MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

American Jews live in a country committed to diversity. Many Americans, moreover, have, for two or three generations, regarded Jews as “white,” situating Jews within the favored race and ostensibly exempting them from racist characterizations. Yet Christian teachings retain themes condemning the hypocrisy, moral blindness, greed, and enmity of Jewish spiritual leaders. These teachings, accepted as religious truth, have influenced many Christian populations, including those in America, to extend such prejudiced judgments – consciously or through unexamined assumptions – to Jews in general.

American Jews may repeatedly experience being blindsided by inimical expressions that crop up right here in their American homeland. I say “blind-sided” for two reasons. First, each occurrence can be a surprise, occurring unexpectedly in seemingly unlikely contexts. Second, nothing in Jewish or American culture prepares Jews to respond. Jews do not proselytize and therefore most never learn to communicate about being Jewish. Unprepared, most adapt by keeping quiet. Each new event feels like being blind-sided and silenced.

Reverend Graham expressed anti-Semitic views in a conversation with Nixon, then denied the report, published in The Haldeman Diaries, and was then confronted with the Nixon Tapes that proved Haldeman was right. Assuming he had experienced an honest memory lapse, Graham’s tape-recorded voice wound up, in effect, blind-siding Graham.

He had offered Nixon bigoted, dangerous remarks, had apparently forgotten, and was later confronted by the evidence. He then had to decide how to respond. He seemed, at each stage, to react, puzzled, to his own chaotic feelings. He seemed as blind-sided as the Jews he had targeted.

American Jewish leaders groped for responses to his calumnies and to his apologies. I therefore view this case history as an American mirror and microcosm of an ancient, widespread phenomenon: this abiding bigotry that confuses both perpetrator and target