How Blacks and Jews can come together again

We have just finished an election that underscored sharp division in our country. Among those divisions have been race-based attacks on both Blacks and Jews. We have all received an earful of the controversy concerning the ignorant statements made by Kanye West and the misguided social media post of Kyrie Irving. Both are emblematic of what is wrong with the discourse surrounding Blacks and Jews. Both controversies center around a divisive, distorted and flat-out incorrect characterization of history. We believe our nation will be served by setting the record straight and healing those divisions.

One of us, Markus Green, is Black, the other, Victor Schwartz, is Jewish. We have worked together on challenging civil justice problems for over a decade. We devote most of our professional time toward prevention of unjust liability claims. More important than our professional link is our friendship based on unyielding mutual respect. It cannot be broken.

Our experience in life and our study of history strongly suggests that Blacks and Jews in general should foster such feelings. They have had both adversity and success.

Both Blacks and Jews have suffered the ignominy of slavery. For nearly 400 years, millions of Africans were forcibly placed on slave ships and sent to America. The Bible tells us that the Jews were slaves in Egypt for hundreds of years. Each Passover holiday, Jews relive that history and celebrate their liberation. That story was a powerful one for enslaved African-Americans, who sung the spiritual, “Go Down Moses.” Harriet Tubman is said to have used that song to announce her arrival when she helped people escape on the Underground Railroad. Tubman herself is referred to as the “the Moses of her people.”

Blacks and Jews have a shared history of being attacked because they are considered different. For a long time, the United States ignored its founding premise of “Equal Justice for All.” But even after the Civil War ended slavery, for generations, Blacks had essentially no civil rights. Jews can relate to the horrors of post-Civil War Black experience in America. Jews fled other countries to escape death from Nazi concentration camps only to experience continued anti-Semitism in America.

Fortunately, many of these barriers have been overcome. Joint efforts by Blacks and Jews have been part of those accomplishments. Jews were allies with Blacks in the fight for civil rights. Several Jewish people were among the founders of the NAACP and Jewish lawyers helped successfully battle Jim Crow legislation.

Martin Luther King Jr. recognized the mutual interest of Blacks and Jews.

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“My people were brought to America in chains,” King said in a 1958 speech to the American Jewish Congress. “Your people were driven here to escape the chains fashioned for them in Europe. Our unity is born of our common struggle for centuries, not only to rid ourselves of bondage, but to make oppression of any people by others an impossibility.”

In 1965, the Civil Rights Act outlawed many forms of discrimination in public places and in employment, but racism and anti-Semitism persist. Both Blacks and Jews understand that prohibiting blatant discrimination is only a partial victory. Today, racism toward Blacks and Jews takes place in many more subtle ways.

Blacks and Jews have seen so-called spokespersons utter remarks against each group. But such folks are a minority in a minority. Without a doubt, both of us as lawyers know that legal battles won for Blacks have helped Jews, and legal battles won for Jews have helped Blacks.

Finally, and often overlooked, is the fact that Black and Jewish culture can be a bond between the two groups — one that includes humor, emotion and love of family.

So at a time where many are planting and growing seeds of division, we ask that Black and Jewish leaders, and ordinary men and women in each group, build a united wall of mutual respect. After all, racism and anti-Semitism racism are two ugly cousins. Anti-Semitism is racism and racism is anti-Semitism. Jews and Blacks must be united against hate and bigotry.

Jews and Blacks have far more in common than we will ever have differences. Both have suffered and survived monumental atrocities and the aftershock is still being felt. We both understand survival and perseverance. But most of all, we both understand the power of love in the face of hate. We are one people. Unity, not divisiveness, is our path forward.

Green is vice president and assistant general counsel at Pfizer. Schwartz is a former law professor and law school dean, and current co-chair of the public policy group of the law firm Shook, Hardy & Bacon, L.L.P.