ABSTRACT
The index to The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual contains nine page references for “Catholicism and Catholics,” six for “Christianity,” four for “Finland and the Finns,” seven for “Indians (American) one for “Irish” and none for “Jews.” “Jews and Negroes,” however, yields thirty-eight references. Two entire chapters of the book are devoted to this relationship, the only ethnic or religious group to enjoy such treatment. What is this fixation about? Cruse’s treatment of Jews in all these pages is certainly negative but not exclusively so, a blend of resentment, admiration, and bitterness. I believe his complex feelings about Jews and his fixation on them stems from the same roots: Jews and blacks have indeed been more deeply intertwined in the United States than any other two groups, and their relationship is full of complexity and ambiguity. From cultural production to political action to economics, blacks and Jews have competed for and in the same spaces. Furthermore, the grounds for Cruse’s indictment of Jews lie squarely in the nationalist moment of the late 1960s. One way of understanding Cruse’s attitudes toward Jews, or more properly toward black-Jewish relations, is to examine the nature of those relationships historically, and to place Cruse’s observations and conclusions in the context of the 1960s critique of liberals and liberalism.
