Enforcing Correctness

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The heightened tensions are made more tragic because blacks and Jews share common interests. "Jews are the most natural white allies that blacks have," says Jonathan Kaufman, author of Broken Alliance, a book about black-Jewish relations. "Jews still remain the one group that's willing to vote for a black candidate." And although the press dwells on alleged black anti- Semitism, Roger Wilkins, a professor of history at George Mason University, observes, "Black people didn't create the law firms and banking firms that wouldn't hire Jews. The Wasps did that."

What rankles some blacks is that some whites feel a need to make all black leaders speak out whenever one black says something stupid. "People are deeply offended that whites always seem to feel that they have to tell black people what to object to, what to condemn," says Clayton Riley, a talk-show host on WLIB, a black radio station in New York City. "There is no comparable kind of instruction to whites."

Last month Senator Ernest Hollings joked about Africans being cannibals, but no other white Senators were pressured to condemn him. Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern make questionable racial remarks, and yet former President Bush invited Limbaugh to the White House, and Senator Alfonse D'Amato attended Stern's book party. Says Jackson: "There is a broad base of objectionable language used by a lot of people in high places. It's not just Farrakhan." Or Muhammad. To make all black leaders responsible for his words, it might be argued, is just another kind of bigotry.