Supporting Black civil rights delayed Jews’ acceptance into Whiteness

Evidence

Not all Jews were silent about lynching and other racial violence against Blacks. Open support of Blacks’ civil rights, however, played into the hands of Anglo-Protestant nativists’ claims that Jews were sympathetic to the despised Negro, which corroborated anti-Semitic conspiracies of disloyalty. To receive the full benefits of social Whiteness, therefore, Jews and Catholics had to participate in the subordination of African Americans. Arguably, it was not until Jews felt more secure in their Whiteness in the decades after World War II that they became more assertive in their support for African Americans’ civil rights. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 390