Black nationalist antisemitism on campus requires Jews to be ‘white’
In a recent controversy, Kwame Zulu Shabazz, an interim professor in the African Studies department at Knox College in Illinois, took to Twitter to condemn Jewish profit-mongers and explain that contemporary Jews have malign intent toward others in the Middle East because the “brutal” God of the Hebrew Bible commanded Jews to commit genocide. While this type of rhetoric would not be out of place at a gathering of white supremacists, Shabazz has garnered support from both students and faculty who support his black nationalist views and dismiss any negative reaction to his views as an inconsequential reaction of coddled white students.
According to an article in The Knox Student, Shabazz concurs with this assessment.
“Jews have aspired to whiteness, integrating into the white category,” he explained. “I’m writing as a black person who is a victim of white supremacy, of which Jews are a part of that group.”
In relation to his tweets, Shabazz explained, “There are currently a subset of Jewish students on this campus who are very hurt and I respect that. And I tell my white students this in classes: whenever a white student feels uncomfortable about something, you can get a fleeting sense, a very fleeting, superficial sense of what it’s like to be black in America.”
This type of incident has recurred for decades, and the pattern is, unfortunately, familiar. A black academic, public intellectual, or activist makes some sort of oral or written comment depicting Jews or Israel as white oppressors, often in terms that evoke historic antisemitic tropes or imagery and sometimes included as part of a message of empowerment. Spokespeople and organizations in the Jewish community react to what they see as the antisemitic content of the comment, and the generator of the comment (along with his or her supporters) then responds in one or more of the following ways:
• Denial of antisemitic effect or intent (sometimes accompanied by an apology, whether sincere or pro forma).
• Justification of the comment because Jews or Israel are white oppressors.
• Approbation of the original comment, even if it might be antisemitic, because it is “the truth.”
