Individual and Societal Friendship
After reading Loewy’s post about Gunnar’s friendships with the Santa Monica boys, I started to think about how the fact that David is Jewish affects their relationship, and does it? For one thing, what Beatty is doing by depicting Gunnar’s close friendships, both David and Scoby, is showing what “true” friendship is. In both relationships, Gunnar and the friend click immediately, have things to bond over, and can have intellectually stimulating conversations.
Gunnar acknowledges that David is white, but says that he’s “off-white”, and the fact that he’s Jewish and Gunnar is black is something he recognizes. However, Gunnar says that the only time race really entered their conversations was when they were “debating who Hitler would kill first, David the diabolical Jew or me the subhuman Negroid,” (pg. 40). It’s a weird thing to bring up, mostly because it shows that even while being taught color blindness they acknowledge that they are different, but that they were also both part of historically marginalized groups. But how much does this fact define their friendship?
The history here is obviously complex. This idea that “Well perhaps because they’re both groups that have been oppressed, they share a common interest” is something we’ve explored since Native Son. Max was Jewish, and he used this to gain Bigger’s respect and trust. Such examples are not hard to find in American history; there was certainly cooperation in movements for racial equality between black Americans and Jews.
But then again, there a lot of ways in which Jews were not always the champions of racial equality, and they experience the privilege of whiteness which black Americans would not get. James Baldwin wrote in 1967 about Black-Jewish relations titled “Negroes are Anti-Semitic Because They’re Anti-White”, and it’s a really complex essay that dives deep into the Black-Jewish relationship, and it’s definitely worth a read if you have time. Baldwin opens the essay by talking about how he and other black people growing up in Harlem hated Jews because they were the same as the white landlords; he didn’t really recognize the difference because in America it was the white man, regardless of other attributes, who oppressed him. What fundamentally becomes a big point in his essay is that there is something fundamentally different about the black experience in America from the Jewish experience, or any other immigrant experience. But what he says in the end is really interesting to me:
Throughout his essay he acknowledges the nuance of the relationship between Jews and African Americans; whether or not one agrees with every point he says, it brings up a lot of relevant questions. Perhaps what he ultimately finds a problem with is Christianity, the majority religion. Nobody gets special “I understand everyone else’s plight” privileges because they’ve been oppressed, but there is still reason to find friendship. They don’t need to be unified, but they can be because they understand to some degree what it means to be the minority.
Then how much does the historical relationship between Jews and African-Americans define David and Gunnar’s friendship? Are they brought closer by their being not part of the majority race/religion? At a surface level based on Gunnar’s descriptions, I’d say yes. Neither of them are colorblind as the all-white multicultural school teaches them to be. But is the reason they’re genuinely friends based on their sharing of a common struggle?
Perhaps it does, but it doesn’t need to. They have fun together and have interesting conversations. But above all us, they treat each other as humans. Gunnar treats David as human knowing he’s Jewish, and David treats Gunnar as human knowing that he’s black. They don’t have to be friends because of that, but they’re friends because they understand each other as humans. Honestly, that’s a pretty good way to define friendship.
Gunnar acknowledges that David is white, but says that he’s “off-white”, and the fact that he’s Jewish and Gunnar is black is something he recognizes. However, Gunnar says that the only time race really entered their conversations was when they were “debating who Hitler would kill first, David the diabolical Jew or me the subhuman Negroid,” (pg. 40). It’s a weird thing to bring up, mostly because it shows that even while being taught color blindness they acknowledge that they are different, but that they were also both part of historically marginalized groups. But how much does this fact define their friendship?
The history here is obviously complex. This idea that “Well perhaps because they’re both groups that have been oppressed, they share a common interest” is something we’ve explored since Native Son. Max was Jewish, and he used this to gain Bigger’s respect and trust. Such examples are not hard to find in American history; there was certainly cooperation in movements for racial equality between black Americans and Jews.
But then again, there a lot of ways in which Jews were not always the champions of racial equality, and they experience the privilege of whiteness which black Americans would not get. James Baldwin wrote in 1967 about Black-Jewish relations titled “Negroes are Anti-Semitic Because They’re Anti-White”, and it’s a really complex essay that dives deep into the Black-Jewish relationship, and it’s definitely worth a read if you have time. Baldwin opens the essay by talking about how he and other black people growing up in Harlem hated Jews because they were the same as the white landlords; he didn’t really recognize the difference because in America it was the white man, regardless of other attributes, who oppressed him. What fundamentally becomes a big point in his essay is that there is something fundamentally different about the black experience in America from the Jewish experience, or any other immigrant experience. But what he says in the end is really interesting to me:
"If one blames the Jew for not having been ennobled by oppression, one is not indicting the single figure of the Jew but the entire human race, and one is also making a quite breathtaking claim for oneself. I know that my own oppression did not ennoble me, not even when I thought of myself as a practicing Christian. I also know that if today I refuse to hate Jews, or anybody else, it is because I know how it feels to be hated. I learned this from Christians, and I ceased to practice what the Christians practiced.
The crisis taking place in the world, and in the minds and hearts of black men everywhere, is not produced by the star of David, but by the old, rugged Roman cross on which Christendom's most celebrated Jew was murdered. And not by Jews.”
Throughout his essay he acknowledges the nuance of the relationship between Jews and African Americans; whether or not one agrees with every point he says, it brings up a lot of relevant questions. Perhaps what he ultimately finds a problem with is Christianity, the majority religion. Nobody gets special “I understand everyone else’s plight” privileges because they’ve been oppressed, but there is still reason to find friendship. They don’t need to be unified, but they can be because they understand to some degree what it means to be the minority.
Then how much does the historical relationship between Jews and African-Americans define David and Gunnar’s friendship? Are they brought closer by their being not part of the majority race/religion? At a surface level based on Gunnar’s descriptions, I’d say yes. Neither of them are colorblind as the all-white multicultural school teaches them to be. But is the reason they’re genuinely friends based on their sharing of a common struggle?
Perhaps it does, but it doesn’t need to. They have fun together and have interesting conversations. But above all us, they treat each other as humans. Gunnar treats David as human knowing he’s Jewish, and David treats Gunnar as human knowing that he’s black. They don’t have to be friends because of that, but they’re friends because they understand each other as humans. Honestly, that’s a pretty good way to define friendship.
Nice post! I didn't think about the parallel Jewish-Black relationships of Bigger-Max and Gunnar-David. The background about James Baldwin is super interesting, and your analysis seems spot on. I agree, and I think Gunnar's friendship with David is really admirable. It kind of surprises me that in your quote the black man hates the Jewish man, because I assumed that the oppressed generally support each other. I think it's revealing that skin color is so important in Baldwin's view. I was definitely very surprised while reading this blog post.
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