Here is a long and remarkable AP piece about how Obama's victory has opened the door on new definitions of black identity. Many blacks are quoted trying to come to terms with the new reality of acceptance, and talking about dropping the yoke of difference and suffering…I am guessing that Jesse Washington, who wrote it, is black, and therefore had the understanding necessary to write this.
The amazement to me of course is that this process has not taken place in the Jewish community. Certainly Jewish identity is changing, due to acceptance and power. It is happening under our feet. But who in the leadership is addressing this? Who is willing to acknowledge that the Council on Foreign Relations is basically half-Jewish if not more, that 30 percent of Supreme Court clerks are Jewish, that half the folks at Obama's first press conference are Jewish, that his first appointment was Jewish? These are issues that Avraham Burg is addressing head on.
I don't think blacks are any better than Jews. Obviously the issue is loaded. Jews have always been charged with influence. So you're dealing with a source of some anxiety. It would be like someone–say Michelle Obama–saying, It's my opinion that the black community needs to deal with the crime problem, and now. And the Holocaust and the "existential" threat to Israel make this loaded. Still: where's the Yivo panel on Jewish success?
