Black like him

As a film directed by a Jewish man based on a book written by a black woman, The Color Purple (1985) remains a part of both the sprawling history of the American cinema and the complicated relationship between blacks and Jews in the United States. The arduous fight for black civil rights during the 1950s and 1960s highlighted the obvious commonalities between these minority groups, molded their conceptions of themselves and each other, and fostered an effective alliance for social change. ¹ Marginalized as outsiders and stigmatized as pariahs – blacks because of their color and Jews because of their religion – these groups recognized a mutual, diasporic heritage permeated with discrimination and persecution at the hands of fearful often hostile, white and Christian societies. ² Homegrown organizations, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nation, made no distinctions between blacks and Jews when spewing their hatred and perpetrating their violence. It is not surprising, therefore, that black leaders often referred to passages from the Old Testament to draw parallels between their own struggles in America and the plight of Jewish slaves in Egypt. Citing their long history as the victims of oppression, many Jews provided money, manpower, and political support to assist the black campaign for equality, linking arms with them in marches, protests, and lawsuits against racism. For most Americans, the two most pervasive and vivid historical examples of intolerance, brutality and genocide are the institution of slavery and the advent of the Holocaust, a fact which further entwines blacks and Jews in the public’s consciousness and in their own minds as well. ³