Julius Lester's Newfound Jewish Identity

Kriegel indicates that each minority classify names the other as its oppressor while simultaneously spotlight their take in group's societal status as "victims of racial hatred" (Kriegel 573). Kriegel indicates that each group, in truth, is victimized by their own company in games of "political correctness" which

seem them giving "racial color" to small incidents, fiercely protecting their own group's interests and vigilantly watching against "exploitation by the other" (Kriegel 573). Kriegel argues that the adoption of this excessively protective and distrustful stance generates an ongoing series of "misunder-standings and ideational feelings of victimization" (Kriegel 573).

Kriegel's comments helps to contextualize Lester's motivation for conversion as articulated in Lovesong. In merging his pregiven unappeasable identity with his newfound Jewish identity, it is as if Lester is leaping across all racial barriers. Heterologically speaking, he is assimilating the other. He is taking into himself that which would on the surface come to the fore to be most foreign. Lester is able to come to a blossom of self-validation once he has extinguished any need to see someone else as radically different from himself. For a glum man to awaken spiritually and see himself as a Jew, he is overcoming the societal impasse of convention. Lester refuses to be constrained by the color of his skin. He is interested in establishing an identity for himself which has non been predetermined by artifi

western hemisphere contends that the current impasse in Ameri net black-Jewish relations can only be overcome through discussions which surpass the isolation of group interests. What is needed, according to West, is an interracial discussion which includes what "being black or Jewish means in ethical impairment" (West 109). Such a discussion hopefully would enable some(prenominal) groups "to formulate strategies and tactics to sidestep the traps of tribalism and chauvinism" (West 109). Further, West specifies that blacks mustiness struggle to overcome three basic tenets of their anti-semitism. First, they must meet it to be "a species of anti-whitism" (West 111).

Second, they must understand that "black anti-Semitism is a result of higher expectations some black sept have of Jews" (West 112). Third, "black anti-Semitism is a form of underdog jaundice and envy, directed at a nonher underdog who has "made it" in American society" (West 112).

West, Cornel. black market Matters. New York: Random House, 1993.

In Race Matters Cornel West, a leading black theorist and apparitional scholar, dedicates an entire chapter to "Black-Jewish Relations" (West 103-16). West observes that "black anti-Semitism and Jewish antiblack racism" are real and "as deeply American as cherry pie" (West 104). West indicates that although thither has been no golden age between these two minority groups, there was a better era when they held "the common histories of oppression and humiliation . . . as a springboard for genuine empathy and principled conjunction" (West 104). West asserts that most blacks fail to recognize and acknowledge the " lowering hatred of Jews which sits at the center of medieval and modern europium" (West 104). In turn, West asserts that Jews fleeing Europe and arriving in America did not sufficiently question the widespread antiblack stereotypes they encountered or their own ability to garner whiteskin privileges unavailable to blacks (West 106). West indicates that American blacks and Jews lodge
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