something defensible. But I do think it’s telling when some of the stereotypes start to seep through.
I guess this gets at why I do think antisemitism deserves its own sort of category when it comes to types of bigotry; while all bigotry is rooted in psychological structures that make us suspicious of those we consider “counterfeit”, Jews--especially Ashkenazim, like my ancestors--became particular victims of that psychological bias, and thus the subsequent discrimination and violence, because they did essentially “look like” everyone else (of course adding to the fact that they had become associated with specific professions, including sordid ones, because frankly, they didn’t really have much choice in medieval Europe but to do things that didn’t involve trade guilds).
Where I part company with a lot of folks is that I think this dynamic is why antisemitism requires unique discourse. Unfortunately, this can turn into demands for unique (read: special) treatment, which has always rubbed me the wrong way with some of the more overzealous ADL types. I get how invoking the Holocaust can feel REALLY cheap to motivated black activists--as was demonstrated by Al Sharpton back in the 90s on I wanna say Springer, when he shouted “I’m sick to death of hearin’ ‘bout the Holocaust!”--but I do think it’s necessary, BUT ONLY WHEN IT’S RELEVANT. Same goes for black activists invoking slavery. This is why both conversations require unique, distinct discourse 99% of the time.
That is, of course, unless someone like you is trying, brother. Well done and looking forward to the next one.
I listened to a Roundtable by Bari Weiss on this subject and my lasting impression is of one of the panelists managing to blame Trump for the deterioration in Jewish, black relations, with no one even mentioning that every video you see of violence against Jews in Brooklyn etc involves blacks, it was if it’s just an intellectual thing. Big win to you.
Your insights into the life long effect (including prejudice and shame) of being beaten up as a child by members of an intrinsically meaner/stronger racial group resonates with me -- I experienced multiple brown on white violence as a child and to this day as a 63 year old I still think about this occasionally concurrent with a variety of emotions. I try not to let this make me a rascist but deep down??
I was probably left of center until I got sucker punched at a New Year's party for saying something someone disagreed with.
These always drop when I’m at work! Thanks for putting this highly... touchy subject in my head right before I meet my family for christmas lmao.
Ps. Do another book club post plz. I loved the last one.
Excellent essay. Thank you. I was reminded of my (ex) Rabbi, who still dutifully attends Thanksgiving Jewish/ Black dinners in New York city, hoping to build solidarity and common understanding using 1950s methods. He is one to push aside Ye or Sharpton as outliers, no matter what. I think a further wrinkle is that most American Jews today are no longer the "Podhoretz Jews" (a recent boss came to me on the eve of Passover asking "is this when we don't eat bread, or when we fast?"). They have become staunch believers of the Dem Party and are reliably anti-Israel, and pro any and all group grievances and microaggressions (BLM, "Stop Asian Hate!" Love is Love). I'm reminded of your essay mentioning Robert Maxwell and how post WWII many Jews thought themselves as Jewish, with strong Judaic moral tenets and obligations. Can the same be said of most American Jewry today? Is Doug Emhoff Jewish the way Podhoretz was? Zuckerberg? Merrick Garland? Admiral Levine? Jews of my parents' generation contributed to hospital wings (Zuck gets points here), and synagogues with attached day-schools. Today they contribute to Schumer's latest fundraiser. We are likely hearing the last of the howls of protest about antisemetic comments by Blacks from Jewish organizations.
I often listen to The Glenn (Lowry) Show, looking for Black intellectuals with different views, but my impression is that he's walking in the wilderness all alone. Sorry for the rambling, but I cannot pull these threads together as masterfully as you. Merry Christmas.
Do you think they are anti-Israel, or anti-Likud?
Anti-Israel. Even if there were 2 states they would claim the Israeli state was an interloper colonizer and unnatural to the region.
Great history, sober approach. Imagine if Baldwin debated Podhoretz instead of Buckley. The street-smart Brooklyn Jewish kid instead of the pampered Catholic intellectual with a voice only National Lampoon could love.
I’m saying this as a pampered Catholic non-intellectual, myself.
I must say you have a special gift when it comes to handling topics that are so touchy. Excellent piece and I believe you will escape being shot down in flames or crucified. Merry christmas DC. Love your work. Its important what you do👍
“I believe you will avoid being shot down in flames or crucified…”
Well. That’s good news.
Good essay although I tend to think the white southerners who are so easily looked down upon in todays world as this holiday season West Point is taking the time to finally get rid of all indications that Robert E. Lee ever existed.
Those southerners after the American civil war had a difficult time integrating with a black culture that was very different than theirs. The whites of the old confederacy get roasted for this difficulty in the history books and all the symbols of white southern culture is now denigrated but if we look at the history of the United States it seems to me those in the north flying that Yankee flag had a equal if not a worse time of it finding that smooth path of integration that is still rocky to this day.
Sowell has interesting insights into the struggle of Southerners to integrate into the North (black and white) in "Black Rednecks and White Liberals".
I went to high school (early 2010s) where it was 50/50 white and black with many of the black students coming from a bad parts of town due to bussing programs. It was an experience that one can’t really talk about without sounding racist in today’s climate. Podhoretz type experiences are still very prominent today, yet are never talked about.
What a shame that simply sharing your experiences would get you labeled as a racist. I still have hope that one day society will once again rise above the sophistication of children.
Honestly all my problems stemmed from the white kids who wished they were black. Most of the black kids were glad to be out of the hellhole their schools had become.
Ha I see you have found the proverbial third rail, can't wait for the audio...
For a more contemporary view of race politics I believe the podcast Moe Factz with Adam Curry is an entertaining listen.
Have a good Christmas!
Yes! Glad I scrolled the comments because I was going to recommend this podcast. Especially the last one about Kanye “Ye” specifically.
After the teaser, I was beginning to fear for you Darryl. Have a Merry Christmas! Thank you for all that you do.
RE: whether it's a good or bad thing that major publications don't run articles like those from Baldwin or Podhertz...there are articles like that, but they only run one direction and their authors don't have the intellectual gifts of either man. It's a long way down from Baldwin to Coates. Reminds me of the essay from Ebony you discussed in the Whose America prelude...better written that most anything recently published in the prestige press.
“A long way from Baldwin down to Coates…”
Man, you can say that again. A looooong way.
The way our so-called intellectual betters assign elite status to mediocrities is disgusting and condescending.
One of the things that gives me hope is the increasing incompetence of the professional managerial class.