Lost In Time

What happened to the alliance between the black and the Jewish community?

Historians have long been puzzled over the breakdown of alliances during the civil rights movement, with tons of different opinions cropping up.  Of course, accurate accounts must exist, but how many of them have been distorted or even manipulated?

Ironically, the black and Jewish community have been prosecuted groups in their own times. Unfortunately, with the power struggles in this world, I’m not surprised how rampant discrimination against race and ethnicities still is.

Anyway, this edition of our political reads is a pontification of what really happened to a story lost in time. There were characters and key players and a whole movement – and a narrative that’s now under hot debate amongst researchers and historians decades later.

Apparently, the civil rights movements created a rift between the Jewish and the black community, when black activism reached its peak and somewhere along the lines, black people wanted an exclusive movement just for themselves. Now, I’m not one to contend this – black folks have seen pain, which has transcended through generations, but then so have Jewish people.

What if two hurt groups of people joined together at the wrong time for the right reasons? Bad timing is a real thing – it can make or break something great or completely diffuse a whole movement because the parties implicated aren’t ready with their sentiments and objectivity.

Anyway, black people trying to create exclusivity for themselves led the Jewish community to do the same. History records the Jewish community as selfless allies who were scorned by their black counterparts but I, for one, refute this. I sincerely believe that the two persecuted groups had so much emotion and pain of politics, social rights and the burden of their beliefs and skin that the initial reason they banded together was lost in the rubble of resentment.

Perhaps, this is where each group realized their differences too. Where as Jews were continuously ostracized, they still managed to amass a majority of the world’s fortune – after all, in Judaism, there is an emphasis on wealth. All the while, the black community continued to struggle for freedom and perhaps they lost the race and even the ability to unite with the Jewish community based on their skin color and poverty.

There’s tons of literature out there if you’re wondering about this mysterious coalition and where it went. However, I still maintain that history is written by conquerors – and the ideal way to ever really get to the root of the issue and to the heart of the story is to find survivors from that era. There’s nothing like a real-life retelling of tales, you know?