SYMPOSIUM: Black Americans, Jewish Americans: Historical Intersections, Collisions, and Passings
A diverse, interdisciplinary group of scholars will explore the complex historical relationship of Black and Jewish Americans as well as their struggles to negotiate a white Christian American society.
Black Americans, Jewish Americans: Historical Intersections, Collisions, and Passings” will explore the complex ways in which two different minority communities, Black Americans and Jewish Americans, have nonetheless both struggled to belong in white Christian America. Despite progress made in civil rights since the mid-1960s, both anti-Black racism and antisemitism have shown no signs of abating in the 21st century’s third decade, exacerbated by a rise of white Christian populist nationalism.
Black American and Jewish American efforts to belong have sometimes resulted in shared activism and goals; at other times, they have resulted in conflict. What is common between them is a desire to fit in as Americans, to claim a rightful place as citizens and to feel accepted on their own terms. In the Jewish historical experience, this effort has often been called “assimilation;” in the Black historical experience, “passing.”
The symposium is comprised of Black, Jewish, and gentile scholars who approach the symposium’s themes from a variety of methodologies, with panels entitled “Historical Intersections of Black/Jewish Relations;” “African Americans and Jews Navigating a White Christian World,” “Literary Representations and Responses to European Antisemitism and White America;” “Political and Cultural Legacies of Civil Rights.” The symposium is structured as a series of accessible conversations among panelists, respondents, and the audience.
