The Politics of Whiteness : Race and Nation in W.E.B DuBois, Mordecai Kaplan, and Contemporary Struggles for Racial Justice

• In Event: Jews and American Politics

Abstract

In the early months of 2017, Rabbis in Los Angeles and New York were arrested blocking traffic and Jewish social justice groups hosted “Seders in the Streets.” While the policies of the Trump administration were the immediate cause, these efforts were organized by Jewish social justice organizations that have, over the last several years, proliferated and expanded.

This growth is in part a consequence of a newly revitalized racial justice movement. One of the cardinal achievements of the Movement for Black Lives has been shifting the language among progressives from a rhetoric of “racism” to “white supremacy.” If the problem is “racism,” whites can work to eliminate prejudice. But “white supremacy” cannot be eradicated without ending “whiteness,” an identity predicated upon the domination of others. But how does one eliminate “Whiteness?” For Jews who have been taught that their Judaism obligates a commitment to racial justice, Jewishly defined politics provides a means of mitigating this dilemma.

In this paper I explore this phenomenon through interviews with newly engaged activists in these organizations. These interviews reveal some of the challenges that this new politics is encountering, particularly as Jewishly defined racial justice politics cannot help, today, but run into the politics of Israel. Questions of Zionism take on new relevance, as an intersectional analysis seems to demand solidarity with the Palestinian people.

After offering an account of these trends and the challenges they provoke, I turn to the work of two key 20th century writers who interrogated racialized conceptions of both Judaism and Blackness while holding to nationalist conceptions of each. Mordecai Kaplan and W.E.B. Dubois were both influenced by the thought of American pragmatism, and sought ways to re-imagine the meaning of their respective communities to meet the challenges of their times. In this paper I ask, how successful were they in rejecting racialized identities? How did they conceive of the relationship between Jewish nationalism and Black nationalism? And what might their work offer for American Jews attempting to develop communities of solidarity equipped to meet contemporary challenges?

Author

• Daniel David May, Princeton University