The Color Issue: An Introduction
Michael Scott Alexander, Bruce D. Haynes
American Jewish History, Volume 100, Number 1, January 2016, pp. ix-x
(Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ajh.2016.0010
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/606054
Accessed 14 Jun 2017 15:00 GMT
The Color Issue:
An Introduction
During the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther
King Jr. often described eleven o’clock Sunday morning as “the most
segregated hour in this nation.” He might have also noted a lack of
diversity during Saturday morning Shabbat services. It is with an acknowledgement that such questions of color continue to define and divide
Jewry in America today that the editors have chosen to explore the lived
identities of Jews in this special “color issue” of American Jewish History.
Who are Jews of color? In America, the term itself has been growing
in usage by many African Jews, Caribbean Jews, Latino Jews, Asian
Jews, and other Jews who consider themselves nonwhite. In his recent
analysis of the 2000 National Jewish Population Survey, social demographer Bruce A. Phillips estimates that 10.8 percent of those in Generation
X and Generation Y currently identify as Jews of color. The growth in
Jews of color among the young represents a clear trend upward from
the 6.8 percent of Jewish baby boomers who consider themselves people
of color, and the 3.9 percent of the Silent Generation who identify as
other than non-Hispanic white. At the current rate, we would expect
Jews of color to represent close to 20 percent of the next generation.
As the number of Jews of color increases alongside people of color
in the general American population, color issues for greater American
Jewry will likely grow in importance. At the turn of the twentieth century, American Jewry witnessed competing narratives among Central
and Eastern European Jewish immigrants, with the former seeking to
disallow the Eastern European immigrants the legitimacy of their culture and traditions, and also insinuating that Eastern European Jews
occupied an inferior racial position. The rejection experienced today by
some nonwhite Jews follows something of a similar pattern, as several
of the articles herein indicate. Yet this volume also makes clear that
the vitality of Jewry in America is beyond the domination of any single
institution or ethnic group.
Because historical scholarship about Jews of color remains in its
infancy, this volume, edited by two scholars from separate disciplines
(history and sociology), utilizes the perspectives of a variety of disciplines
to explore the area at the nexus of assimilation, color, and race. These
are themes with which AJH readers will already be well acquainted.
We begin with sociologist Kelly Amanda Train, who uses in-depth
ethnographic interviews to explore the distinct histories of Indian Jews
in Toronto’s Bene Israel of North America congregation. Her account
reveals the strained and often racially charged interactions between the
congregation’s Indian community and the majority Ashkenazi community.
Historian Rebecca L. Davis explores the startling 1950s conversion to
Judaism of the African-American entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. We then
turn to linguist Sarah Bunin Benor, who looks at how black Jews utilize
a repertoire of distinctive linguistic features as strategies in managing
their self-presentations as black and Jewish. Bruce A. Phillips then traces
the history of Jewish neighborhood migrations in Los Angeles across
the twentieth century. Judging from the pattern he reveals of Jewish
residential concentration “by preference,” he wonders whether scholars
should best be studying the formation of “ethnoburbs” and comparing
Jewish residential patterns to those of nonwhite groups such as Asian
Americans. We end the exchange with an essay by the Afro-Jewish philosopher Lewis R. Gordon, who challenges assumptions about Jewish
demography and history as he explores the problems facing Jews of
color who have been “hidden in proverbial plain sight.”
The editors regret that they were unable to secure an article regarding
advances in population genetics and their possible meanings for American
Jewish history. Such scientific developments will certainly be among the
most important influences on Jewish identity and Jewish historiography
in the current century. These advances may prove especially crucial for
claims to legitimacy in the future.1
Lastly, this volume includes a separate article by Nancy Sinkoff under
the AJH banner “From the Archives.” The piece recounts the remarkable
work of Lucy S. Dawidowicz in 1946 to attain from war-torn Europe
what was left of the great archive of the Yiddish Scientific Institute
(YIVO). Ashkenazi Jews were the greatest victims of racial violence in
the last century and Dawidowicz’s work to retain and legitimate the
cultural property of that population is a purpose not entirely different
from our own aspirations in these pages.
Michael Scott Alexander, University of California, Riverside
Bruce D. Haynes, University of California, Davis
1. For instance, the Cohen Modal Haplotype has been found among the Bene Israel
of India, a group discussed in this volume by Kelly Amanda Train, although without
reference to genetic issues. See Tudor Parfitt and Yulia Egorova, “Genetics, History, and
Identity: The Case of the Bene Israel and the Lemba,” Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry
29, June 2005, 193–224.