Last month, Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Antidefamation League (ADL), appeared on the popular radio show The Breakfast Club to discuss anti-Semitism in America, and in particular the recent controversies surrounding the basketball player Kyrie Irving and the rapper Kanye West. The results, writes Hannah Meyers, suggest that his approach might not be working:
Unfortunately, much of the pushback so far [from Jewish leaders and organizations] treats the problem of anti-Semitism like an issue for classroom discussion, curable by tackling ignorance and rudeness. This approach doesn’t appear especially effective against the loose slurry of ideas borrowed from sources like the Nation of Islam and Black Hebrew Israelites, tinged by both far-left villainizing of privilege and far-right fears of “replacement” by minorities.
Greenblatt . . . began with a careful defense of Jews spending time protecting Jews when blacks are also in need of defense. He responded to questions about the distinctions between public and private speech and about how to distinguish a benign “punchline” from an inciting “punch.” Scrolling through the more than 11,600 comments below the interview video, a theme emerges that suggests this conciliatory conversation didn’t land: that anti-Semitism is justified.
Perhaps conscientious education can cure people of prejudice; certainly, dialogue is a critical and healthy part of civics. Anti-Semitism, however, is an age-old malignancy that leapfrogs bias to become something irrational, suffused with magical thinking and the potential for violence. Maybe to combat this growing surge, we need to focus less on explaining why anti-Semitism is not nice and more on discovering what forces of misplaced grievance and fear in the black community are inflaming it now.
Read more on City Journal: https://www.city-journal.org/the-need-to-curb-black-anti-semitism