In response to a series of anti-Semitic outbursts, several fashion companies severed their business dealings with the rapper Kanye West, as did the agency that represented him. Elliot Kaufman cautions against seeing this reaction as evidence of civic health:
The naïve view is that the refusal to defend West marks a sea shift in black attitudes toward Jews, transcending the impulse to defend the indefensible just because it was done by a fellow African American. The cynical view is that if West hadn’t first angered black people with his comment that slavery was “a choice,” and betrayed black leaders with his decision to put on the MAGA cap, the reaction would have been entirely different.
West now simply has reason to paint himself as a victim of Jewish power. Meanwhile, Kaufman writes, the forms of anti-Semitism that have particular purchase among African Americans are not going anywhere:
Any confrontation with black anti-Semitism incurs risk for Jews, but it is necessary. First, black anti-Semitism places traditional Jews in physical danger every day on the streets of Brooklyn and not only there. Many Jews have moved to neighborhoods where they can usually avoid being mugged by such a reality, but some won’t—or can’t afford to. They are owed practical, moral, and political support, including against progressives whose policies release criminal Jew-haters to the streets, where they can attack again.
Second, black anti-Semitism has a unique ability to strike at the heart of liberalism, the older kind that has often made exile in America seem for Jews like a vacation from history. Jewish success and prominence in America—taken by some as a standing insult—have hinged on liberal principles of merit, equality before the law, pluralism, free expression, and individual rights, as opposed to group privileges. Black anti-Semitism, in denying the legitimacy of Jewish success and prominence, is also an assault on those ruling principles. Its deeper meaning is to call the American system a fraud, a manipulation, and a conspiracy.
Read more on Commentary: https://www.commentary.org/articles/elliot-kaufman/kanye-west-antisemitism/